Executive decision

Mindful of the need to produce poems ready for a collection, I must radically and urgently change my approach to editing.

Here's the background. There are around 390 pieces, and a significant minority of them - say up to a third - need editing. In many cases, when I look at the piece, I opt to rewrite rather than edit, sometimes completely changing the topic or theme.

My source document is split into four sections - 'ballads', 'blues', 'spirituals' and 'comedies'. The pieces went into one of these four sections in alphabetical order.

My error was to start at the beginning with 'ballads'. Love poems, as Da Bomb knows, bore me rigid, and it shows in my writing. I can write well about fucked-up love, otherwise I don't get my teeth into it. My strength tends towards the darker, weightier, meatier subject matter, that holds my interest.

Of course, as Da Bomb wrote, 'I think sometimes we do have to be tough on ourselves and exclude certain subject matter - maybe for you it's love! Or maybe it's just the kind of girls you get involved with aren't worthy of a weighty poem!!!'

Maybe it's a bit of both?

There are some good love poems, but a lot of shit ones too, written as rants in response to xyz event. The key thing is that they woudn't - no matter their state - fit in with what the first collection is supposed to be about.

So the decision is to skip editing the ballads for this year, and focus on the 'blues' and 'spirituals' - there is also much less editing required there!

Greetings and salutations to: Kung-Fu daddy Aziz