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Poetry Regs Duncan Jones on some rules and regulations for creativity

Poetry Regs

Duncan Jones on some rules and regulations for creativity

by Duncan Jones, Poet in Residence
first published: January, 2025

approximate reading time: minutes

15. Poetry is no help at all

Poetry Regs

  1. What are you making and imagining?

  2. Are we all part of the same business? 

  3. “And there shall be no more tears”.

  4. Is poetry a salve for common hurts? What are your common hurts, you little fuck?

  5. The odd slips and dissonance of a conversation in the staffroom to be phrased later.

  6. The letter your grandmother wrote you, drenched in bad faith and resentment, set out with line breaks.

  7. Directive, procedural, eschewing all ambiguity. A data set that can be consumed and placed in the head. 

  8. Everything can be accounted for but the exception.

  9. Are we there to tell people what they already know? 

  10. Beauty dispossesses you. You struggle to centre yourself. 

  11. Adorned with idées reçues and haloed with dayglo clickbait flames, they become true citizens of the HERE and of the NOW.

  12. ““They’re sour”, he said, “and only fit for swine””

  13. Is there some common prosody we’re all serving? Should there be? 

  14. Do we need each other or the idea of each other?

  15. Poetry is no help at all.

  16. You’re writing in the midst of the sweating mystery. Your hands ache with strange possibilities.

  17. The page is waiting.


© 2025 Duncan Jones

Duncan Jones
Poet in Residence

Duncan has lived and worked in Birmingham for over forty years. He does things with words and pictures.


about Duncan Jones »»

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