Go to Jane Holland's Raw Light blog for an insight into her creative process, writer's block, and the safe birth of her poem 'Fifth'.
A quote from her post:
'You have to remember that I hadn’t written a poem for over three years when ‘Fifth’ suddenly came to me, out of the blue. In such reduced circumstances any poem is miraculous. So I was reluctant to mess too much with those early drafts, however pedestrian, in case I jinxed my return to poetry.'
It was Jane who wisely advised in another post that 'first drafts are not holy relics':
'They will still exist, perfectly intact, after you have rewritten the poem twenty-five times. So release your grip on the poem; let it move in whichever direction it chooses. If the redrafting process unnerves you, keep the first draft at your elbow and use it as an anchor; however ‘out there’ subsequent drafts become, your original impetus can remain steady.'
