Poetry Wednesday - Revising time limited poetry - part 2
Words as pictures, words given autonomy
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Hello poetry people,
Earlier this year I undertook the
#tinywinterpoems challenge. A single word prompt, 10 mins only to think and write, no revision allowed. I took no revision to mean that once it was written down it couldn’t be changed you had to work with it (I did alter incorrect spelling, cos yeah, dyslexia). I’ve been working on them slowly, keeping the originals but now allowing myself revision. A couple I liked enough to not revise at all, a couple I thought were really yuck and those I’m still struggling with, I may even completely scratch what’s already written and start afresh with those, this was one of those. And some I think I can improve on. This is my second revised poem, Belief. My personal notes on this original one were “what a load of crap”. It started well and then zoomed off because my brain started to think about Trump supporters and their beliefs in so many conspiracies, lordy knows why it did that! It wasn’t where I was trying to go the words just took over. And I have tried now, for a good few days, to work with it in some form, but nope, that wasn’t happening. So something different.Belief
Old ways abandoned
Wilfully, carelessly, without thought.
New ones garnered
Wilfully, carelessly, without thought.
The red wave destroying the blue.
Democracy threatened by mistaken beliefs.
Flat worlds, personal suns, chem trails,
Q-Anon, the dark web.
The list grows and goes on and on.
Armchair socialists sigh and drink
Their free trade wine
Sitting in gentle suburbia in 100 year old houses
Belief can now be bought, traded, and swapped
On a whim. 
Belief
Yeah, I didn’t do that thing today
The motivation was there but the body and brain were lacking
I held onto the belief that I would manage
But that was misguided.
So I don’t do the thing today
And I probably won’t do it tomorrow either.
I didn’t do the thing.Quite a big change, eh? More about my frustration at not being able to do the rewrite I wanted. Ug, sometimes you just have to let go. Not everything can be rescued.
What do you think? Which version is your favourite? Do you go back and rewrite often, or do you never review them once your filed under finished?
I’m normally of the opinion that I don’t go back much and change much, maybe the occasional punctuation or an odd word, but I don’t normally do big rewrites. Poems are of their time and space and should write another rather than make big, big revisions. I have extended two poems, only two, over the years. Added on extra as the situations became clearer to me. I keep both copies. For everything else I get rid of old versions, scrap the drafts, and let the finished version sit.
Until next time.
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Hi Tamsin, the first one is my favourite. I think the opening repetitive structure works really well. Yes, I think the middle section goes a bit astray, but it largely gets on track again at the end. I’d be inclined to think of them as two entirely separate poems. So there’s no reason the second one couldn’t be worked on too. I seem to recall there was a classical poet (Horace?) who put every poem he wrote in his desk for six years after writing it. Only then did he look at it again to decide what was worth keeping/ what needed revision - pretty extreme, for sure, but it shows what can be done. Btw. I think writing political poetry is especially difficult, because it tends to become partisan and so miss the nuance of life (and poetry). We have a general election coming up in the UK in about a month and closer to the time I’m intending to put out a “political” (but not party political) poem - you can tell me then if you think (on these terms or any other) I’ve succeeded or failed!! 🙂
In my opinion, these are two completely different poems (just linked by the original word/title). I have a hard time talking about American politics because the fact that D.T. was our country's president and may be again makes me feel like crying and screaming into a pillow at the same time. But I love poems that address the very real awfulness that is our current system. It's here, it's frightening, and we need to talk about it and point out the madness.
The second poem resonates for me because I get caught in my brain and have a hard time starting certain things. It felt like it had a broader meaning than revision, which I like.
I've been thinking about revision a lot and wondering if the previous version (in my case only) was simply the best I could do at the time. Later, maybe because of time and also circumstances changing, a different version (a better version?) can come out.