editing is a form of love
and other lessons from writing
Dear friends,
Thank you for your comments last week. It was moving to read the moments when you have been borne witness to.
Last Saturday, I hosted a meal at my apartment. It was a working meal; I was paying friends with stew and homemade bread. I’ve got a new book of poems coming out later this year, and I wanted to get feedback on the content and ordering of the manuscript. A few couldn’t make it, so they phoned or texted with ideas. Five came and made magnificent chaos of my flat and my poems: interruptions, ideas, queries, gossip, pushback, more interruptions, food, pass-the-butter, edits, excisions, occasional praise, radical revisions, reordering, consensus, diverging, and constructive critiques.
Tidying up afterwards, I was buzzing with ideas. I knew I’d need to take a day or two to let the energy of the possibilities settle down.
It’s one of the things I love about poetry friendships: how we turn to each other for support, knowing that our friends can tune into our voice. My first experience of being edited was when I was 11 and my older sister Áine found a poem I’d written about a dog. “It’s pretty good,” she said, “but I made it better.” I looked at her edits, and my god, she had improved it. It started a lifelong love of editing and being edited for me. Few read more closely than a good editor.
The etymological roots of “edit” imply “to bring forth” or “to bring about.” To be edited can, of course, have a connotation of being silenced or misrepresented. But the sense I am extolling today is the one where some careful companion has helped you bring forth your own words in your own voice, not by silencing you but by amplifying your true message. My sister did that for me — the poem itself was a fairly typical example of what an 11-year-old would write — but she tuned me to the possibility that my voice had something to say. Within a few weeks, I was writing poems that were, for me, daring: putting language on paper that even I couldn’t bear to say aloud, but needed to see in front of me.
Work in conflict resolution can, at its best, be a process of helping disputants to feel the best side of editing, where they are supported to convey their message without confusion, instead feeling carried in the vehicle of their own language to communicate something vital about their experience, survival, story, change, assertion, or learning.
Have you had a good experience of being edited? Whether in writing, or in person-to-person communication, what did it do for you?
Looking at my manuscript last weekend, one friend said, “You could get to the main point more speedily,” and another said, “I’m not sure these words help." Someone said, “Can you bear to hear a major critique?”, and another said, “How about you divvy this one up so it’s easier to appreciate?” Someone texted and said, “Surely this is a typo.” Messages for life, not just for writing. Paid for by soup and gratitude. Afterwards, I cleaned each cup with a happy heart.
I’ll see you in the comments and meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the delicious episodes from this week, from innuendo and erotics to prayer and yearning. Yes!
The Latest from Poetry Unbound
Episode 9: Harryette Mullen — LUVTOFU
Episode 10: Kevin Hart — Prayer
You can also listen on Spotify, poetryunbound.org, or wherever podcasts are found.
Poetry in the World
A list of my events: Online and in the US (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Kingston, and Rhinebeck, NY; Houston, TX; Orlando, FL; Memphis, TN; Notre Dame, IN; Santa Fe, NM) and the UK (Iona, Scotland)
February 18, Brooklyn, New York
Join me in celebrating the release of R.A. Villanueva’s newest collection at Liz’s Book Bar at 7 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
February 19, Manhattan, New York
I’m giving a lecture on storytelling and narrative poetry at The Morgan Library at 6:30 p.m. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
February 21–22, Houston, Texas
Christ Church Cathedral has invited me for two days of events — there will be a retreat exploring conflict, an evening reading and book signing, and a talk on belonging the following morning. (For more information, click on the date heading.)
I’m giving a keynote address at Training Magazine’s annual exposition. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
February 26–March 1, Kingston, New York
I’m leading a weekend retreat workshop called “Poems of Longing”. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
Join me at the University of Glasgow Campus Bookshop for a reading and conversation, beginning at 6:30 p.m. (For more information, click on the date heading.)
Peter Constantine, Joseph O. Legaspi, Daniel Simon, and myself will be reading to celebrate 100 years of World Literature Today, hosted by McNally Jackson Seaport, beginning at 7 p.m. (For more information, click on the date heading.)
March 25–26, Memphis, Tennessee, and Online
I’m delighted to be returning to Cavalry Episcopal Church for this year’s Lenten Preaching Series. My good friend Marie Howe and I will be in conversation at 6:15 p.m. on March 25, and then I’ll give a talk the next afternoon. (For more information, click on the date heading.)
I’ll be giving the keynote for a symposium at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
May 31–June 5, Rhinebeck, New York
This spring, I’m leading a six-day workshop at the Omega Institute. We’ll read and examine poems and also write and discuss our own. I’d love to see you there. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
June 27–July 3, Iona, Scotland
Krista and I will be leading a week of conversation (with some musical guests) on Iona, an island off an island off the west coast of Scotland. It is filled, but if you want to be on a waiting list, you can email the Saint Columba hotel by clicking on the title just above here. (For more info, click on the date heading.)
August 9–13, Santa Fe, New Mexico
I’m leading a four-day intensive workshop at Modern Elder Academy called “Poetry as a Common Language”. We’ll read, write, and discuss poems on finding and deepening connection. (For more information, click on the date heading.)
Brilliant. I love the idea of editing as love. So many of us fear the red line of evaluation from days when that meant a poor grade, failure. But to see it as bringing forth (which is what the best teachers were doing) is freeing.
Hello everyone, and happy Sunday! Padraig, this makes me smile in recognition. Editing, at its best, really is a form of profound listening. I’m lucky to have a few first readers I treasure, poet James Morehead @dublinpoetlaureate among them, whose comments often arrive as small acts of precision that help to open the poem rather than judge it. I love the kind of attention that notices whether I’m “inhaling” or “sipping” and asks me to choose, not for correctness, but for clarity of image. Or the gentle nudge toward consistency of voice, like one of his reminders that if I begin with “They call me…,” I should probably stay inside the “I.” Those moments feel less like correction and more like someone holding a tuning fork up to the poem until it hums truer.
What I’ve learned, again and again, is that good editing doesn’t impose a voice. It reveals one. It says: I hear what you’re trying to do. Come a little closer to it.
Paid for by stew and bread, or by friendship and trust, it’s one of the great privileges of making poems alongside other people. Thank you for these Sunday prompts; they inspire me greatly and set the tone for the week ahead.