Often, it is the smallest, seemingly irrelevant detail that will spark an idea. So it was for the Irish poet William Butler Yeats with his poem ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’. Yeats was walking along a London street one day when an idea came into his mind. He wrote:

[W]hen walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop-window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem ‘Innisfree…’

As a child, Yeats had spent his summers with his mother’s family in County Sligo, and there he had explored the shores of the lake Lough Gill. In the lake is a tiny island called Innisfree, and Yeats used to indulge in fantasies of living there. The tinkle of water on a London street in 1888 brought back memories for Yeats, and he was inspired to write what has become one of his most loved poems:

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Beautiful, don’t you think? And all the more powerful today in our busy, crowded modern world.

It is worth noting, though, that the actual island of Innisfree in Lough Gill is not quite the scenic spot that Keats depicts. Independent.ie’s travel editor describes it as ‘no more than a quarter-acre hump poking out of Lough Gill’, and in The Telegraph Fionnuala McHugh dubs it ‘an unremarkable piece of scrubland’. Here is a recent picture of the island:

But that is the wonder of inspiration – it was not the island itself that inspired Keats, but the memory of how it was in his boyish fantasies. Innisfree became something more in Keats’ imagination: a haven, a spiritual home.

Anything, then, can stir memories and thoughts, bringing about the lightning-bolt idea. That is why I never go anywhere without a notebook. After all these years of writing, I have quite the collection of notebooks – for my eyes only, for many of the ideas I have not pursued. Often, an idea is interesting, but does not move me to write. But when an idea strikes that really excites me – oh, what a feeling that is. Then I must write, and write, and write.