Originality

Originality is a non sequitur, it does not follow from the reality that it appears to complement.

Ideas can come at any time and any serious poet or writer knows that they must be jotted down immediately. One may be drinking in the pub, or waiting for the bus, and a good line arrives. If one doesn't write it down the chance of recovering it later is hit and miss (better to miss the bus!).

Speaking of poetry, I've been reading some in the May 2004 acumen and am amazed to find lines of poetry that are really snippets of good prose, rather than good poetry. Take these 3 lines from The Rainbow Birds by Linda Saunders:

We walk between darkness and light, struck by the sun's last
lemony fire
while thunderheads loom to the east above the march of rain.

It's not a condemnation of the poem, in which the sentiment does emerge through careful construction. One says that to indicate that it succeeds in its aim, rather than as poetry.