Poetry Please
Learning to proofread or copy-edit can be a great way to earn a bit of extra money. You really never know what might be a good source of income, and the freelancer’s life can sometimes throw up surprises.
For example, though I earn the majority of my income from proofreading for students and academics, I do have a peculiar sideline in poetry.
I know what you’re thinking. Poetry needn’t conform to the norms of English spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. Proofreaders and copy-editors have no right to pedantically insist that their way is the best, poetic licence be damned. Rules and strictures have no place in art.
Well, you’re right. Poetry is a fundamentally different business from any other literary avenue, and the way we tackle proofreading it must also be different. Here are a few points to bear in mind:
- You’re not Ezra Pound. Note that in the last paragraph I said ‘proofreading’, not ‘proofreading and editing’. Heavy editing of poetry is best left up to fellow poets, usually ones who run poetry journals and small presses, and while some poets will like to have co-dependent relationships with their editors, many more will rightly resent it as an intrusion on their style. You might feel that a poet’s metaphors are overcooked, and be tempted to crack out the red pen. Don’t. Those metaphors belong to the poet, and it’s not your concern if that poet happens to like them a little crunchier than you do.
- Poetic Licence is a real thing. Following on from the previous point, don’t mess with poets’ linguistic choices. Many poets like to invent words or play with form. Let them.
- Less is more. Don’t try to justify your presence by littering poetry with punctuation. Some poets use a lot, and some use none at all. Try to get a feel for the work of each particular poet, and only add or remove punctuation when necessary. If a poet, / for want of a better expression, / writes prose / with line breaks, it might be best to just punctuate the sentences as you normally would, whereas for more abstract / banana tree / poetry, you might consider keeping commas and full stops to a bare minimum.
- Queries are your friend. If in doubt, always query. Poets are unlikely to resent a polite suggestion. They will resent you swinging down your proofreading axe and hacking away at the fruits of their poetic labours.
So, if you’re supposed to leave it all up to the poet and barely intervene, what good is proofreading for poetry, then? Well, as you may well know, there has been something of a shift in poetry over the last century or so, from a formal structure and rhythm-based approach, to a much more ‘anything goes’ mentality. So,
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
looks very different to
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
This is not in itself a bad thing, but it has meant that people who want to write poetry are increasingly at a loss as to just what the rules of the game are. When poets write in a more formal style, there is often a level of confusion.
How do I punctuate this? How many lines are there? Where do the rhymes go?
You can capitalise on this. Poets need proofreaders to show them the light!