Hi James,

You mention Ruth Padel-my-own-canoe’s comment about a poem taking 100 
drafts. To me that seems possible.

But I guess it depends on the poem (as well as the poet!).

I mean it might be that one tries different stanza breaks (and changes the 
order some stanzas appear in the poem); it may be that one tries a poem in 
the 1st person (singular & and then plural), in the 2nd person, in the 3rd 
person (male and female); it might be that one has a weak line that gets 
highlighted by all of the above and drafts with other phrases are tried to 
strengthen it; it might be that different starts and endings are toyed with; 
it might be that one glimpses the possibilities of changing the form 
altogether (maybe snipping bits of a free form poem to compress it to a 
sonnet, or whatever). The number of drafts can soon add up. But all this is 
sort of too dry explanation, it feels too far from a real poem… (but I’ve 
worked through a fair few poems using almost all these different changes, 
and I’ve worked on other poems using the rest!).

I’ll start again… I guess the drafting process is the learning process. I 
guess we learn (more of) the craft of shaping a poem with the poem we’ve got 
in front of us. We learn what the poem we’re working on wants to be - and it 
can take a while before we cotton on to the fact that it doesn’t want to go 
the way we’re prodding… It might be that one recognises that it’s following 
a tried and tested formula (maybe: statement of observation-musing on its 
significance-conclusion) and either a conscious decision - or an impulsive 
one -  is made to try and break the habit and see what can happen with the 
material we’ve got. What’s longed for in the process is The Moment when it 
all feels OK (And there’s sometimes plenty of false moments before the best 
one arrives…).

Some poems, however, do appear on the page almost fully dressed and ready to 
go out (just need tidying up here and there, a bit of a hair-cut) but I 
guess those are the rare ones!

I guess, when I used a clockwork typewriter, I made many more paper drafts 
than I save to my computer files. Now it’s possible to tell at a glance that 
some change isn’t worth saving and try something else. Sometimes I only save 
20 drafts, and the last 5 or so could well have been the last one (if it 
wasn’t for …THAT!!!!!!! – erch!). Sometimes there’s more (a lot more?) 
(occasionally, yes).
I’d be more interested to know how long is spent in front of the screen 
chipping away, comparing versions, swapping bits round, taking bits out 
(adding bits in? Sometimes that as well!). I guess, now, drafting has more 
to do with hours of focused concentration - cut-and-paste, press Delete, 
press Enter, press backspace, move-that-word-up-a-line, move lines to 
elsewhere, copy that copy and try something else then compare - than actual 
printable-outable drafts. Maybe we need to think in terms of the hours we 
stare with that quiet click-click at the end of our fingers. How many hours? 
10, 20, 50? How long between the times of intense revision? (And how do we 
count the time, if we've posted it to TheWorks, the time others spend 
looking at it and making comments...). It still all adds up.

Bob

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