Editing Poetry: Polish a Poem Without Losing It

People often ask me how to edit a poem. Usually in a slightly panicked way. As if editing poetry is a dark art that only reveals itself after years of suffering. I get it. Writing the poem is one thing. Editing it is another entirely.

I’m a published poet and I edit poetry through Stewed Rhubarb Press. I read a lot of poems. I talk about poems all the time. And yet, despite all that, I still do every single thing I’m about to mention in my own drafts. My own editor will happily confirm this.

A lot of editing is instinct. That instinct can only come from experience and from getting things wrong repeatedly. But there are also some very solid starting points. Simple things that almost always improve a poem once it’s had a bit of space. Think of these as ways in, rather than rules you have to follow.

First, step away from the poem!

Once the poem is written, leave it alone. I know this is annoying advice, but it’s also true. Give it a few days if you can. Longer if you’re feeling brave. Read some other things. The poem will not evaporate. What will fade is your emotional attachment to every word. That is a good thing.

When you come back to it, you are closer to being a reader rather than the person who had to wrestle the thing onto the page. Editing poetry is really about learning how to read your own work properly.

Ask yourself: “Do I actually need the opening lines?”

This is one of the first things I look at when I’m editing a poem, including my own. Very often, the opening lines are there to help the poet get started. They set the scene. They ease us in. They are doing useful work, but that work might only be for you.

Try this. Cover the first few lines and start reading from further down. Does the poem suddenly feel sharper? More confident? Slightly braver? I recommend this cut to poets all the time. I also ignore my own advice regularly. Over the years, I’ve recommended this cut countless times. And over the years, I’ve resisted it in my own drafts. Now I see those opening lines differently. They’re a warm-up. In any sport, you warm up before you perform. You jog. You stretch. But those movements don’t count toward the final result.

The ending probably needs a look too, so the second thing to ask yourself is “Do you need the ending?”

Poets are terrible at stopping. We cling on. We explain. We add a soft landing because we don’t want to let the reader go. We’re needy in our first drafts. More often than not, the poem has already finished and we just haven’t accepted it yet. Try cutting the last line. A couple more. Then the final stanza. Read each version out loud. One of them will usually feel more alive, even if it makes you slightly uncomfortable. I still struggle with this. My editor still tells me to stop earlier than I want to. They are almost always right. In the last developmental edit for my second novel, I condensed the first three chapters and binned the last two. It hurt, but the work is the better for it, and the same applies to poetry. Think again of sport: athletes cool down after the whistle is blown. That cool-down matters for the body, but it doesn’t count toward the score.

Watch out for the obvious emotion words.

In early drafts, you need clarity. You need to know what the poem is about. So you write words like love, grief, anger, joy. That’s fine. But when you’re editing, those words deserve suspicion.

If the poem tells us someone is sad, can it show us instead? Through what they do, what they notice, what they avoid? If you take the word love out, does the feeling disappear or does it get more interesting? If I were editing your poetry, I would circle these emotional signposts and ask: is this doing work, or is it doing explaining? And, if my own editor is reading this: I can hear you roll your eyes!

This is not about being clever or obscure. It’s about trusting the reader to meet you halfway.

Be suspicious of adjectives and adverbs.

This is not a call to strip the poem bare. It’s just an invitation to look closely.

Adjectives and adverbs often appear when the noun or verb is not quite strong enough yet. Ask whether the word underneath can do more on its own. I find plenty of these in my own work. So does my editor. Repeatedly.

OK, now, read it out loud, even if you feel daft.

Yes, everyone says this. Yes, it still matters.

Poetry lives in the ear. You hear problems before you can explain them. Where the line trips. Where the rhythm drags. Where a word is doing far less work than it thinks it is. If you stumble when you read it, there is usually a reason. I sometimes read poems out loud to no one at all. It still works. I also read them onto the voice note thingy on my phone and listen back. Oh the cringe! But it works.

The tricky thing is that editing is a different job to writing. Writing is expansive. Editing is selective. Trying to do both at once is exhausting. Let the draft be messy. Let it overwrite. Let it explain itself. Then come back later and make decisions. Some poems need very little. Others need a lot of cutting. Neither means you’ve failed. Even once you’ve written it and carefully edited it, your editor will come back and find something to pick at. That’s part of the work.

Editing poetry is not about sanding a poem down until it’s soft and pliable. It’s about helping it become more itself. These are not rules. They won’t apply to every poem. But they are places to start once the rush of the first draft has passed.

And if it helps, know this. No matter how long you’ve been writing, these issues don’t disappear. You just get better at spotting them. And sometimes, you still need someone else to point them out.