If I told you that sometimes the poem you've written is not the poem that is there at all you would think I'm mad wouldn't you?

But how closely do you look at the first draft you've written? It's the easiest thing in the world to assume, when you start to write a poem, that what you are trying to say is the most important thing about it but sometimes (quite a lot of the time actually) what is really important, what the poem really wants to be is something totally different?

Do you ever think what would happen to your poem if you start to shift it around, cut it up and even throw away huge chunks of it? Do you ever think the poem you've written about drinking tea is actually so full of colour, texture and smells that hiding inside it is a lovely lyric meditation on the nature of love (and vice versa)?

What you say in the poem is important, especially to get you as a writer into the poem, but don't forget that poems have a life of their own - this isn't some mataphysical drivel on the nature of poetry this is true, good poems are organic - we talk about them as seamless, or natural-sounding, this isn't just about the language. Sometimes we shout at our poems so loud with want we want to say that we're deaf to what the poem really is. When was the last time you paid attention to your poems, rather than have them pay attention to you?

interesting comments as always why do you people always manage to get my lazy brain to work. ( it is quite a bright brain when I let it out to play)

My poetry is usually as a result often generated by a phrase or word that comes to me from wherever and i build around that.
In that respect I tend to let the poem and words take me where they want to take me.

I rarely think Oh I will write about this or that but even if I do often my original perception has altered dramaticaly by the time I reach the end.

equally I can see others see things in my poems that I dont or perhaps a second message which I consider subserviantto the main message is stronger for somebody else than it is for me.

I am also awarethat accent or dialect can changethe emphasis on a word or phrase and thus can change the emotion generated from the words.

It's my mission in life is to get brains thinking (especially my own).

Taking something you said (but by no means applying it purely to yor work this is a general statement), "I tend to let the poem and words take me where they want to take me." - Most people think they are doing exactly this but a lot of the time they decide very early on in the poem, maybe not before they start but somewhere around the beginning of writing, what the work is going to say and do - this is not the same as deciding a form before you start writing, that's a challenge all in itself - but how many times do we write 5 or 6 lines, think that's really lovely then go into the poem and extract perhaps one line or half a dozen words because that's where the poem wants to be, that's where the poetry is working as poetry and not prose broken into segments? It gets back to that old quote about 'murdering your little darlings', that what you think are the best lines are not necessarily the best for the poem you are writing.

Food for thought maybe?