W S Graham

So I've been doing these pointless poetry exercises for a week now, carefully following the injunction to write the poems from the first lines provided without looking at the originals.

This morning I looked at the originals - each of the ten opening lines come from poems by W S Graham. I shouldn't have done it. I can see now how juvenile and stupid my pointless poetry exercises look in comparison to the originals. Of course I knew this would happen: an opening line is generated by the poet who has a very good understanding of how they want to use that line as part of the rest of the poem; whereas the Guardian unlimited workshop is just asking a writer to take a first line and run with it. The end result is, necessarily, shoddy - a tacked on thing, a dangling misrepresentation rather than an innovative reinterpretation.

Now I can't bear to look at my pointless poetry attempts; I shan't be writing any more. Instead, some links to a few of the original poems:

The constructed space (Meanwhile surely there must be something to say)
I leave this at your ear
Imagine a forest
A beast in the space (Shut up. Shut up. There's nobody here)

And here's one I particularly loved:

Letter VI