Our Philosophy for Editing Poetry
At Wordcatcher Publishing we trust that poets put deep consideration into every word of their poetry. We do not see it as our role to critique or edit word choice.
We do help authors by looking closely at spelling, punctuation and capitalisation to suggest anything that might be a typing error. However, poetry doesn’t follow the normal rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling, so they are only suggestions.
We don’t edit poetry in the same way that we edit prose because we firmly believe that poetry is art with words, and we wouldn’t insist that an artist change the shade of purple they use because we think it’s wrong. We assume that every brush stroke is intentional.
This isn’t the stance taken by all publishers, however, and is neither right nor wrong. Poets publishing with us know that they are 100% responsible for the words on the page. We feel our role with poetry is to give poets a voice and to help them to reach their audience. As a result, our catalogue has a diverse range of styles from literary to more everyday speech, from haikus and free poetry to four-line rhyming patterns. All are welcome here.
Tag:editing, poetry, proofreading, suggestions