Runner-up: Anthony Leyton on piecing a poem together
updated on Sep 2, 2024
Named as one of the runners-up in the Happiful Poetry Prize 2024, Anthony Leyton reflects on bringing ideas together to create a poem
The poem ‘Enough’ by Anthony Leyton zooms in on the moment of reaching breaking point, when the weight of daily life is overwhelming. Using relatable images to create a commentary on a common experience, this poem artfully articulates the feeling of being toppled by the last straw.
Here, Anthony reflects on why bringing in an element of hope to the poem was important, and how to build a poem by piecing together fragmented images.
1. Why did you decide to enter the Happiful Poetry Prize?
I’m a copywriter and editor for a living so, although I do an awful lot of writing every day, I don’t often find or make time to do anything especially creative or just for myself. Anything without a deadline attached to it generally doesn’t get done.
When I heard about the Happiful Poetry Prize, I had a poem that was taking shape that I realised met the criteria for entry, and which I thought might turn into something interesting. The competition’s deadline was a handy incentive to get it finished.
2. Could you tell us a little about the poem you submitted?
It’s about one of those moments when everything suddenly becomes too much; when you’re going about the mundanities of your day and are ambushed by a feeling of despair. Something has tipped the balance and you can’t always be sure exactly what.
It could be a long-term condition, the stresses of your own life, mounting horror at global instability, the gloom of changing seasons and longer nights, a general existential crisis, or simply being a bit hungry. Or it might be all of these at once. But, in that moment, everything feels like it’s too much, and you can’t imagine ever getting back to stability.
The poem is about the experience of that tipping point. I called it ‘Enough’ to express the idea that we all have a set capacity for trauma and sorrow before we break – like buckets overflowing with the final drop of rainwater. But it was really important for me that the poem wasn’t just unmitigated negativity – because life isn’t – so I made sure to include a note of hope. However horrible they might be to experience, all emotional states are temporary – how you feel one day is not how you feel the next. That’s why the word ‘today’ in the penultimate line is, I think, the most important word in the poem.
3. When writing poetry, where do you find your inspiration?
I don’t write a huge amount of poetry – maybe two or three poems a year – and I never sit down and think: I’m going to write a poem about love, or grief, or nature, or whatever. What tends to happen is I get a line or a descriptive phrase stuck in my head that stays there until I do something with it. The poem generally builds around that line or that image, like crystals on a thread. In this case, it was the first line: ‘I was overwhelmed in the kitchen’, which is a straight-up statement of fact.
4. How do you approach writing a new poem?
I tend to write them over several days or weeks, taking a few minutes here and there in stolen moments of procrastination from my actual paid work. In the beginning, I’ll have a few fragments, odd lines, and concepts scattered around the page that need to be slotted together and sewn into place. I’ll tinker with it until it feels finished, then I’ll show it to my wife who hates poetry, and if she doesn’t look too bored or actively revolted, I know it’s worked well enough.
5. What advice would you give to aspiring poets?
I don’t feel qualified to give anyone advice on anything, but the thing I try to remember myself is that writing a poem is like conducting a bank heist – you need to be in and out as quickly and cleanly as possible, and get as much as you can from the vaults in the process.
The principal quality of every good poem is precision; your job as a poet is to find the best and leanest way to convey an idea or impress an emotion. You can’t do that unless you are obsessively attuned to the meaning of every word and the baggage it’s packing.
Read Anthony’s poem ‘Enough’, and others from 2024, here.
Enter the Happiful Poetry Prize 2025