Some lines you just like...

(and then fervently hope that others will like them too)

Photo by Thomas Kinto on Unsplash

I’m now about three-quarters of the way through the first draft of a new poetry project (I’ve shared snippets here before: there are two readings from mid-May). Occasionally I come across lines I’ve written that I simply like, which feel as if they’re almost fully-formed and won’t need too much work.

But then I suspect we all do that from time-to-time, take the risk of being bold enough to ‘like’ our own work.

Yet such a feeling worries me given my default position is that every line will need work, that a first draft is no more than laying down a marker for what will follow. Scaffolding.

A passionate believer in editing, I am inherently sceptical of poets who never edit: “It just came to me” is often proudly uttered as the introduction to a sub-standard piece of poetry…

I include below two tiny extracts from the latest piece on which I’ve been working — and which, I confess, have already been ‘tweaked’ slightly. Think of my sharing as ‘kicking the tyres’…

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We measure our horizons in language,
our heads sand-stuck;
our cries, muffled by the earth,
are serenades to waiting worms.

~

Sitting on our own sidelines
we watch others
as they pirouette through life

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