Poems in Progress

Ask two poets what a first draft looks like and you’ll get wildly different answers. From typed pages with delicate annotation to scribbles in a dog-eared notebook, drafts tell us so much more about poems – and poets – than the published versions ever could.

Themed chapters allow for fascinating new comparisons – William Blake’s ‘London’ (1794) sits alongside Andrew Salkey’s ‘Jamaica’ (1973) in discussions of place – revealing how each manuscript has shaped our understanding and practice of poetry today.

Experts from the British Library explain the process and provenance behind poems from across the globe, and practicing poets reveal their own drafts, with new reflections on their writing.