I received (by email) the first proof of Wristwatch, my first full length collection, a month ago. What followed was …
Exhilaration.
Then the fear. All these poems are shite!
(A glass of wine). Hang on. Various mags and competitions rated them. Cinnamon rated them.
A strange world of wondering about hyphens vs em dashes.
The editor and copy editor have done a grand job of tidying my inconsistent, misspelled and often botanically inaccurate manuscript.
Three iterations follow. I mark corrections on a pdf and email them back to the ever-patient Jan. She makes the changes and sends back a new pdf. I print and read again. We are resolving formatting, some full-stops become commas, some commas become full-stops, and (ahem) one poem moves from past to present tense.
On a sunny Thursday spring morning at 0515 I read through the latest version and realise this is it. It’s a wrap.
I’m choked. I can’t quite believe I reached this point.
Jay Whittaker, Edinburgh-based poet 