Young poets
Who don’t think of themselves
As apprentices
Are notorious
For resisting influences.
They’ve experienced
The first stages
Of that limiting self-consciousness
That comes with knowledge.
They don’t want anything
To stop them
From thinking
That what they’ve done
Is original.
Originality, of course,
Is what occurs when
Something new
Arises out of what’s already been done.
Poets who remain poets
Have, presumably, worked through
The terrors of influence,
And are willing to acknowledge their debts
By using them in order
To go their own way.
They’ve learned what Thomas Mann knew:
‘A writer is somebody
For whom writing is more difficult
Than it is for other people.’
Stephen Dunn, from Walking Light (P. 5)
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Published by Anthony Wilson
I am a lecturer, poet and writing tutor. I work in teacher and medical education at the University of Exeter. My anthology Lifesaving Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015. In 2012 I published Riddance (Worple Press), a collection of poems, and Love for Now (Impress Books), a memoir, about my experience of cancer. My most recent books are Deck Shoes (Impress Books, 2019), a book of prose memoir and criticism, and The Afterlife (Worple Press, 2019). In 2023 I will publish The Wind and the Rain, my sixth collection of poems, with Blue Diode Press. My current research project, with Sue Dymoke from Nottingham Trent University and funded by the Foyle Foundation, is Young Poets' Stories: https://youngpoetsstories.com/. This blog is archived by the British Library.
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Anthony Wilson 
when i was a young poet i did not fit into this category. it took me 10 years before i accepted that what i wrote was of any value. i experimented with many poets’ forms, as it was the best way for me to study poetry, to directly use their forms to get inside the mechanism of them. i may still at 30 be considered a young poet, if so, maybe i do fit Dunn’s criteria, though i don’t think i would claim originality.
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I think we are all beginners, the more I reflect on it….
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Thanks for sharing Stephen Dunn’s poem. Great choice. Certainly reflects my writing experiences – especially the last stanza.
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Absolutely bang on. I remind myself of it every day xx Ant
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Fantastic. Applies, by the way, to many other forms of creative output including songwriting and even academic writing. Thomas Mann’s words a great comfort to this 57 year old!
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Thank you so much Charlie. I quote that line to my students all the time. As ever, Anthony
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The final stanza says it all!
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Quite
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