Although, in my mind, there is a difference between songwriting and poetry (having done both) – there are certainly great songwriters who blur the line. Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen are two who spring immediately to mind – and, of course, Leonard was also a respected poet. Going back centuries to the old bardic traditions – lyric ballads were meant to be sung. On my way back to writing poetry (after many years of being lost in the law), I first rediscovered music (playing and composing), and jazz, and songwriting. And during my years of studying songwriting, I took several masterclasses with Pat Pattison, professor in songwriting (and poetry) at Berklee College of Music in Boston. His classes on lyric writing were extraordinarily detailed, and covered much poetic technique and sensory writing – I still use his techniques (although now they’re less techniques, and more like second nature) in poetry writing today. And I think my musical background has had a huge impact on the musicality of my writing – even in free verse, I’m always looking for the rhythm of the piece, and listening for the musicality in the words chosen, and their placement. For me, writing a poem is much like composing music – I even think of it in musical terms, in terms of pacing and space, the rise and fall, legato and staccato. (On a side note, I published a number of my song lyrics in my early days on Medium – masquerading as poems. But to me, they’re still song lyrics. One day I might gather them up and record music for each of them…)