Novelists (on the intense NANOWRIMO* ) say it’s either pantsing (flying by the seat of your pants) or planning (chapters, flowcharts, timelines etc).

Mimi Khalvati * first taught me to read poetry collections from beginning to end and study the underlying structure, which I found immensely helpful. But many readers prefer to dip in and out of a poetry book (and enjoy precisely that, instead of reading a novel, say, in a linear way). Does that matter? Not at all. It’s still worth all the behind the scenes work of structuring a collection and readers do benefit without necessarily realising. The best art appears artless.

But in response to Part 1 of these blogs the Swedish writer Louise Halvardsson commented about messing up the order she sets up. A timely reminder: Art needs to get messy.

Having previously written two books where I’d mapped out beginning, middle and end from the start, writing my new book, Small Odysseys felt different. I didn’t know where I was going. What was this book going to be ‘about’ – if poetry books are ‘about’ something. I had to go on my nerve and I had to keep going. It turned out my narrator needed to be baffled, perturbed, uncertain. Bewildered the way a child might be. But also bewildered as an adult. Getting lost was my process and turned out to be an essential part of my journey.

I asked innovative poet and friend Janet Sutherland who is currently in the process of finishing her new, fifth poetry collection about this messy stage. Her thoughts were uncannily similar to what I felt finishing Small Oddysseys. Uncannily so but maybe not surprisingly. And a relief to know I wasn’t the only one. Janet says:

“The new collection I’m working on feels more recalcitrant than my last two*. The Messenger House, will be a hybrid affair (a new way of working for me) with two sets of journals, one my own and two from the 1840’s written by my great great grandfather. I had no fixed idea until recently of how they might fit together and how poems would fit into the mix along with a forward, notes, and other historical documents.  I am gradually inching my way towards a shape.

I used to think of the manuscript as uncomfortably loose and baggy. I felt lost and doubted that I could find a way to move forward with it although I had lots of the elements already written. That lost feeling is useful though, it leads to experimentation, to trying things that might work, to opening out. The process of editing is exciting – the trick is to re-frame “being lost” and redesignate it as “going exploring”. Putting the different parts together into a single document helped me to think through how they might split apart and be juxtaposed, and writing a forward helped me to think systematically of the manuscript as a whole. There are still elements I’m struggling towards, poems that are just an itch at the moment and which occupy my mind when I’m walking or gardening or edging towards sleep.”

I happen to know Janet is a dab hand at editing documents. When I was finishing Small Odysseys the floor was so strewn with printed out pages of manuscript walking became hazardous. Shuffled, reshuffled, rearranged again.

There are lots of great guides about how to edit an individual poem, from beginnings and endings, to pace, diction or imagery. In a way the same things apply to a whole book – you can think of it as one whole poem. It takes time. Sometimes you just don’t know if your poem – or book – is ‘there yet’ and you have to put it aside, then start editing again.

All poets will tell you that you, your controlling authorial self, (ego?) have to get out of the way to let your poetry through. Visual artists talk about following the line to see where it leads and it’s the same kind of thing. If you are lucky, after a few sentences (paragraphs/stanzas/ pages… and pages) you suddenly think ‘oh, so that’s what I wanted to say’. Which is why it’s so important to write even when we don’t feel like it, or when the Muse seems far away, busy bestowing her gifts on everyone else…

Often we don’t know what we think or feel until we have written it. Similarly I didn’t know where this blog post was going when I started it and now I realise there’s more I want to tell you about writing Small Odysseys so I hope you will read Part 3!

*National Novel Writing Month

*Mimi Khalvati founded the Poetry School. Her most recent, sublime collection is Afterwardness published by Carcanet.

*Janet Sutherland’s last two books were: Bone Monkey and Home Farm published by Shearsman.

Small Odysseys by Maria Jastrzębska is forthcoming later this year from Waterloo Press.