Mass Poetry interviews Anne Whitehouse concerning her poetry and her most recent book of poems, Outside from the Inside. Anne Whitehouse is also the author of The Refrain, and Meteor Shower.
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems?
I first encountered poetry in Mother Goose rhymes and children’s anthologies. When I was a child, my grandmother used to recite “The Owl and the Pussycat” by Edward Lear to me and my sister. My mother read us “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes. I still have a little pad of pink paper where I copied out “Full fathom five” from The Tempest and “Sea Fever” by John Masefield when I was eight years old. At the age of 16, I read Wallace Stevens’ poem, “The Snow Man.” The triple use of the word “nothing” in the last stanza made me want to write poetry.
