TWT Wave 2 can be purchased here: https://shorturl.at/ezFNn

Lesley Curwen

is a poet, broadcaster and sailor from Plymouth. She won the Molecules Unlimited poetry competition, and in 2024, Hedgehog Press published her pamphlet Rescue Lines, and Dreich published an eco-chapbook, Sticky with Miles. She has been nominated for Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. @elcurwen, X and Insta @elcurwen.bskyb.social http://www.lesleycurwenpoet.com

The Interview

1 How did you decide on what poems to send?

I looked at the many poems I have written about nature and environmental decline, and chose one which asks for the reader to think differently about something very humble and common, sand, how it is formed and what it has been through before we carelessly walk on it. The poem contrasts the desirable seaglass that catches beachcombers’ eyes, either the simple beauty of pebbles and sand.

2 What poetic form did it take, and why?

It started out as a shapeless mass of ideas, then gained a kind of momentum as the story of sand’s beginnings took off. I ended up putting it in tercets with a final couplet and suddenly it was a sonnet, though the volta comes very early in the poem.

3 How did you use the whiteness of the page in your poem?

I suppose the poem could have been a block of text, a sonnet with no white space, but as the poem is an argument against the easy and heterodox view, the uneasy, restless shape of the tercet worked better, and the last two lines seemed to belong on their own, to give them the final word. Having said that, I always torture myself that my endings are too obvious and wrapped-up, a hangover from a lifetime as a reporter where it was a requirement of the job.

4 How did you decide on the title of your poem?

It took a while- there were some titles that mentioned seaglass. But in the end it seemed that the key thought was that even the humblest stuff beneath our feet has its own history, is a gift from nature, to be perceived and appreciated.

5 Imagery, or narrative. Which was more important to you in writing the poem?

The first line came first, about the attraction of seaglass, which I confess, I do collect myself. After that, the narrative and it’s momentum was intensely important. The rest of the imagery folded around it.

6 What do you think of where your poem is placed in the collection?

It is in the middle, which is fine with me, though I suspect my poem will be overshadowed by the work before and after it, from my hugely talented colleagues.

7 Once they have read your poem, what do you hope the reader will leave with?

A new perception every time they visit a beach, thinking of the untamed crash and thunder of waves which once beat stone and cliff to the softness of sand they walk on.