Friday, January 11, 2008

Juvenilia

Oy. I just learned that Dalhousie University's undergrad English journal Fathom has digitized and archived its back issues online--including the 1999 issue in which two early versions of poems from Unsettled appear. Bad early versions (tho one was good enough for second prize in their contest...); I'd only started writing poems the previous year (when, in fact, these poems were written, as you can tell by the handy date tags I thoughtfully provided). If I was publishing the book this year, I'd probably cut both poems; even in their revised versions, they're far from the strongest work. But for those CLM readers with a copy of Unsettled ready to hand, it might be of interest to see the differences. Most of the book's poems were written post-2000. 99% of what I wrote prior to that, Arctic or otherwise, has been scrapped or completely re-written. Which is a very good thing.

4 comments:

Megan said...

If it matters, I like 'em. :)

Zachariah Wells said...

You knew me when I wrote them, which disqualifies your opinion!

Brenda Schmidt said...

Cool! It's fun to look at early versions.

Megan said...

Details, details!