Drafts

This is hopefully not as self-indulgent as it looks!

 

These are drafts of three of my paraphrapses of poems by Dafydd ap Gwilym ('The Trout', 'The Titmouse' and 'The Tree Man'), alongside my gouache illustration for 'The Trout' and pencil drawing for 'The Titmouse'.

 

I have always been fascinated by the whole process of drafting, particularly as it applies to poetry. I was delighted when I discovered that John Clare often drafted his poems in the fields, leaning the paper against the top of his hat - not least because I had done this myself on a number of occasions.

 

Once, when I was writing a chapter of my thesis (on the 'Four Quartets') I went to read the papers of T.S. Eliot in Cambridge, and was able to put my hands on his hand-annotated typescripts of 'The Waste Land' and other poems. It was endlessly fascinating to follow the range of possibilities as he had once explored them, and at times, mystifying to discover the appeal of lines that he had rejected. It was a fascinating day's work, but I wasn't able to use anything that I found in my thesis: Eliot's surviving wife refused me permission.

 

My own drafts are often a haphazard affair. I prefer to write in pencil if I can, because it is a suitably tentative impliment, although oddly enough, I never erase. At times, there are heavy alterations, and changes to the order of the contents of a line, but what interests me more, when I look back on these drafts, is the parts where the poetry runs with very little alteration at all. It is not that these parts just suddenly came to me in exactly the right form and order. Rather, these bits tend to have been written just after I have gone off to get a cup of tea, or do some menial chore, and when I return to the page, the lines have already been formed in my mind. Usually, I am in a rush to write them down, before I forget them.

 

When writing paraphrases, the process is still more complex. I will hold a picture of two lines - a couplet - in my mind, trying to hold onto the sound of it in the original Welsh (which, alas, I cannot speak). Gradually, a range of options for paraphrase begin to suggest themselves. Sometimes they are written down, and then either accepted and rejected, but more often than not, as these drafts show, I mull them over in my mind, and then splurge them onto the page at the last minute. If I forget one of the options, it is probably not a tragedy, because it obviously was not memorable enough.

 

The pictures are there for a good reason. These pictures are also often forming in my mind as I am writing. For me, the senses of sight and of hearing are most important when I am writing: these drafts have been read aloud repeatedly as I have been writing. It is interesting how poets often criticise other poets on the grounds that one or other of their senses was lacking. T.S. Eliot criticised Milton's poetry, saying that it was adversely affected by the latter's blindness. Similarly, Robert Graves insisted that Wordsworth's poetry was marred by his physical short-sightedness. I would like to talk to a poet who cannot hear. I suspect that in one way, this might not be so much of a disadvantage: perhaps the sound of the poem would still echo in the poet's mind - all the more profoundly perhaps, for the lack of any other noise. I used to write with music playing, but as I get older, I find I cannot do this. I must write in silence, or with a window open, and only birdsong outside.

 

I wish that more writers would publish their drafts. I remember my delight, whilst reading 'The Silmarillion', when I discovered that parts of the story of Beren and Luthien were alliterative. Later I discovered that Tolkien had originally written the story in alliterative verse, and that the final draft still contained palimpsests of the earlier idea. Yes - that is what I love about manuscripts: the palimpsests; the holes scratched in the surface; the hints into the workings of a human mind.

Done