My deadline for Third Wish Wasted is July 31st - that's four weeks today. I have 47 poems ready for the final editing, half of which will probably not be changed at all now. In addition, I have 13 poems needing work - ranging from those which are getting there to those (about half) which are still just ideas (including a central sequence of three which is mentioned in the blurb, probably already in an forthcoming catalogue!).

I know not everyone here has published as yet, but many of us have pamphlets and / or books, and others have prepared an MS for sending out. I'd like to hear about people's processes and struggles when it comes to bringing a book or manuscript together: what outside help do you use, what is the final editing process, how, if at all, do you order the poems and sections, how and when do the cover, blurb, acks, dedications, notes, etc fit in and so on.

Good idea for a thread, Roddy. I will post something up soon (from a non-published perspective!).

I've been *this* close to finishing my MS for bluechrome for the last year and a half. Still, I feel all the time gone by has only improved it. A lot of it has been deep and careful consideration of how the poems fit together, which ones are truly worth going in, whether there needs to be some 'kill your darlings' style action - all the sort of things that one would hope ultimately guard against critical mauling and indifference but never do. Then there's the less productive but more distracting suspicion that I'm just not good enough to be doing this anyway and the knowledge that some people will undoubtedly regard that suspicion as well founded.

Since I tend to write sequences, the 'order' thing is sometimes easier than it may be for others. Though even within a sequence, decisions about order need to be made. I was still swopping things round a few days before making the final choice for Camper Van Blues (due out this autumn with Salt).

I like arranging my books into sections too, where appropriate. It's like having discrete courses within a meal, I suppose, for aesthetic reasons or to aid digestion. Poems can be written at such different times and for such different reasons that just bunging them all together into a book without creating at least a few barriers between 'types' of poems seems careless, to say the least.

With Boudicca & Co., I put the individual poems first, in sections according to theme or 'feel', where that was possible, and then finished with the Boudicca sequence.

In Camper Van Blues, I've reversed that: the Camper sequence comes first, followed by Lament of the Wanderer, which is quite a longish poem acting as a strong central partition, followed by the individual or stand-alone poems. Within that final section, I've tried to link poems either by theme or style, although creating interesting juxtapositions is also a tactic I enjoy, i.e. to keep the reader on their toes. There's also perhaps a subtle sense of narrative with the stand-alone poems, or at least an idea of progression.

Of course, some people will say it doesn't matter, because readers dip in and out of poetry collections rather than read them in a linear fashion. And that's true. But if you return to a collection often enough - and we all hope that may happen with our own books! - you should spot such correspondences in time, and perhaps even draw a sense of narrative from the whole because of them.

I've included a few notes in this collection, where that felt necessary, and assembled those just before sending the final draft. Just as with Boudicca & Co, I didn't get much in the way of pre-publication feedback, but didn't really seek it out, though a few people have had access to the poems in advance. I was making final minor revisions on poems right up to the last minute and would happily make changes to a poem even after publication - if including it in a Selected, for instance, or an anthology.

Being a bit of a loner, I prefer to take chances and make my own mistakes as a poet rather than getting poems checked over and signed in triplicate before daring to publish them in book-form. Or perhaps I simply haven't met my 'miglior fabbro' yet.

I chose to dedicate the book to a long-standing friend.

From a pamphlet publisher's perspective, I work very closely with each poet from the outset. I will suggest content and sequence, but if the authors aren't happy with my choice, I need them to tell me, as strongly as possible. Equally, if I have strong feelings on either, I will try to persuade the poet. What I usually do is to ask the author to mark their list of poems A, B or C. I do the same, and then we compare lists. However, the final decision is with the author - must be. On sequence, if there are defined sections, then that's fine; if not, I like to have 'strong' poems at the beginning, middle and end, with the rest 'flowing' in between. There's usually an underlying rhythm to a collection, even if it's not apparent to the reader who just dips in here and there.

Covers are a big thing with me. If the author has an idea, I will source or commission a suitable illustration. If not, I will make the suggestion. So far I've been very lucky - most authors have been very visually aware. Back cover usually has a brief biography and a brief quote from an already published poet or critic.

Collection title will usually be the title of a poem, but that too is always a matter for debate.

I always do the typography - I like to choose a type face that's in keeping with the style of the poems. And I do the layouts and internal design.

The detailed discussions with authors often oblige them to think very carefully about content and sequence - perhaps for the first time - and that's a good thing. It's all a hugely creative process, and I just love it.

With me also. I was lucky with Salmon (particularly my second collection THE SKY ROAD), as the publisher and designer were happy to use my own photographs. Whether or not others think them appropriate, at least they have the virtue of pleasing me.

There are several trajectories within the material in Me & the Dead - there's a (sort of, and very loose) narrative one. Or there are a couple. And there's the passage of time, as in when were they written and where was the 'story' at that point. Then there's grouping as in subject matter, theme etc.

In the end I bookended it with two poems about writing - the first one a bit dubious but hopeful, the final one sort of hopeless but triumphal. Inside those I essentially went from the happiest, lighthearted poems to the darkest - there are sets of memorial poems for two people, and many others about different kinds of anxiety and loss. To be honest, most of the light ones are at the least ironic, and most of the dark ones are, well, at least ironic; but I think there is a progression, and within that there are mini-progressions or stories, or sort of mood stories or something. I tried to keep things themed but fluid - so someone reading sequentially would have a surprise of discovering something maybe two poems later, rather than just all in a blob together - and so themes could sort of unspool through the book. I think in terms of misery it sort of builds to a climax, and then goes into "It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life" (a quote from Henry James), which I think is a strong ending.

I also put my poem "Centre Point" in the middle, which is what Pen Pusher magazine did with it when they published it. And it fits in the middle of the mood thing too.

Like Jane I have some notes, though not as many as I'd have liked. Also I had to cut my epigraph, which I didn't like doing!

Come to that, I had to cut several poems, which I also didn't like... I made those decisions based on: applicability to the themes in this book, whether I thought I'd still want to use them for the next, stylistic issues, length etc. Also, one new(ish) poem went into this book at a late(ish) stage. These two things together should provide a sense of progression from one book to the next, rather than one book simply containing one kind of poems and the next another - because I think I am writing relatively different stuff these days. (Having said which, maybe only relatively! More accurately, I think I'm getting more successful in some things I've been trying to do for a while.)

And like Mark etc I am very pleased to have been able to use a photograph for the cover that has meaning for me and in the context of these poems.

The book is BEAUTIFUL, thanks Chris!

With my chapbook, it was a case of Helena Nelson asking me to send her everything I had at that time. She wrote back with a list of 30 or so possibles, which pretty closely corresponded with my own list. We then hammered out what to cut, and the running order, between us over the phone and by letter. Nell also suggested some edits to a handful of poems, and again we talked it out on the phone. Nell did make me argue the case for a few poems pretty strongly, and it struck me afterwards that it was probably to make sure that I had everything straight in my own mind as much as anything else. Finally, we each suggested several titles, and eventually settled on one which is taken from a line in one of the poems.

Once we had the MS together, I got a friend who’s a big poetry fan to read it and give feedback, and she also read the proofs when they were ready. I think it was at that stage I added notes on a couple of the poems. The cover was down to Nell’s daughter, and Nell organised the blurb too.

With my new collection, Troy Town, it was totally different - more a case of Arrowhead asking me to submit a pretty much complete MS. I printed each poem off on A4 sheets, and then stuck them on the wall in my spare room, and spent about 18 months shifting them around until I got what I wanted. I had some feedback from friends again, but during that time, plenty of new poems came along, and quite a lot were written specifically to replace similar poems, or to fill what I thought were gaps, so I think I was the only one to see the final, finished MS.

This time I did the organising of blurbs (although, the main one was by the same poet again, Alison Brackenbury), and also spent quite a while looking for a cover pic. I took some trial runs of the final photo myself, then was lucky enough to be able to get our photographer at work to do the final versions (he’s a big reader of poetry so offered to help out). Arrowhead have quite a distinctive house style now, so had given pretty strict requirements for size and shape of pic.

I'm just starting to edit my MS for publication next summer. There are around 60 poems and I know there are some I want to take out and other newer ones I want to put in. I intend to do that first and then start looking closely at individual poems for revision.

I thought I was close a couple of weeks ago then realised I probably wasn't. I like the idea of sticking all the poems up on a wall, might do that. And I like the idea of finding a cover early on. Or fairly early on. Maybe the cover's like the title - you feel everything will start making sense once that's nailed. At the moment I keep thinking of new titles, some of them are brilliant for up to six hours.

I'm a compulsive collection-builder, and have been compiling more or less the same collection for the past three years (which is a long time for me, given that I only began writing poems a couple years before that). Of course it's now almost entirely different -- especially as I have a knack for hating everything I write within about 3 months of writing it. I have three or four pamphlet-worths of poems, but have so far done nothing with them. I have difficulty feeling satisfied with any one arrangement for long enough to seriously consider it.

When I started out, I made my writing a pretty public affair via online and offline workshopping. Increasingly, I keep it to myself. Nowadays it's usually just a case of a few people who are very familiar with my work looking things over. When ordering things I find it's mostly a case of trying to graduate the different styles so certain poems don't seem completely incongruent. I vacillate between sectioning these off and attempting to ease into them by progression.

Yes, so is mine!

Salt does a mean cover, I must say. No input from me on the new one, Camper Van Blues, anymore than with Boudicca & Co., but I think that's probably best. I'm not particularly good at design, though I can take a reasonable photograph, and really prefer to leave such important decisions to people with more experience and good taste than myself. So far I have not been disappointed ...

You'll all be sick of it.

(Sorry image so big; I can't change it from here...)

I love both of those covers :)
I am currently choosing mine - Pat Jones, the artist that does much of the work for The Shit Creek Review and The Chimaera, has agreed to do something for me.

My experience with my HappenStance pamphlet was much the same as Matt’s, so I won’t bore people by repeating pretty much what he said.

16 months ago, I compiled a new book-length manuscript, but I’ve now replaced about three-quarters of the poems in it. I didn’t send that version to any publishers (thank goodness). It took a while for me to move forward from what I’d been writing at the time of the pamphlet publication, which was, to be honest, a bit of everything. My more recent stuff is more focused (whether it’s good enough isn’t for me to say). Good advice from one or two people, an almost ‘Damascus Road experience’ while reading Michael Hamburger’s The Truth of Poetry, and a deliberate move away from certain types of poem that came too easily to me, have all led to the revamp.

I’ve exchanged manuscripts with people at various points and we’ve commented on one another’s poems. Also, one poet has very generously made time to give critical feedback. The order of poems keeps changing. Sometimes connections between adjacent poems are obvious but, other times, it’s just a word in common or even a notion that they are kindred spirits by style. Other times, I’ve kept related poems apart.

I would leave the cover to the experts. I’m useless at that. I have a couple of blurbs already, but I have plans for another couple. I don’t want to ask those people until I know the book is going to be published.

I recently changed the title of the collection. The original title gave a sense of the book’s theme, but even I felt bored by it. The new title is far more interesting, but some people might really hate it. I read an article that suggested “a title and any section titles or governing conceit probably work best if they expand, rather than limit, the reader's understanding of the book,” which sounds like good advice to me (the full article, on ordering poems, is at this site).

Interesting article, Rob. The Sgt. Pepper's example is one I hadn't thought of before, largely because I don't have much interest in the Beatles, but now I think of it, as a reader, that idea of the overall conceit which governs the contents is often what snares my interest. The vast, vast majority of poetry books have the initial appearance of being simply the last 40-80 good poems a poet has written, all lumped together, after which a suitably interesting title is applied (maybe from a line in one of the poems) and the overarcing themes or purpose is duly rummaged for. This is an effect principally achieved by the blurbs, which often really struggle to sound like they know what they're talking about.

In this context, I'm immediately drawn to books like W.N. Herbert's 'Bumper Book of Troy', with its implication of being rather like an 'information treasure trove' book for children, or, going back to when I was first getting into poetry, 'Crow', which is almost biography-like in its apparent focus on a single character. Obviously, the more typical poetry books get a look-in but I usually feel I have to 'give it a chance, make an effort', rather than actually being drawn in. After all, why shouldn't the macrostructure of a poetry book serve as an important poetic device in itself?

Thanks for posting that article, Rob - interesting and useful. I know I'll be re-reading it as I try to order mine.

For those writers contemplating the ebook revolution hitting the trade, there are two competing standards, Kindle with it's proprietary XML encoding and the OPF standards which Sony supports in its ereader. The latter is supported by the big guns in publishing, and has been around for some years. The reason I mention this is that the OPF standard supports the creation of tours, where alternative routes through the book are stored for use with an electronic reader. Users can bypass the table of contents and design their own routes around a book, a but like building playlists in iTunes. What is implicit in this is that the look and feel of a text, its location, its sequence in a text stream (don't ask) are largely going to be user driven. And for all that Olsonian field composition it can be dismantled and mangled at the click of a button by a user choosing to display text at 72 point. I've pondered on how these tours might add value to the reader, like skip the prelims, or dodge the notes, avoid the haikus. Interesting times. All coming your way soon.

We only have to wait two or three years after it goes mainstream, Chris, and then 'old school' book production will be cooler than it ever was, like LPs and Soviet analogue cameras.

Hi Jon,

I love both things really, the tactility, smell and mnemonic effect of physical print (clearing out books over the past fortnight I've had a steady hourly gasp at discoveries of old books). But I love the unforgiving code mechanics of ebooks, and the kind of archival precision of it all. In production terms the two things have to unite in one workflow and I've begun to wonder about proofing books to authors as OPF ebooks (a perfect subset of XHTML).

Best
C

and the avant-garde...

what about the Arvon-garde?

or the Arvon-grade

It's a really great book, Katy. I hope it goes terrifically well tomorrow.

For me poems go in the order they are written...unless I have a specific idea as to intentional structuring.

You dreadful liar! It was clearly a case of 'look, my image is bigger than yours!'

Have a great launch tonight. Enjoy the moment. Sorry I can't be there!

:(

@ CJ, I can't imagine putting out a book of poems presented in the order in which they were written. That would be too random for words.

The process of editing my book was one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me.

I put poems in the order of my life history as a way of giving it structure; others I grouped around the people and events/non-events that they came from. More abstract stuff I put into the in-between spaces. The final edit was spent looking at how the poems looked on the page - their symmetry and non-non-symmetry.

I made the cover design from a book I have called Das Kleine Buch Der Tropenwunder by Maria Sybilla Merian, a pioneering botanical illustrator t whose work I often use for my embroideries. Being a very visual person, I would always want either to make the design myself or have a lot of control over the final image.

Blimey, Annie. You need to get out more! :lol:

True

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D . I didn't know you were only allowed a limited number of emoticons
true

Jane, I was at work, in a hurry. I'll show you: I'll make it smaller. So there.

And yes, thanks, guys - the launch went fabulosoly, packed out, and Jane your book will be winging its way...

Chris, everyone was raving about the cover.

Just discovered the Northern Exposure poem Katy, trebuchet and all. That was one of my favourite series - quirky and offbeat.

Really, really pleased to hear it, Katy. Get some photos over to me when you can, and let's see a report on Baroque in Hackney when to catch your breath.

Love from me and Jen
C

Colin, I hope you like it!

Yeah, I loved that show. Slightly sugary as it was. Quirky & fun.

And Chris, some people did take some pictures and I'm waiting to see some of those... I've had quite a few late nights recently, as well as long days, and am whacked. A night's sleep and I'll be posting (I hope) like crazy!

Congrats Katy, glad to hear the launch was such a success.

congrats katy, and sorry i couldn't be there

tom x