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Are you happy to let editors change your work?
I am shortly to have a poem published in Popshot, and the editor would like to slightly change two lines, as well as the very last word so that it ends on a positive note. I don't mind the change of the last word so much, but I prefer my original versions of the other two lines.
Do you think I should just humbly bow to his superiority? After all, I suppose he knows his stuff!
Comments
Which is more important to you – to have it published, or to retain the version you prefer?
I have just drafted an email agreeing to the changes, but very politely mentioning that one of the amendments makes the line a little more clunky to me, but that if he feels it needs the extra words for clarification then to go ahead.
I let JF change my poem. But if i didn't like a change I might query it, if it changed meaning, particularly, and to me the last word would be more of an issue.
Poems are unique in that copyright always remains with the poet - not only that, it has been honed to be the best and fewest possible words in the perfect order - therefore changing anything has to be agreed with the author.
My last book of my own, the editor (IRON Press) didn't like three of the poems I sent and they weren't used - I was fairly happy with this, but very happy when he told everyone at my launch that my book was the least edited poem-wise of any he had published (and he has been an editor for a very long time). That is not that he would have asked for changes to the poems - just which poems were used. I'm in 70 anthologies and only the one poem was changed by John Foster. And in the book just published (Macmillan) not a word was changed of all three poets' poems. The one I sent off earlier this year (Bloomsbury) likewise - nothing changed. It is NOT usual.
I have got another poem in the publishing pipeline where the editor has broken up the density with extra line spaces. That was fine, although that can still make a difference.
I do feel precious about changes to my poetry. It's as though I've built them, brick by brick, and it's been no mean feat! I'd feel very different about suggested changes to stories, although I don't recall that they have ever been changed.
Sorry. I'll go back to the Jaffa Cakes.
I'm glad I didn't just settle for his ideas. I gently fought it out and supported my viewpoint using a bit of practical criticism about how each version would be understood.
Result!!