Caroline Bird and Helen Mort
London Review Bookshop Podcast
00:00
How Important Is the First Draft of a Poem?
I think like the first draft is almost as important as the final draft because if you don't take some kind of risk in that first draft then you can rewrite it as much as you like but it'll be like giving mouth to mouth to a log. There's something something in that something in the emotional risk of that first draft that is vital even if you then do like 40 drafts so then after that all of the words might change and there's something about the push of that firstDraft which holds it to motion. Sometimes I will go beyond the final draft and I'll read the poem and I'll think why is it dead and then I'll go back to like draft 18 or something and
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