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Jacob Polley is the author of three books of poetry, The Brink, Little Gods and, most recently, The Havocs, as well as a novel, Talk of the Town.

On Adapting Poem into Prose

"I thought it was an intriguing idea to write a story based on a poem. I think of most poems as little stages, so to write ‘A Potion’, I had to discover what might be going on offstage, outside ‘The Remedy’, which was the poem I chose to adapt. Is adapt the right word? Maybe not, as what happens in ‘A Potion’ isn’t what happens in ‘The Remedy’, and I’d now rather think about the poem and the story as two completely different pieces of work, despite the things – like nettles – they share. I never write with a plan, so I only felt the story come to life when I found Gracey and Robert, and the story is theirs."