Poems in Progress: Drafts from Master Poets

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Previously unpublished early drafts by practicing poets including Benjamin Zephaniah, Simon Armitage, Pascale Petit and Hollie McNish are accompanied by new reflections from the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.

Laura Walker is Lead Curator of Modern Archives and Manuscripts 1850–1950 at the British Library.

Alexandra Ault is Lead Curator of Modern Archives and Manuscripts 1601–1850.