Some writers know instinctively which genre they want to pursue, and make no attempt to write anything different. Others never settle on one genre or another, but move around butterfly-style, writing whatever they’re drawn to on any given day. Some stumble on a new genre by chance, or because they have branched out in their study of the writer’s craft and discovered a fresh joy.
This is how it was for Paul Athorne of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, who came to poetry via a writing course held by the WEA. For the most part, he writes short stories and plays, and in general the poems he’d produced in the past had taken the form of comic verse. When the course tutor
