I think I was first introduced to the cut-up technique — via Dada — by a friend and fellow student on my PGCE course at the Institute of Education in London in the early 2000s…

Since then, I’ve used various versions of cut-up and collage in my poetry teaching: to overcome initial fear of the blank page, to encourage collaboration and a sense of play, and to work on craft and technique — form, lineation, juxtaposition and more

It’s not quite harvest time yet, but summer is a time when, for many of us, day job work slows down or pauses, or we travel beyond our usual everyday environment, and we might have a little more time and brain space to contemplate our creative work—its repetitions, resonances and directions.

Last month I taught a workshop on using rules, constraint and collision in poetry writing. These approaches, I think, are part of my toolkit for times when I want to (gently) rediscover playfulness and experimentation in my writing, without necessarily having a particular goal – or manuscript deadline – in mind.