Tim Key doesn't do drafts so now I don't either

I know next-to zero about poetry, except that I like it, and I write it. I have a notebook absolutely heaving with about 6 or so little poems I scribble out when I think of them. I think they’re sort of glib and chuckle-worthy and basically well-intentioned crap.

My exemplar for these poems is Tim Key. Key is a favourite comedian of mine who writes free-verse poems only as long as playing cards and reads them out on stage. Recently on a podcast I heard him say he doesn’t really have an editing process, he just writes a few poems in a row, and sometimes one of them is pretty good and he uses that. Quantity over refinement. Likewise, I read of a lecturer asking his students to write a poem about a bucket, every week for 12 weeks, and the last week’s poem was usually a pretty good bucket poem.

On the other hand, they say that all writing is editing - Stephen King maybe? But also that some writers - Kerouac, Woolf - are known for a stream-of-consciousness style. Surely that can’t be so heavily edited without losing some of that spontaneity.

For articles like this one, I like to write quite slowly, this one took maybe three sittings, and in every one I re-read it, just to check for the sound of it, or fix innumerable errors. I suppose the danger there is that the start which has had a couple of touch-ups will be better than the end, which has none. But in a 6-line poem, there isn’t much touching up to be done really.

I think what I’m devising here is a framework around my own writing. Write often, write quickly, edit less, and don’t worry about “good”, just practice the writing. And after some time and repetition, just like the bucket poems, the stuff will probably be pretty okay.