How Did You Structure Your Poetry Book?

And other questions I’ll be asking poets and publishers about their process

Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash

It’s happening. Today, I’ll be interviewing poet Mary B. Moore and founder/editor Luke Hankins of Orison Books about Mary’s forthcoming collection, Dear If—the first two of (I hope) many poets and publishers who will share their wisdom about the poetry book-development process with us.

I think poetry manuscript development as a whole isn’t explored nearly enough. Without explicit examples to follow, most of us walk into the process with a distortion or two, either believing that making a book should be simple and easy to accomplish or that it’s too complex and opaque or out of reach. Neither of these distortions serve us. 

So I’m thrilled to be starting these conversations with authors and publishers, which I’m certain will provide some refreshing clarity. How exactly do we poets sustain a creative practice, engage with core subject matters and themes, develop a successful collection of poems, and find a publisher? And on the publishing side, don’t we all wish we knew more about what poetry editors/publishers look for in a manuscript?

Here are some of the questions I plan to ask:

POETS

1. How many years did it take to develop the manuscript, start to finish?

2. How was the process different for this book than for others?

3. When did you know you had a viable manuscript? How far into the process?

4. What are the books themes? And how did you come to recognize those themes? 

5. Which books, authors, or works in other disciplines influenced the collection? 

6. What was your approach to revision? Did you revise individual poems based on how they would work together in the manuscript?

7. How long does it take for you to “finish” poems? When do you consider them finished?

8. How many poems did you select from to form the manuscript? How did you decide which would stay and which would go? 

9. Did you end up leaving out any poems that you thought were manuscript worthy but that ultimately didn’t fit?

10. What was your approach to organizing the book? What was that process like? 

11. How did you settle on the book’s title? Did you have a working title that changed?

12. How did you find the right publisher? What was your submission strategy? How many submissions did it take?

13. What nourished you along the way? What or who supported the work most?

14. What do you wish you had known about the book-development process earlier?

15. What did this book teach you?

EDITORS / PUBLISHERS

1. What drew you to ______________ ? What stood out in the manuscript?

2. What changed from manuscript to final book? Did you and the author make many revisions? Tell us about that process.

3. Did you stick with the manuscript’s title? Why or why not?

4. Tell us about the cover. How was it selected? What was the approach to design?

5. What do you wish more poets knew about the publishing process or about any other aspect of the relationship between author and press?

6. What advice do you have for poets developing manuscripts?

Of course, different writers will give different answers. Every writer has unique approaches and tools that work for her. But that’s the beauty of conversations like these: By seeing others’ paths to publication more clearly, we can more accurately navigate our own.

Which of these questions top your list? What else do you want to know? Pop your questions into the comments.