Goodreads asked James C. Morehead:

How do you get inspired to write?

James C. Morehead I was introduced to writing poetry by a creative writing teacher in high school. I had always enjoyed writing (and was a shy, voracious bookworm) but hadn’t experimented with poetry. I had the typical high school student’s impression of poetry: boring, hard to understand, and worst of all nerdy. But that teacher was the spark, and during the section on poetic forms I discovered the extraordinary power of poetry: the ability to capture emotion, sound, and movement in a few carefully crafted words. Reading E.E. Cummings, more than any other poet, taught me the design language of poetry.

I'm usually inspired by powerful images. "tethered", which brings a bell buoy to life, was inspired during a Pacific Ocean stroll. Seeing a solitary buoy floating in the distance I thought what it would be like to be that buoy, floating year after year, through every season, protecting ships. That was the spark - the challenge is to turn that spark into poetry.

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