Take the poem \u2018Rollright Stones\u2019 for instance \u2013 I\u2019ve been obsessed with standing stones for ages and\u00a0Ast\u00e9ronymes<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>has its fair share of them. Soon before I had to submit the final manuscript, I realized I was living close to a stone circle and made the cold walk to the stones, hoping some last minute poem would appear. I made soggy notes and got annoyed at other people sharing \u2018my\u2019 experience with me. Eventually, once I got back somewhere drier and more caffeinated, I realized that I had the wrong subject all along, and the poem now begins:<\/p>\n Men come and stand in its centre: Some poems in\u00a0Ast\u00e9ronymes<\/em>\u00a0came from processing a situation by alienating them: the end of a friendship seen through an index, a traumatic experience debunked through author corrections,\u2026 Most of my poems have started with a constraint of some sort, even if the end result has ended up discarding them. It\u2019s a method that works for me, and it\u2019s generally generated from the situation I\u2019m in at the time of writing.<\/p>\n A method found in several poems across the collection comes from taking a word, cutting it in two and placing it on either side of that line. I\u2019m sure someone out there has named that technique, I certainly haven\u2019t. I first used it after standing in a circle of standing stones on Machrie Moor on the Isle of Arran, and wondering how on earth I could capture the place through form. Cutting up the word \u2018Stone\u2019 so that it seeped into the roots of the poem kickstarted a whole sequence based on the island. Here is the Machrie Moor section:<\/p>\n Start on the first page, the scone- Stare under its teeth for a story. One steer through bricks, a chimney of nettles gone stage-struck circles of barnacled bone: Straight-backed bolts in this mix-taped zone, storing the years, their surface a drone Clich\u00e9 as it sounds then, the inspiration for poems in\u00a0Ast\u00e9ronymes<\/em>\u00a0tend to come from finding a form through which I can translate something rattling around my brain. In the warmth. Later.<\/p>\n Order your copy of Asteronymes online.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nstubbled, pocked, and pickled,
\nand interrupt my poem
\nabout unknowable history.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.coolplaces.co.uk\/system\/images\/5725\/rollright-stones-see-do-buildings-monuments-large.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\ncoloured path to the croft\u2019s collapsed slates.<\/p>\n
\ntree has taken over the walls, fern tentacles<\/p>\n
\ndry; and then, past the loner labels, turn to<\/p>\n
\nan empty index, a haptic glossary.<\/p>\n
\nthey\u2019ve weathered the art of echoes,<\/p>\n
\nof initials and lichen dripped lava-like.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/wp-content\/themes\/classic\/cover-images\/asteronymes.jpg\")
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