“Time is a necessary engine in poetry“
From honing your editing skills and making reading lists to finding inspiration and ‘receiving poems on your senses’, four leading writers share some gems of advice with Poetry Wales
Try to see editing as a joy not a penance, says Iris Anne Lewis.
“For me, editing is writing,” says Iris, who was highly commended in the 2022 Wales Poetry Award.
“I find it a rewarding part of the creative process and it allows me to really think about the words – every single one of which has to earn its place. I’ve learnt not to be afraid to wield the scalpel, either, because a poem is often all the better for being cut.”
The editing phase is the time to really put punctuation and line-break choices under the microscope, advises Iris. “Also consider if the poem would be more effective if some of the lines and stanzas were re-ordered, and ask yourself if the first and last lines are really needed.”
Reading a piece of work aloud can help. “Does it flow? Does it feel good in the mouth? You can also pick up valuable tricks about sounds if you go to readings and open-mic events.
“It’s important to read widely, but it can be hard to know where to begin, so anthologies are a good starting point,” suggests Iris. “You can then move on to collections and pamphlets by particular poets who speak to you.
“When you’re writing, ultimately you have to respect the intelligence of the reader. You don’t have to explain everything, so leave space for the reader to bring something of themselves to the poem.
“I always keep in mind Basil Bunting’s advice to put a poem away for a week then cut every word you dare. Then do it again a week later. And then again.”
No word is too precious to escape deletion or be replaced by a better-suited one, agrees Taz Rahman, whose debut collection, East of the Sun, West of the Moon was published by Seren in February.
“Write and rewrite as many drafts as are required to get to a draft that is no longer a draft,” says Taz.
“Keeping a notebook or paper or digital writing device with you will enable you to capture observations when they come to you without waiting for the convenient moment to arrive. You can then revisit these notes, however random they might be, when a draft is not working.”
It can also be helpful to create a personal anthology of favourite inspirational poems, he suggests. “As your practice grows, some will fall off and others can be added but, when a draft is not going anywhere, take a break, go for a walk and read a little from this anthology. When you then return to the editing process, you may find you see and feel your own poem differently.”
Although Taz had written a little at university, he only started writing poetry seriously in 2019, following the death of his father. “The intense grief made me realise life was short and I needed to find a way to do what I had always wanted to do – to write,” he explains.
He began visiting Cardiff Central Library, sitting close to the poetry collection. “I read a lot of contemporary work and, with each poem I wrote, it felt as if the voice was getting stronger and I was able to say more – or, even if I wasn’t saying more, that I was able to say what I wanted to say using ideas and literary devices I didn’t think I would be capable of. It was reading poetry that eventually gave me the confidence to write it.”
Bereavement was also the emotion which prompted Carrie Etter to write her fifth collection, Grief’s Alphabet, which is also published by Seren.
“It’s a memoir in poetry of the relationship I had with my mother and of how I’m navigating that loss,” explains Carrie.
“Wordsworth wrote about poetry being ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’, but I wanted to convey the rawness of grief, and understand the different types of grief one experiences over time,” she says.
“Sometimes when people write elegy, they try to get it all into a single poem. I approached it by trying to get it all into one book – and that helped because individual poems could isolate particular moments and experiences I had with my mother and single aspects of her character. That enabled me to particularise rather than generalise, which is often the key to making poems about grief original and vivid.”
When it comes to writing, don’t feel any pressure to write at a certain time or even a certain amount, advises Matthew Hollis, whose recently published collection, Earth House, was described by The Guardian as ‘representing the ecological imagination at its most multi-layered and persuasive’.
“T. S. Eliot used to say that a poet should write as little as possible and his point was essentially a good one,” says Matthew. “What’s peculiar to poetry is that nobody ever asks: ‘How much have you written?’ They simply ask: ‘Is it any good?’ Time is a necessary engine in poetry and life must be permitted to intervene. It is difficult to write deeply of life before a life has been deeply lived.
“Write with one hand in the present, but allow the other to hold hands with the past,” he suggests.
“Your ancestors have much to teach you: hear them, then find the language of yourself in the modern in order to speak with us all.
“One in a thousand poets arrives fully formed as a miraculous artist. For the rest of us, there’s a learned apprenticeship to our trade: so read and read again. Your contemporaries have much to teach you, but so do the writers who came before.”
And when you’re reading, don’t feel the need to immediately deconstruct or understand what a poem is ‘about’, says Matthew.
“People sometimes say of poetry that they don’t ‘get’ it, as it were an equation with a hidden answer just out of view.
“You wouldn’t listen to music that way, nor look at certain styles in visual art: you’d receive them first and resolve them later.
“Try instead to receive a poem on your senses. If we approach poetry through the intellect alone, we will miss a deeper understanding.”
Iris, Taz, Carrie and Matthew are all taking part in events at this year’s Cheltenham Poetry Festival which runs from April 19-27. Other leading poets including Liz Berry and Don Paterson are also appearing at the Festival. For full details, see cheltenhampoetryfestival.co.uk