Poetry
Ordering a collection is its own act of writing
Individual poems arrive finished. Collections do not. The work here is almost entirely about sequence and subtraction: which poem opens, which poems are doing the same job as each other, and which eight are quietly holding the book back. Most poets are far better at writing poems than at killing them.
Where poetry collections usually goes wrong
- Sequence carries the arc, since there is no plot to carry it
- The weakest eight poems cost more than the strongest eight gain
- Sections can rescue a manuscript or bury it, and the default is to overuse them
- Contest and open-reading requirements are specific, unforgiving, and change annually
Print it, spread it on the floor
The first thing I ask for on a collection is a printed copy, because ordering is a spatial problem and nobody solves it by scrolling. We lay the whole manuscript out, physically, and the poems that are doing the same work as their neighbours become obvious within about ten minutes. It sounds precious. It works every time.
What I have edited in poetry collections
Collection ordering and manuscript preparation, including books placed with small presses and manuscripts shortlisted in first-book contests.
Every service, for poetry collections
From poetry collections clients
★★★★★
Collection Ordering“We cut eleven poems and moved four. Same poems otherwise, and the manuscript went from shortlisted twice to accepted.”
★★★★★
Workshop“Eight people, everybody submits, everybody reads everybody. I had been in a workshop of twenty before and did not realize how much that number mattered.”
★★★★★
Collection Ordering“We laid the printed collection out on the floor and within ten minutes I could see that four poems were doing the same job. I had been staring at that manuscript for three years.”
See the edit before you buy the edit
Send your first ten pages and I will edit them properly and send the notes back, free. Not a summary of what I would do, the actual marked-up pages. If those notes are not worth having, we both learned something cheaply and you owe me nothing.
Other genres
Writing poetry collections?
Send the first ten pages. I will edit them properly and send the marked pages back within a week, free.