"I expect wonders round every corner"
I was bored, picked a book off from the shelf. Ignored chapters on Esperanto, Volapük, Interlingua, Toki Pona, Lingua Ignota, and Solresol, and started reading a one on Klingon because I liked the Star Trek series on TV and film following the adventures of the Star Ship Enterprise and its crew. It’s mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, and to boldly go where no one has gone before.
There wasn’t any doubt what I’d write about. It was the highlight of the day, and I felt guilty about not writing about all the other things: Dave at the cruise terminal who directed me to a barber’s for my first haircut on the cruise, the museum itself with its installations, the war memorial gardens which reminded me of the hero’s shrine in Aldershot. But it was only when I started writing that I realised just how significant the experience was. How much respect meant. In 2024 I travelled on a World Cruise and wrote a poem a day for 100 days. I’m now getting a book of these ready for publication. This is the poem 44. A version was published by Wildfire words.
Talking with the house band’s guitarist Lee about seeing the blues singer/guitarist Muddy Waters back in 1968
In 2024 I travelled on a World Cruise and wrote a poem a day for 100 days.
It took all day to pass through the canal and cost £250,000. I feel guilty I did not spend more time on deck just looking. What really struck me was smoke coming from behind a hill when we were about to pass Panama City.
In 2024 I travelled on a World Cruise and wrote a poem a day for 100 days. I’m now getting the book ready for publication This is the poem I wrote on day 17.
Photograph by Richard Lovelock. See also https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=682878398095070&set=a.149287128120869 for other wonderful photos.
Many thanks to David Cooke for publishing this poem in the Summer 2026 edition of The High Window, and to Richard Lovelock for allowing me to use his wildlife photographs from the voyage.
The Story Behind the Poem
This happened on a sea day somewhere in the Atlantic.
I was reading a Jack Reacher novel on a lounger when June, from the next cabin, said a bird was trapped by the cabin window. Ray, from the cabin opposite, identified it as a storm petrel and explained that these birds struggle to take off from solid surfaces because of their specialised legs, weak feet and long wings. They normally need open water, a wave, or a cliff edge to gain lift.
After much discussion about what to do, June fetched the guest lecturer and wildlife photographer Richard Lovelock. Wearing cargo shorts and looking entirely unfazed, he gently wrapped the bird in a towel, carried it to the stern, and launched it into the wind.
For a few seconds it seemed uncertain whether the bird would fly.
Then it caught the air and disappeared into the sky.
The Poem
DAY 92: THE SOFTEST THING
A storm petrel falls from the sky,
feathers plastered by rain,
wings folding under the pull of gravity,
one half alert to waves,
the other drifting, chest rising in tiny rhythms.
Then Richard Lovelock appears,
hands practiced, careful,
beard salt white, eyes scanning the storm.
He kneels by the cabin door,
swaddles the bird in a towel,
feeling the pulse, the fear,
breath trembling through feathers.
Passengers angle for photos,
oblivious to the small life
he carries to the stern,
a small message
meant for sky, not sea.
He throws the bird upward,
expecting a miracle.
Gravity, that unsentimental editor,
offers no guarantees.
For three long beats: nothing.
Then instinct kicks in.
Wings catch the wind,
rain stinging, spray on the deck:
it rises, slipping into the open sky.
Publication
Published in The High Window, Summer 2026.
About the Project
In 2024 I travelled on a world cruise and wrote a poem for each of the 100 days of the voyage and am now getting the book ready for publication. This poem is Day 92 of that sequence.
I sent my collection to four trusted readers: Greg Freeman, Stephen Claughton, John Wheeler, and Cheryl McLennon. The instructions were vague: read the poems and let me know if you have any comments.
It was one of the best decisions I made. It was expecting far too much from each person to read all 102 poems and provide detailed feedback, so I’ll have to do the difficult bit myself. I became someone else. I had to wear different hats to look at a problem to ask what sort of hard questions they would demand of each poem:
Wearing the curator’s hat. Does it earn its place in the collection? A poem that works on its own may still be deadweight in a collection. Ask whether it adds something the other poems do not: a different tone, a different angle, a necessary pause or acceleration. If you could remove it and nothing would be lost, it probably should go.
Wearing the architect’s hat. Does its form work? (Short answer: no. Loose free verse became poems in three-line tercets.) Form is not decoration. It is an argument about how the content should be experienced. Free verse can feel like a default rather than a decision. Ask whether the shape of the poem on the page is working for or against what the poem is trying to do.
Wearing the navigator’s hat. Is there a turn, a moment where something shifts? This is sometimes called the volta. It does not have to be dramatic, but something needs to change: the speaker’s understanding, the emotional register, the angle of vision. A poem without a turn is usually just a description. The turn is where the poem becomes a poem.
Wearing the carpenter’s hat. Do the lines and stanzas end in the right place? The end of a line is the most powerful position in a poem. It creates a small moment of suspension before the reader moves on. Look at what word is sitting at the end of each line and ask whether it deserves that emphasis. The same goes for stanza breaks, which are like a longer breath, a chance to let something land before moving forward.
Wearing the critic’s hat. Is the poem unclear? Is it interesting? These are two separate questions and both matter. A poem can be perfectly clear and completely inert. It can also be interestingly strange but so obscure it locks the reader out. You are looking for the productive middle ground: a poem that rewards attention without demanding decoding.
Wearing the doorman’s hat. Does the ending explain what the poem already showed rather than open beyond it? Weak endings tend to summarise or interpret, telling the reader what to feel about what they have just read. Strong endings trust the poem and the reader. They tend to open outward rather than close down, leaving a resonance rather than a conclusion.
Wearing the conductor’s hat. Is the poem rushing past its best moments or lingering past its welcome? Read the poem aloud and notice where you want more time and where you want to move on. A poem that races through its most interesting image has probably not understood where its centre of gravity is. A poem that keeps going after its natural ending has not trusted itself to stop.
Wearing the surgeon’s hat. Are there unnecessary lines? Most poems are too long. Look for lines that repeat what has already been said, that explain an image rather than let it stand, or that exist only to get to the next line. Cut them and see if the poem gets stronger. It usually does.
Wearing the detective’s hat. Does it actually sound like me? This is one of the hardest questions because it requires you to know what your voice actually is. Look for lines that feel borrowed, that sound like a poem rather than like you. If you read a line and think someone else could have written it, that is worth examining. The goal is not to be different for its own sake but to be specific, and specificity is where voice lives.
Wearing the gatekeeper’s hat. Does the opening earn entry quickly, or is the real poem buried a few stanzas in? Writers often need to write their way into a poem, which means the first draft frequently has a false start at the top. Read the poem and ask where it actually begins. If the third stanza is where things come alive, consider cutting everything above it and seeing what happens.
Wearing the diver’s hat. Is the poem about what it thinks it is about, or is there a deeper subject trying to surface? A poem about a walk in the woods may actually be about grief. A poem about a childhood kitchen may actually be about forgiveness. Sometimes the stated subject is a way in to something the writer has not quite named yet. If you can feel a pressure beneath the surface of a poem, try to identify what it is and ask whether the poem is fully addressing it.
Wearing the traveller’s hat. Does the poem move? Does something change between the first line and the last? By the final line, the poem should have taken you somewhere. The change can be subtle, a shift in tone, a slight reframing, a new image that recasts everything before it. But if the last line could swap places with the first without any real loss, the poem is standing still.
Wearing the gardener’s hat. Are the images doing work, or are they decoration? An image should earn its place by doing something that direct statement cannot. It should illuminate, complicate, or extend the poem’s meaning. If an image is simply pretty, or simply there, ask what would happen if you removed it. If the answer is nothing, it is probably decoration.
Wearing the hat that keeps falling off. Where does the poem lose you, even slightly? That is usually where the problem is. This is the most useful instinct an editor can develop. You do not always need to know why a poem loses you, only to notice that it does. A moment of confusion, a line that feels off, a stanza where your attention drifts: these are signals. Mark them and bring them to the writer. The problem may not be exactly where you felt it, but it will be nearby.
The phrase is commonly linked to William Faulkner. Its clearer early form appears in a 1914 lecture by Arthur Quiller-Couch. He advised writers:
“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it wholeheartedly and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”
In a poetry collection, the darling may be a strong standalone poem that disrupts tonal coherence, a crowd-pleaser that flattens quieter tensions, an early success that no longer matches your current voice, or a poem that repeats work handled better elsewhere. The issue is not quality in isolation. It is fit.
Postcards from the Floating World began with a simple constraint: one poem a day for a 102-day world cruise. The structure felt watertight. Every day accounted for, every port recorded, the calendar as backbone.
A strict calendar can flatten voltage.
When I sent the manuscript to a few friends and then left it alone for two weeks, I came back with different eyes. Not better eyes. Just eyes that had stopped being proud of the project and started reading the poems. I saw a collection that documented the voyage faithfully but in places forgot to be a book.
I hope they agree with me I should cut nine poems. Days 5, 6, 18, 33, 34, 39, 56, 60, and 80.
The reasons vary Some are weak. Some are pleasant but go nowhere. Some cover ground handled better elsewhere. Some could have been written by anyone. Some were too raw, serving me rather than the reader. Some were repetitive.
Removing those days restored pressure to the collection. The gaps do what gaps do. They ask the reader to lean in.
The hardest cut was Day 39. I had called it Exit, a poem about the introvert’s need to slip away from noise and find a quiet corner. I liked it. I revised it carefully. It had a good last line. Read cold, it said exactly what it meant and nothing more. It did not discover anything. It confirmed what the reader already suspected about the speaker and sent them on their way. That may be enough for an essay. It is not enough for a poem.
That is what a darling looks like from the outside. Important to the writer. Explicable. Self-contained. For those reasons, faintly inert on the page.
A collection is an argument in sequence. One poem may be excellent in isolation yet distort pacing, shift register, or introduce a theme the book cannot sustain. Keeping it because it once felt important weakens the whole.
There is a structural economy at stake. Too many high-voltage poems in a row can numb the reader. Too many explanatory poems close down interpretive space. The discipline of cutting is not self-punishment. It is alignment. Asking each poem not just whether it works, but whether it works here, next to these poems, in this order, for a reader who has just come from there and is heading elsewhere.
The 102-day structure was never the point. The voyage was. And the voyage, like all voyages, was not continuous. It had dead days, wasted days, days that led nowhere. Honouring that in the manuscript means keeping some of those days. It also means knowing which serve the book and which serve the calendar.
The calendar, in the end, is not your reader’s problem.
If you are working on a collection and wondering whether a poem belongs, the question is not: is this good? You already know it is good. That is why it is still there.
The question is: does it discover, or does it confirm?
Confirmation is comfortable. Discovery is what the reader came for.
Murder your darlings. They survive the cut. You wrote them. They are already inside everything else.
Last week I received four rejections in the space of a few days. Close enough together to feel cumulative. I reminded myself, as I always do, that there are many reasons a strong poem is turned away.
Not a fit for the journal
A poem can be doing serious work and still fall outside a journal’s aesthetic or tonal frame. Editors shape issues deliberately. Fit is curatorial, not evaluative. Rejection here says nothing about the poem’s durability.
The editor already has enough poems
Space is finite. Once a balance of voices, forms, or subjects is reached, later submissions face a higher bar regardless of quality. Timing often outweighs merit. Many strong poems arrive after the door has effectively closed.
The poem was read after several stronger or similar pieces
Reading is comparative, not absolute. When poems echo themes or structures already encountered, even a good one can feel diminished. Fatigue is contextual. In a different sequence, the poem may have stood out.
The editor read it on a crowded, distracted day
Submissions are often read between other obligations. Attention is uneven. Energy is limited. Subtle work can be missed under these conditions. The poem did not fail the reader. The reading failed the poem.
Rejected for logistical reasons, not merit
Editorial calendars, themed issues, internal debates, and shifting priorities all shape decisions. Many rejections come after a poem has been taken seriously. Silence or form replies often mask constraint rather than judgment.
Of course I feel disappointed. Rejection costs something. But I do not feel judged. A rejection is not a verdict on the poem’s intelligence, ambition, or future. It is a situational decision made under conditions I cannot see.
My responses vary. Sometimes the poem goes straight to the next journal unchanged, a belief that the work is finished and the context was wrong. Sometimes I let it sit, then return with cooler attention. Distance can expose slack, or confirm the poem’s integrity.
I try not to revise aggressively to preempt rejection. Risk and strangeness are easy to trim and hard to restore. More often, I shelve the poem and write something new, accepting that not every strong poem needs an outlet immediately. Over time, rejection becomes background noise.
There is no ideal response. What matters is whether the response allows the work to continue. I like Sylvia Plath’s response “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.” Tony Hoagland reminds me that editors are often protecting a framework, not judging a life’s work. Mary Oliver frames rejection as ordinary labour, endures.
1. Opening scene
A decade ago, a poet handing out a stapled pamphlet at an open mic in Leeds or Hackney risked being quietly dismissed. If your work did not pass through a recognised press, people assumed you had missed the mark. The rule was never written down, but everyone knew it. You had to be serious.
2. What “proper poet” used to mean
Serious poets subscribed to Poetry Review, PN Review and The Rialto. They clocked every new issue of magazines such as Magma, Ambit, Butcher’s Dog and Acumen. They tracked pamphlet releases from Smith Doorstop, HappenStance, Shoestring and Tall-lighthouse. They knew who had moved from Faber to Picador or stepped across to Cape. They knew about the canon, even championed obscure ones. This was the culture of correctness and it was a full-time job. Oh yes, they were mostly men.
3. Why things changed
Digital tools lowered barriers. Print on demand services such as KDP, IngramSpark and Lulu brought costs down. Mixam and Ex Why Zed made small runs viable. A poet in Norwich could design a cover, send the file to print and have twenty books ready for a weekend fair. The poet did not need a gatekeeper to check it was good enough, would sell enough copies, eventually say yes. Or no
4. The poet changed too
The rise of spoken word reshaped expectations. Poets were no longer only page writers queuing for magazine slots. They were performers touring pubs, bars and festivals. Open mics across London, Manchester, Bristol, Liverpool, Cardiff and here in Woking created active scenes for local people to become involved in. A poem refined on stage fed straight into a hand sold pamphlet. The poet became author, editor, promoter, bookseller and sometimes publisher.
5. The new audience
Spoken word brought people who had never read Poetry Review into the room. They bought what moved them. Salena Godden, Joelle Taylor, Robert Garnham built loyal followings through live work long before anyone took notice. When those readers wanted the poems in print, self published or micro press books filled the gap.
6. The new landscape
Tables at Ledbury, the London Small Press Fair show self published work stacked beside titles from Nine Arches, Verve, Bad Betty, Fly On The Wall, Paper Swans and Bloodaxe. But publishing is a precarious trade. Small presses stretch shoestring budgets, depend on grant cycles and volunteer labour, and sometimes fold without warning. In the past decade presses such as Tall Lighthouse and Eyewear have closed or paused activity. Others shrink their lists or skip a season when money or time runs short. A poet who waited years for a perfect home could watch it disappear overnight. Self publishing became a practical safeguard against this uncertainty.
7. Money and control
A ten pound pamphlet printed through Mixam might cost two pounds per copy. Sell it after a reading and the poet keeps most of the margin. In a traditional deal the poet might receive one or two pounds per copy. Self publishing also means choosing artwork, correcting drafts immediately and reprinting on your own schedule.
8. Where the old stigma still clings
Some gates remain narrow. Prizes such as the Forward and T S Eliot typically accept books submitted by publishers. National review pages lean toward Picador, Faber, Cape and Carcanet catalogues. Yet blogs and podcasts including The Poetry School, Sabotage Reviews and Lunar Poetry regularly feature self published titles.
9. Choosing what fits your life
A press such as Carcanet, Bloodaxe or Peepal Tree works well for poets who want editorial depth and distribution. For occasional writers or anyone who cannot spare hours each day sending to magazines, a local print shop may be the simplest route. Design a cover, order fifty copies, give or sell them to friends and local readers. Either way the work reaches the world.
10. Closing reflection
The definition of a poet has widened. No longer confined to pages in sanctioned magazines, poets now read, perform, film, post and print on their own terms. Some still pursue the traditional ladder. Others build their own steps. A poem that connects with a listener or reader counts. The route it travelled is no longer the test. So this year I will self-publish a book.