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Loose Canons is a series in which we invite artists we love to share five things that have informed their work. Meet the rest of our Loose Canons here.

Grace Iwashita-Taylor is a poet, performer and curator of Silo Theatre’s UPU.

When I first met poetry, it was through the lyrics of my favourite songwriters. Meticulously playing and rewinding and replaying their songs on cassettes just so I could write the lyrics down in a notebook. As a teenager I would buy albums and open up the sleeve to read the lyrics before I would even play the music.

The other way I met poetry was through Shakespeare, by way of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Or to be more specific it was Leonardo smoking a cigarette, writing sonnets in his notebook with the Venice sun setting behind him. The alluring cliche of the tragic romantic to a teenager! That then led to me stealing The Complete Works of Shakespeare from my Year 11 English class, the only time I have ever stolen anything. It wasn’t long before I started to write my own words, but I dared not call it poetry for a couple of years. Poetry did become the language that makes the most sense to me, in my world of many languages. When I read poetry that thrills me, resonates with me, it is the same as making slow glorious love. It is orgasmic.

Poetry my greatest lover, forever constant, never stumbling.