In my last post I mentioned editing and redrafting, essential steps in the journey of a written piece from first ideas to something that feels more finished and perhaps more publishable. I’ve mentioned working with an editor which can be a hugely creative relationship, but a great deal of the initial work can be done by the writer in conversation with themselves.
What am I trying to say?
How to begin my poem? Sometimes beginning in the middle can be effective, or using a striking line from your first draft.
To rhyme or not to rhyme?
Does it read well aloud? Is there rhythm and metre to be found in it?
What shape should it make on the page?
Below are the first and final drafts of my poem ‘Petals’ [which serves as an introduction to new collection ‘Notes of Your Music’]. See how it changes under the rigour of all the questions above, particularly ‘What am I trying to say?’ where the answer I realised was simply, ‘I miss you’.
Some readers prefer the more expansive first draft, but I can already see in the final draft of this poem, written nearly thirty years ago, a move to the sonnet form which I am addicted to now.
Petals – first draft
I am sitting here trying to tell you I still think of you
Sitting here peacefully in my house.
We were together for a long time,
And I pick up the old cornet from all those years ago.It is beautiful as an object,
I have it hanging on my wall.
And though I have never played an instrument
and neither did you,
We played a kind of music together
In the house we used to live in.
We spent time together doing things we loved,
Whether it was gardening, or watching the birds which came to our bird-table.
Do you remember all the things we used to do?But the garden is untidy, and though the birds still come to feed.
The music has stopped, and the cornet no longer
Has the piano to accompany it.
A long time has passed
and the cornet hangs like a brass rose
on the wall with all the other horns and instruments
like a complicated radiator.But I still hear the music we played,
Though there have been other tunes between,
And I always will.
petals
Remember the music we used to play?
The instruments still hang on the wall,
a trellis of brass roses
or an exotic vine with bugle flowers.
Like plumbing but not joined up,
and silent now.
And the lid of the piano is down.The tunes still prickle in my blood,
and though blooming less
each successive year,
have kept a scent of you.
And the truth is
that I have grown older and loved others,
but I shall always carry some notes of your music
in my pockets, like petals, wherever I go.© James M Nash
