There's still time to enter the Mslexia and PBS Women's Poetry and Pamphlet Competitions before the 14th September. We've enlisted some of our favourite PBS poets to share their words of wisdom and get you all inspired. Today it's the turn of last year's prize judge and former PBS Choice, Sinéad Morrissey.
Here's Sinéad Morrissey's Top 3 PoeTips:
1) Read those poets who can do things with language you can't (yet). Then have a go. Then have a go again.
2) Change your mind about what poetry is, how it works and what it might do at least twice in the course of your writing journey.
3) Be your own most ruthless editor. Be honest with yourself in that process.
Sinéad Morrissey was born in 1972 and grew up in Belfast. She read English and German at Trinity College, Dublin, from which she took her PhD in 2003. Her poetry collections include There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996), Between Here and There (2002), The State of the Prisons (2005), Through the Square Window (2009) and the T S Eliot Prize-winning Parallax (2013) all of which are published by Carcanet Press. She has lived in Germany, Japan and New Zealand and now lectures at Newcastle University. She was Belfast's inaugural Poet Laureate.
PBS members can order copies of Sinéad's latest collection, PBS Summer Choice, On Balance, with 25% off here.