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Putting A Collection Together

in Poetry Discussion

I've put collections together before (submitted to a few publishers to no avail) and putting the poems together always stresses me out.

But I had a thought the other day. Fair warning: I'm going down a Taylor Swift rabbit hole. I saw a tiktok a couple of months ago that said that Folklore was the better album but Evermore had better songs and this opinion hit me in the gut. It's so true and I completely agree with it. And that led me to another thought: that's why Red isn't my favourite album. I love the song (come on! The Last Time, Come Back...Be Here, The Moment I Knew, not even mentioning the masterpiece that is All Too Well). But the songs don't gel together that well and I think that's why I didn't really like it compared to the beauty of Speak Now or the vibes of 1989.

And it occurred to me that I suppose putting a collection together might be similar to putting an album together. To be clear: I've never put an album together before in my life. Whereby, the poems have to stand on there own, have their own themes and motifs and vibes but they also have to work together as part of a bigger picture.

I wondered if anybody had any thoughts/suggestions/advice for putting collections together?

4 comments

Comments (4)

Shen Friebe

Nov 29, 2021

•

Agreed. I naturally file my poems into collections based on a chronological story or journey I or the speaker is embarking on, even if the speaker differs between each poem- they're all telling one cohesive narrative that could be interpreted as one universal narrative or journey many share. Of course, within that narrative are many different stories, events, characters and revelations the speaker/s experiences and philosophises over. So naturally, towards the end of the collection, at least major revelation or value will be apparent to both the speaker and reader, and a drastic change within the speaker would have taken place.