George Szirtes on the great poem

“All good poems surprise. Great poems keep surprising for longer, for as long as we can imagine. The surprise is not willed: it arrives, lands in our laps. We can sense its approach as we move through the poem, every sense alert.” For more of this and George Szirtes' Poetry Workshop: Writ Small, visit the Guardian online. George selected Lost by Caroline Lynch as the finest of the responses to this exercise. Here's a tease: … beyond the Claddagh's green spit/that travels out into nothing between//two enormous blues. I am vanishing …