I bought this book by mistake. But it has to be one of the best mistakes I've made in a long while.

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Writing Poetry: A practical guide by Julia Casterton, £9.99, paperback, pp 144 , The Crowood Press Ltd.

Over the years, I've read a good many 'how to' guides about poetry and writing. I don't think I will ever stop learning as a writer. I certainly hope my mind will never become so closed that I think I've nothing left to learn. But what I've already read and learned does make me a little choosy now when approaching new 'how to' guides and courses.

ReadingWriting Poetry: A practical guide by Julia Casterton was a pleasant surprise: a book that should appeal to new writers but also offers a lot to me as someone who has been writing for a while.

Although most of the information it contains about eg metre and form is not new to me, I still enjoyed the examples given. Casterton not only quotes from some great poems but also offers some very interesting quotes from poets about the art/process of writing.

The reader is urged to write as they read the book. But even if you don't do the specific exercises, it offers a more general meditative/philosophical method/approach to creativity and writing. On a personal level, I found the opening section on the origins of poetry, Sanscrit and Sanscrit teachings particularly interesting. Though I've never studied Sanscrit in detail, I think everyone, but especially poets, could gain something by listening to the sounds/musicality possible in the language.

Of course, that is not something the printed form offers but it does offer lots of sound advice on many aspects of poetry. In fact, one of the things that originally put me off the book is the sectioning into chapters like nature poems, love poems, the poetry of war, poems that celebrate cities. (Such classification initially felt too old-fashioned/restraining. However, having read the book I realised my own wrong, cliched interpretation of such sectioning.) Ironically though, this system of theming poems, so to speak, as one goes along is something I could have done with doing when I first started writing, both in terms of keeping the mind focused on the subject matter of the poem and to avoid ending up with a huge pile of unthemed poems to sort through later. Still, as I said at the start, there's still plenty left for me to learn!