Radhika submitted her piece 'Death of the Soldier' to write-to-feedback. Her former piece 'dreamz', which I've included a link to at the bottom of this page, was included after some minor editorial changes, as agreed with Radhika.

Sometimes, new writers are also new to aspects of writing that fall outside of their own control. For instance, the process or the impact of someone else editing their work. This isn't very surprising; when you're alone with your own thoughts, conjured like magic as words upon the page, it can often feel as if you're striving for that final-final draft. Of course, to someone else who looks at what you've drafted, it may not seem quite so final.

This isn't to say that external editing is something you need to be fearful of, it can be a very positive process - so long as it's sympathetic to your writing - it can be a way of gaining important feedback on your work, a way of gaining insight and perspective on the meaning of your words. I think this was Radhika's experience with dreamz, and so it was that she submitted Death of the Soldier for feedback.

Here's the original piece:

Poetry is difficult to edit. Much of what the poet writes is a matter of their vision or view. Someone may write the list of the ingredients off of a box of breakfast cereal and call their poem 'junk food' - and what would an editor have to do about that?

I felt that feeding back on Radhika's piece was a difficult task, so I showed it to a mixed media writer friend of mine (who wishes to remain annoymous, but I'm gonna use her firstname anyway - smile). Joy and I thought this was a generally good piece of work. Joy went on to say, that in parts she felt it contradicted itself; as for when, in the second stanza it talks about death:

'One life ends at death,
For the other to begin.'

and then in the third stanza it goes on to ask a question about death, as in:

Personally, I thought this was just the philosophical nature of the poem. I took the view that it wasn't meant to be read literally. This led to a bit of debate - which is in the poem's favour; anything that has the power to provoke discussion is working on at least some level.

Joy finally concluded that the poem could be simplified by making a couple of changes. Removing a word and clarifying a line.

In conclusion we could say, writing poetry can require a careful balance between the number of words you need to retain to give meaning, and minimising the number of linking (conjunctions) words you need to retain to make sense.