I love editing poetry. One engages both the left and right sides of the brain, in that one has to discern sentences in the midst of the words, ensuring that the underlying structure is sound, while also paying attention to the sense of sound or musicality. Apart from making sense, poetry must sound good, embodying rhythm, assonance and alliteration, with some variation in pace. When I read poetry, I hear the sounds in my mind, and when editing, I look for ways to make it sound better.

Sometimes the changes are miniscule. A poet wrote

‘… like rain after a drought.’

Removing that little ‘a’ improved the rhythm and created parallelism, which sounded more pleasing.

Sometimes a little assonance improves a line: ‘the great school gates’ instead of ‘the big school gates’. This was in a poem extolling the virtues of discipline and education, and the word ‘great’ retained the poet’s sense of the enormous value of education.

There is little room for empty words – each word must have its purpose, contributing to an image, speeding or slowing the pace, enhancing the musicality, conveying as much as possible in as few words as possible. Removing words is a big part of the job. A poet, praising the ‘good wife’, wrote, ‘Her husband’s fears dissolve into nothingness.’ I ended the line at ‘dissolve’ – those extra words were not needed.

Sometimes it’s a matter of introducing stronger verbs and nouns. In a love poem, a pining (male) lover remembers

‘my head buried into your chest’.

It sounded awkward and a little violent. I changed this to ‘My head pillowed on your breast’, which was in keeping with the soft, reflective nature of the poem.

Sometimes, a poet mixes metaphors, robbing the original metaphor of its power. The same poet wrote:

‘I was exploring the wreckage of my heartbreak
picking up the rubble.’

‘Wreckage’ suggests a destroyed ship – where would the rubble come from? I changed it to:

‘I was exploring the wreckage of my heartbreak
Combing through the flotsam.’

Wreckage and flotsam have a stronger affinity than wreckage and rubble!

Many people feel that poetry is too personal to edit – that what the poet wrote is their personal expression of an experience, and that we really cannot meddle with that. I understand the sentiment, but I believe that with sensitive editing, we can still do a great deal to enhance expression.

For instance, a poet wrote:

‘Oh how do we escape from the clutches of deceit
This pit we have dug and tied ourselves into?
Can a nation thrive from tricks and tricksters?’

I liked ‘clutches of deceit’ but made it singular, editing the lines as:

‘Oh, how do we escape the clutch of deceit
This pit we have dug, this knot we have tied –
Can a nation survive these tricksters and tricks?’

I don’t believe I meddled with the poet’s sentiment but slightly sharpened the expression of it.

Sometimes I add words for emphasis. The same poet wrote movingly about the death of a child. Near the end of the poem, she remembers the day of death, saying,

‘Let its pain fade away,
Let this day perish …’

For emphasis I added words: ‘Let this day perish, be gone!’ Looking at the lines now, I wonder if I did the right thing. At the time, it seemed an improvement. The poet has been wrestling, coming gradually to the realisation that she is ready to face life again; at this point, she makes a decisive break with the years of suffering and declares her readiness to trust God and live again. In that context, I felt the emphasis was warranted. Out of context, it seems quite unnecessary!

Of course it is all subjective. This is a form of editing that relies largely on intuition, and mine could be wrong.

A key to editing poetry is to be aware of the ‘gestalt’ of the poem as well as its details. In other words, first absorb the poem as a whole; gain a sense of its flow, the rise and fall of its intensity, its mood and the metaphor that underpins it. Then work on the parts.

I try to respond to a poem with head and heart and have often found myself deeply moved by what I am reading or even, in the case of one of the poets above, quite stirred by the moral teachings the poems conveyed. Poetry is expanding, deepening and reviving – just think of the poem ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver – and editing it is a joy.

Poets do need editors and – even more importantly – the world needs poets.

Note: All the poets quoted in this article gave permission for their poems to be quoted.

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