Behind the Scenes: How I Wrote 'Swans We Cannot See'

Swans We Cannot See was my third collection of poetry and in this post I want to give you an idea of what went into it, how I wrote it and why I learned so much from the process. 

A Reading of 'In Praise of Artisans' from Swans We Cannot See

Late Nights

Working full-time, with a newborn and a 3 year old, while also trying to make progress with my PhD, I will remember writing this book to be one of the busiest times of my life. I would leave the house at 7.30am, get to work, teach a day of lessons (sometimes also involving coaching a sports team), get home after 5pm, have dinner, help get the kids to bed, do whatever work emails I needed to do, and then start writing. All day, the thing I wanted to do most was to write and it felt like everything else just got in the way. Perhaps this is what led me ultimately to leaving full-time teaching to become a private tutor and be able to balance a more flexible workload and be autonomous. I never had a problem with the workload itself as a teacher (I accepted it and was always good at being efficient and finding ways to manage and deal with it) however I just had a nagging feeling that it was taking me away more and more from what I really wanted to do. At any rate, all this considered, this meant that if I had any hope of writing a third book I was going to have to stay up late and crack on with it, so I did. On a school night, to stay up later than 1am was dangerous as it meant that I’d be exhausted and grouchy the next day, forgetting things and being a bit absent-minded, however I did at times stay up that late. A more regular hour for me to stay up to though was about midnight. A good night of writing, meant at least one poem, or editing a poem to a satisfying position. When it came to the summer holidays (July and August before the book was published) there were often nights I was staying up to 2, 3 or even 4 am to get the book written. I was so determined to write this book, even if it did mean I’d be a zombie the next day. That summer of 2023 probably wasn’t the most enjoyable for my wife, however by the end of August it was over and I was able to rest, or would have been able to if it weren’t the start of the academic year again. That summer, though, was a big learning curve for me, and taught me what could be achieved with effort. When I look at Swans now, I think of those late nights and that summer, with a mixture of pride, exhaustion and wonder.

Written in 20 Months

I wrote this book over quite an intense 20 month period. I started my PhD in January 2022 and Swans was published by Gallery Press in October 2023. You might think this is quite a quick turnaround, however, I was finding that the poems were coming to me, I was intensely enjoying the creative process, and, coincidentally, my publisher Peter Fallon, got in touch in 2023 to ask when the next book would be. I hadn’t planned to put it out so quickly, however, he said there was a window to publish a book in the autumn if I could make it, and so I thought it would be good to have the impetus to complete the book and I did. It was an intense period, as I was also teaching full-time, and January 2023 saw the birth of our second son; in fact, when I look back at that time now, I’m amazed I found the energy to write the book at all and get it over the line. But I did, thanks to the editorial help of Peter Robinson, my PhD supervisor, and Peter Fallon, my editor at Gallery Press (who I’m sure had my face on a dartboard at the end, due to all of the last minute changes I needed to make). But, ultimately I think it’s a book that speaks to the intensity of that time in my life, with a lot going on, personally, professionally and creatively - it’s a book I’m proud of, not least for the fact I managed to complete it at such a chaotic time in my life. 

Listening to Music

I listened to a lot of music while writing this book. However, I have a terrible habit of listening to the same tracks again and again. I wrote much of this book staying up late, but what I found hard was getting into the creative frame of mind, after a day of teaching, parenting, and other menial tasks, so I found that a way of transitioning into a more creative state was to listen to music, and often I’d start my writing sessions simply by going to Youtube and  listening to whatever songs I wanted. This helped to somehow stop the world from spinning so fast, and allow me to focus and clear space in my mind to let my imagination come to the fore. A piece of music which I credit above all others for doing that, in the case of this book, was 'The Swan' from Carnival of the Animal by Camille Saint-Saëns. The version that I listened to on repeat was played by Yo-Yo Ma on the cello and Katherine Stott on the piano. In this version they are on stage alone in an empty concert hall. There was something dreamy and gentle about this piece that lulled me into a state of creativity and contemplation. On some occasions, when I’d had a really long day and was tired, I would just listen to the piece and then close the laptop and go to bed, but it never felt like wasted time, as often that was my body’s way of saying, let some new ideas take seed and come back tomorrow night. I’ve always loved music and credit it for stimulating much of the creativity I’ve had in my life, and if you listen closely enough to the poems of this collection you may well be able to hear the lingering cello of Yo-Yo Ma and the floaty piano of Katherine Stott in the background. 

Editing, editing and then some more editing

So, once the excitement of the first drafts had died down, it was time to revise and edit, and there was a lot of editing to do. Although I wrote this book quicker than any other book, weirdly I seemed to spend more time editing it. Maybe this was due to the sense of the looming deadline and needing to get the book finished by September, which in my case was no bad thing. The sonnets that you see in the book, for example, did not start out as sonnets; they may well have started at free verse or blank verse or something else entirely, however they became sonnets through editing, and this editing more often than not required a reducing. In the way that chefs will take a watery pot full of ingredients and turn it into a deliciously glossy, thick sauce, this is kind of what happened with the poems in this collection. They often started out as a  big, baggy thought and ended up in a much shorter, more intense form. Writing this book taught me the importance, more so than the other two books I’ve written, of editing work again and again, going back to it and holding the magnifying glass up to every verb and noun and pronoun and preposition and definite article and comma in order to get to a finished piece that you’re satisfied with, and that is now beyond editing. Writing this book taught me about the hours and time required to do that and I’m grateful for that. So much in writing poems is about learning some element of the craft to take into the next poem, and writing this collection taught me many of these things, especially with regards to drafting and editing, as often one more draft can be the difference between a good poem and a great one. 

Research

One of the longest poems I’ve ever written was in this collection, 'A Short History of the Potato', but there were other poems, much shorter than that, that also required a significant amount of research. We live in an age of fact-checking, and quite rightly. I think it’s important for facts/terms/historical events in a poem to have been researched in order to give them a sense of verification and authority. Not only did my long poem on the potato require many hours of checking facts and research but also poems such as 'In Praise of Artisans' with references to the parts of a staircase also required more fact-checking than you may realise when you first read the poem. The other long poem at the end of the collection, 'Death of an Artisan', required lots of reading up on the history of baking and Lyon as a capital of French cuisine, as well as more technical terms, particularly in French, for baking. So, in writing this book, I’ve come to appreciate the level of research that is required in writing poems which go the extra mile and have an added layer of depth, due to the reading that has gone into them. There will always be room for poetic licence and poet’s taking liberties here and there with certain facts, and not letting facts get in the way of a good poem, however I think this needs to be balanced with giving poems a sense of legitimacy, which could otherwise upset the applecart of the poet’s endeavour. 

You can watch a video of me reading the first poem in the collection here.

You can buy the collection, signed, in either paperback or hardback here:

SWANS WE CANNOT SEE (Signed) Hardback

Buy Now

SWANS WE CANNOT SEE (Signed) Paperback

Buy Now