Poetry Workshop: Revising Drafts for Depth
Three techniques to develop your poems
In the secret writing life of a poet, there are often more unfinished than complete poems. Stray verses in random notebooks. Tantalizing poem titles, accompanied by a few lines and phrases on an otherwise daunting blank page. Fragments of ideas in our heads that we’ve yet to capture on paper. Poems in computer files that look complete, but instinct whispers, aren’t quite perfect.
As I’ve started to write more poetry more frequently in the last two years, I’ve noticed I’ve greatly improved my ability to revise older poems and drafts, resulting in stronger work. I partially attribute this to several years working as a developmental fiction editor for novelists and short story authors. As an editor for Scrittura, I’m enjoying transferring those editing skills to assist writers in fine-tuning their poetry.
In a publishing environment where a poem is “old” after 24 hours, we may sometimes succumb to the temptation of publishing before they’re as good as we can make them. I’d like to share three strategies to give fellow poets fresh approaches to improving their own poems, distilling and deepening those initial ideas before — or even after — hitting “Publish”.
So, find some of those unfinished or partially-polished poems, and give the following ideas a try.
1. Identify Sketchy or Awkward Lines
You know the ones — they’re like the awkward guest who drops faux-pas into the first course at your dinner party and spills red wine over your best friend’s white dress. Somehow, they don’t enhance the overall atmosphere or meaning of the poem — they just don’t quite belong.
I don’t know about you, but my instinct nearly always knows those lines are faking it. They’re the lines your eyes skitter over in Verse 1, in a hurry to revel in that great image you created in Verse 2. Notice, next time you catch yourself doing that — it’s probably your instinct hinting that something needs revising.
If you have trouble spotting those evasive little critters, try reading your poem out loud. You might stumble over them, or notice they disrupt (in an awkward, rather than an interesting way) the overall rhythms of your poem, or just that they’re flat in some way your stronger lines are not.
Examine them closely — are there latent images that you haven’t quite captured? Sometimes we unconsciously circle the thing we’re really trying to say. Does the idea need more detail, perhaps expanding into an extra line or two? Does it need cutting altogether?
I’ve found giving attention to my sketchy lines is often the “key” to unlocking the poem, opening a door into a room of more vivid imagery and ideas. If we’re willing to work with them, they can be our best teachers.
2. Mining Key Words: Discovering Deeper Layers of Meaning
New veins of inspiration may be uncovered, like threads of gold in coarse rock, by getting precise about the meanings of key words in your poems.
Even if you think you know already, look up the meanings of your key words (think nouns and verbs) — to ensure your word choices are aligned with what you actually want to express. I always keep an old-fashioned dictionary and a thesaurus handy, or use virtual versions of these if I’m not near my bookshelf.
Pay attention to etymology (history of a word’s usage and linguistic origins), but also to alternative, less common or archaic word definitions and usage. Something you didn’t know about a word may provide intriguing doublings of meaning, deepen imagery, or take you in a new direction.
As I’ll illustrate in the example below, I find this process invaluable in deepening ideas and metaphors.
3. Poem as Place: Creating your Word-World
World-building is a familiar concept for writers of speculative fiction. If we think of our poems as a world in miniature, with its own environment, culture and language, we can begin outlining what defines this world — of what stuff is it made?
This process of generating ideas for poetry can be used when beginning the drafting process — or when revising. Here, I’ll focus on how I use it when revising. When I’ve established the parts I want to re-work, expand or deepen, I return to my core themes and metaphors.
I start a list, jotting down words and phrases that I intuitively feel belong in this poem. By telling your brain you’re just making a list, it frees you from the pressure of line and stanza structure — you’re just getting it down. The list will ideally contain verbs, nouns and perhaps a few adjectives related to your core themes and metaphors, as well as already-nascent phrases or imagery. Don’t sweat the grammar distinctions for now!
When I’m at a point in the poem where I’m literally “stuck for words”, I review my list to get my ideas flowing again.
Example Poem: Revising for Depth
Here’s the (originally untitled) micro-poem I wrote a few years ago:
In the spaces between things, in the places other people don’t see, she peers; an archaeologist of ideas an anthropologist of words unearthing poems, always tainting the evidence with fragments of herself
Originally posted to Twitter, I decided to revise this poem to see if I could create something more substantial. It was one of my most re-tweeted poems on Twitter — but my instinct suggested there was more to be revealed between those lines in the middle, whilst assuring me the final three lines were right.
Key words & word-worlds
Firstly, I identified the metaphors of a poet as “an anthropologist of ideas, an archaeologist of words” as two of the strongest ideas in the poem, and that I could discover more lines by pursuing those words further.
Next, I looked up those two key concepts: “archaeologist” and “anthropologist”, writing down the definitions. From those definitions, I extracted a couple of powerful verbs to add to my word-world: “excavate” was one.
As I wrote more, my primary metaphor centred around archaeology: the ideas of exploring, unearthing and discovering precious or unique objects of value and beauty. Secondary (but related) imagery were around the ideas of underground spaces echoing the subconscious creative state and of decoding, translating or “shedding light” on ideas. Thirdly I wanted to relate those ideas to the elements of writing a poem. So my brainstormed list of imagery and “language” specific to my word-world looked something like this (but messier — as I hand-write mine!):
- runes /ruins
- Nouns: artefacts /finds /urns /tombs /catacombs
- ideas /words / metaphors /subtext
- Verbs: descend / unearth / delve /discover /search
- introspection / perceptions /chambers of memory (subconscious?)
- hieroglyphics/ signs /symbols
- Archeological activities: carbon-dating / specimen collecting /sifting
You may not use all of your words or images — but consider them as optional pieces in an evolving puzzle — where the final picture isn’t a static outcome, but one emerging as you draft.
Working with sketchy lines
By reading the poem out loud I was able to identify my first couple of sketchy lines: “between things” and “unearthing poems”.
For the first instance, I noted the vagueness of the word “things”. Could I make that image more specific? Poetry often takes aspects of the ordinary and the familiar, reframing these concepts so we comprehend them from a different perspective. Poetry also often looks askance at a scene, drawing attention away from the obvious subjects into the negative space, or towards elements in the frame’s periphery.
I replaced “things” with “the familiar” and jotted down a new phrase — “foundations of the ordinary” in my word-world. I used this later — as the poem grew— in the first stanza.
In revising “unearthing poems”, I wanted to keep “unearthing” as a verb related to the metaphor of archaeology, but realized using the word “poems” so early short-circuited the whole “making-of-a-poem” concept.
To expand the poem, I sensed I needed to deconstruct and excavate the elements that comprise writing a poem, just as archaeologists find objects in pieces and have to re-assemble them for meaning. Now, I was thinking in metaphors!
Next, I asked myself what do I most make poetry from? Answer: my experiences and my memories.
Returning to that sketchy line “unearthing poems”, I realized it needed to say more about the creative process of poetry in relation to experiences and memories, and the processes of archaeology and anthropology. Finally, I had it:
unearthing shards of experience, and artefacts of memory
Farewell, sketchy line! Hello, three new, more interesting lines.
Those lines suggested I elaborate on the idea of how metaphors are embedded in life experiences, and how careful examination yields secrets, like unearthing ancient Egyptian tombs and treasures for the after-life. Recalling that these treasures included frankincense and myrrh inspired the metaphor: “rare perfumes of revelation”. This significantly expanded my poem’s “middle” and eventually resulted in more imagery.
The Outcome: Poetry as Discovery
Arriving at the final poem took numerous piles of experimental lines; keeping some, discarding others, like fragments of bone from dust — to play with more archaeological imagery. The process of using these three techniques resulted in:
- From one verse to four — lengthening and changing the structure of the entire poem
- Instances where enjambed lines create multiple interpretations (Descending into her dark /chambers of time-worn narratives)
- Entirely new images and more striking, cohesive metaphors — which you can see by visiting the complete poem (below).
- Deepening and refining my metaphors also led me to the perfect title for this formerly untitled poem — a term used in archaeology to indicate an important discovery: “The Find”.
Summing Up the Process: Revising your Draft Poems
Use these techniques — not as this linear list suggests, but in a kind of organic, circular process, directed by the needs of the poem:
- Identify sketchy or awkward lines & phrases
- Explore the meanings of your key words
- Brainstorm your word-world
In my experience, these three approaches — deceptively simple as bullet points — will reveal many elements in your poem to work with: from cutting superfluous words to clarifying rhythms, to deepening and unifying your imagery and metaphors.
Working with these techniques encompasses a rigorous, creative and constructive revision process — with the potential to take your poem from vague to vivid, from promising to powerful.
Melissa Coffey is a Melbourne-based writer, editor, poet & performer. She is fascinated by creative process.
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