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Photographer: Caroline Forbes.

Wendy Cope's poetry collections include Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986), Serious Concerns (1992) and If I Don't Know (2001), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. She has edited a number of poetry anthologies including The Orchard Book of Funny Poems (1993), Is That The New Moon? (1989), The Funny Side: 101 Humorous Poems (1998) and The Faber Book of Bedtime Stories (1999) and Heaven on Earth: 101 Happy Poems (2001). She is also the author of two books for children, Twiddling Your Thumbs (1988) and The River Girl (1991).

How did you start writing poetry?

I wrote a few dreadful poems at around the age of 14 and then stopped for a long time. I began again at the age of 27. Later on, when I asked myself why this happened, I decided there were three reasons. 1) The work I was doing as a primary school teacher stimulated my interest in poetry. 2) I had been in psychoanalysis for six months and was getting in touch with some powerful feelings I'd been unaware of. I found I could express them by writing poems. 3) I was living alone for the first time and had no-one at home to talk to.

I was a full time teacher and writing poems was something I felt like doing in my spare time. It was a while before I even thought about trying to get published.

What's your typical process when writing a poem?

I always write my first drafts with a pen or pencil. If I'm at home I use an A4 size hardback notebook. If I'm anywhere else, the back of an envelope will do. If I haven't got a pen or paper with me, for example if I'm out walking, I can work on a poem in my head and write it down later. Very occasionally I'll get a short poem right in only one draft. But usually there's quite a bit of trial and error, over several pages of my notebook. When I think the poem is finished, I copy it onto my computer, print it out, and read it through to see if it needs some more work. Most often it does.

Then I have to wait days, weeks, months or years to be sure whether or not the poem is any good. The day after I've written it, I can't tell.

What's the biggest mistake that new poets tend to make?

The biggest mistake is to think that you can write poetry without reading any. If you're not interested in reading poems, forget it. That doesn't mean that you have to enjoy every poem you read. It's OK to find quite a lot of poetry boring, as long as there are some poems that you love and respond to. You need to keep on searching for more poems that appeal to you. Another big mistake is to think there is any chance that you will write a good poem without writing a lot of bad ones first. Learning to write poems takes time and hard work. Part of the struggle is to find one's own, authentic tone of voice. Other common mistakes made by beginners:

• Too many abstractions and not enough concrete details.

• Preaching. Adolescents need to be on their guard against this.

• Stating the obvious - e.g. pollution is a bad thing - in an unoriginal way.

• Failing to distinguish between what you really feel and what you would like to feel, or think you ought to feel. A poem won't work if the poet isn't telling the truth.

What advice do you have for a young person who wants to be a poet?

I think the answer above covers most of it. Read, and be prepared to work hard. Have the humility to realise that there is a lot to learn. And don't imagine for one moment that being a poet is going to make you rich. Many poets have day jobs doing something else, at least to begin with, and this is a good thing. If you embark on a "career" as a poet straight from university, your experience of life will be limited.

I'm sometimes asked if it is a good idea for an aspiring writer to read English at university. I don't think it is essential. A lot of good poets have read English, and a lot haven't. Some have emerged from art schools, some have read other subjects. I read history. A few published poets have degrees in science and their scientific knowledge enriches their poems.

The poem above is from "If I Don't Know" by Wendy Cope, published by Faber and Faber, and appears by permission of the publishers.

You can find out more about Wendy Cope here.