Writers' Bloc - Creative Writing Off Topic Thread

I know this is the "Off Topic Thread" but it feels more right to post in here rather than in the How To Get Published thread. I think it'd be nice to kick-start a bit of a chat with different points of view from different kinds of writers.

I had a conversation early last winter with a publisher of creative writing. I was volunteering to help them with another project at the time, but it was casually mentioned that there might be an opportunity to get my first collection of poems published at some stage soon. I mentioned that I'd read a collection by another local poet of a similar age-bracket to myself, and was told very firmly not to be too influenced by what they had produced. I also mentioned that I had nearly 250 poems to work with and was told to put together closer to 50, and we left it at that.

I haven't mentioned it since so I don't know if the opportunity still stands. That said, I took some time over the Bank Holiday weekend to put together the first draft of a manuscript. It's a 40 page document (including the table of contents) with 47 poems in English, 2 in Irish, and 2 accompanying English translations. Some of the poems have scarcely changed since I wrote them as a teenager, and I'd like to keep them that way, but the others have had multiple re-drafts. I like the selection a lot, and have tried to frame the poems as a kind of progression of nearly 13 years of writing.

Then today I took some time to do some extra research. In other words, I put "What makes a good poetry collection?" into Google and read the first few decent results. :pac: I found the 2013 series of eight essays by American poet and writer Robert Lee Brewer particularly interesting. (link to archive of posts) He had a first draft accepted in January that year but spent eight months editing and preparing it for launch.

I'm starting to wonder what to do next. I'll hopefully be able to chat with the publisher again soon anyway, so whatever happens in that next conversation will probably answer most of my questions. It's easy to let my imagination run wild, though. Will I have to re-write a big chunk of work? Will I have to cut poems I'm fond of? Will I have to totally change my approach to things like punctuation, capitalisation, line lengths? Will I be judged for not having villanelles, sestinas, cinquains, monotetras, rondels? Who knows?

km85264 wrote: »

The next step is get somebody to read it. Find an editor who works in poetry and pay for a critique. Find out what works and what just looks like something you've thrown in because you can't bear to let it go.

I've done a bit of work on it today and cut out three more poems that either weren't strong enough or just didn't really fit. I've re-ordered the others a bit more thematically as well.

I'll print it off this afternoon and see how it looks on paper. Might feel better about showing it to people then.

So on Thursday afternoon, by pure coincidence, I bumped into the very man I wanted to see.

We chatted for a few minutes before I casually dropped it into the conversation that I've been working on something. He's interested in seeing it, both the electronic copy of the document and the printed prototype. There's a possibility of this becoming a book before the end of 2018. Exciting times!

Another bit of an update today. Forgive me for rambling a little bit!

The publisher said he could go ahead with the manuscript as it is and it would be alright, but there's potential to make it something really impressive if I continue to work on it. He gave the collection to a poet who's been publishing and editing since the 1970s in order to get more detailed feedback. Plenty of encouragement to begin with. Out of the 49 pieces in the manuscript there were 21 that needed no revisions. Another 9 needed only minor changes (capital letters, missing words, commas, etc).

The other 19 are a mixed bag of challenges. It'll be an interesting exercise to see if I can keep rhyming schemes in some poems while still improving on imagery and word choices. And of course there are some suggestions that I just want to ignore altogether. :pac: For example, there is an adjective flagged in one poem because it can be argued that it's not true in 100% of cases. I think it works nicely, particularly when the poem is read aloud. Maybe I'm too much under the influence of spoken word poetry as opposed to purely written work?

Some of the poems were written over a decade ago, including two that I wrote when I was in Transition Year. I'm reluctant to change those two because I felt they captured things perfectly at the time they were written, but I might have to make concessions anyway. I've been told to take another early one (from just before the Leaving Cert) and cut it in half, removing the final four verses altogether. The first piece that I ever got published in a journal needs its first stanza cut too. I'd rather make changes to it and see if the core idea can be kept in some way. We shall have to wait and see.

A few of them are going to require some real philosophical considerations. Who exactly is the speaking voice in the piece? And to whom exactly are they speaking?

There are two poems that I put at the end because I felt they were atmospheric enough to close out the book properly. I thought they captured certain feelings, but the expert reckons I need to put more effort into dealing with particular themes. These are the kinds of ideas I was hoping to get feedback about. I missed out on a few years worth of conversations with other writers, so I'm glad to communicate with people who have the kind of expertise that I still need to learn. I know I don't necessarily have to go with every recommendation made by the expert. Some of them will open up some fascinating conversations all the same.

I'm lucky that I have some free time over the next few weeks to mull everything over. I plan to spend most of tomorrow in the peace and quiet of the library.

I suppose I'm (rightly) a little perplexed by being told to find my own voice, while still having to conform to what's fashionable with other contemporary writers. Part of the challenge of working effectively within the medium, I guess.

Das Kitty wrote: »

It’s one person’s opinion.

Do you workshop your poems with a group at all? A lot of the time I find a conversation with a small group very effective at getting to the heart of feedback.

Salmon would be the big poetry collection publisher in Ireland. The output is quite diverse. Would it be worthwhile dropping them a line?

A friend of mine was telling me recently that his dream is to have his debut collection published by Salmon. He's refusing to send a book to anyone else until Salmon have published him first. The problem is they have a waiting list of three and a half to four years. :pac:

I've never had the chance to properly workshop my poems before, but I was invited during the chat this morning to join a circle who meet once a month. I wasn't aware that anything like it existed. It'll be very beneficial in the long term to be part of a group like that.

I think part of my reaction today is facing the reality that I'm really still a novice in this game. I've been writing poetry for over 13 years but I haven't always been dedicating enough time or energy to it. I've a hell of a lot of reading and thinking (and then more writing) to do before I can start to be considered a writer of any kind of significance.