Ask two poets what their first drafts look like, and you'll likely get
wildly different answers. From typed pages with delicate annotation to
hasty scribbles in a dog-eared notebook, drafts often tell us so much
more about poems - and their poets - than the published versions ever
could.
Manuscripts shown here range from John Keats' drafts in his own hand, to
poems written on toilet paper by Sylvia Pankhurst while confined in
Holloway Prison, to early versions typed by Sylvia Plath on the reverse
of Ted Hughes' own discarded work.
Themed chapters allow for fascinating new comparisons between diverse
objects - 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 the UK and Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle
East, highlighting the secrets that published poems often conceal.
Previously unpublished early drafts by practicing poets including
Benjamin Zephaniah, Simon Armitage, Pascale Petit and Hollie McNish are
accompanied by new reflections from the poets themselves on their
inspiration and craft.
Featured poets include: Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John
Betjeman, W. B. Yeats, Maya Angelou, Fujiwara no Teika, Emily Dickinson,
Ted Hughes, T. S. Eliot, Christina Rossetti, Seamus Heaney, Rudyard
Kipling, James Berry, Robert Burns, Sylvia Plath.
