The “Independent” (London-based newspaper) featured a series of inserts on writing. One entitled “How to Write Poetry” included this advice from Wendy Cope: “I find that the most important and helpful question to ask myself when I’m working on a poem is ‘Am I telling the truth?’ TS Eliot said the greatest difficulty for a poet is to distinguish between ‘what one really feels and what one would like to feel’. Knowing what one really feels is not always such a simple matter as it may sound. Whether we are writing about our own lives, or our response to the world around us, or public events, Eliot’s dictum still holds. If the poet is, knowingly or unknowingly, being dishonest, the poem will fail. We need to search for the words and images that accurately convey the truth of the matter.”