“Feedback is a gift!” as my brother Luke used to tell me when I gave him my drafts on rainy Sunday afternoons after the football, before spending forty-five minutes telling me everything wrong in my work. I used to leave these sessions feeling like I’d just been through the battle of Passchendaele – tired, bloodied, unsure of what it was all about. Later, fearing the literary hairdryer, I tended to give poems to my mum or one of my sisters, as they would tell me how wonderful it was, without ever mentioning any specifics. It felt lovely to be complemented, but it got me nowhere.

15 years later, I realize how right Luke was (though I’ll be damned if I ever tell him). For me, the best feeling you get outside the rare levity when an idea avalanches onto the page, is the one that responds honestly to criticism. Sometimes that response is “Yeah, you’re right – it doesn’t quite work. Let me make it better.” Sometimes it can be “This phrase is meant to be difficult. I want it to be ambiguous. It stays.” Getting there is hard. Damn hard.

One of the things I did to get there was take an MA in poetry writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. I spent a day a week in the company of Andrew Motion and Jo Shapcott, and a gallimaufry of poets from every background, level of expertise, and age. While it was joyous to have the poet laureate and the winner of multiple poetry awards reading my work week in, week out, the real gift was the opportunity to listen to my peers in the class. I was forced to justify my choices, and recognize when my efforts to convey a sentiment, image or mood hadn’t hit the mark. It made me acknowledge that if you deny your mistakes, you are condemned to repeat them. By being open to feedback from my peers, I have become a better poet. I know when to fight my cause and when to act on received wisdom. That new judgment has been the making of my writing, and one all poets must accept if they wish to improve.

And it is with that sentiment that I have created a new group on the hello poetry website. It is called HP focus group: Advanced poetry criticism. I want it to be a place where people come to sharpen their own work, and their editor’s eye. There are several aspects of the group that differentiate it from others on the web. These are laid out on the group site, but the most important two are these: Only submit one poem at a time; and remember that feedback is a gift, but it isn’t gospel. If you ask a group to review 20 of your poems at once, that insight will be diluted too greatly. Poetry is a craft entrenched in detail, and that detail is needed. Stay sharp, stay focused, and the benefits will speak for themselves. And when feedback arrives, remember that it has value because it opens your mind to other perspectives. One of my favourite stories involves going to see a Bertolucci Movie, where the director had a Q&A after the flick. One person noted that one of the major characters seemed to be influenced greatly by a Shakespearean character, which gave that person an added depth and context to his experience of the film. Bertolucci’s response: “That wasn’t in my mind at all when I shot the film, but I love that you see Shakespeare’s character in your mind’s eye.” Sometimes, people don’t get what you’re trying to do, but what they do get is lovely nonetheless. At the end of the day, the moment you put your poem on the page for someone else to read, you no longer own it. The reader does. Their view can be just as beautiful, and can work just as well as your own.

I hope that people will make the most of the advanced poetry criticism group, and enjoy the opportunities it offers. In time, I would like to create other HP focus groups, including a focus for unfinished poems, for poetry beginners and for specific aspects of criticism, such as layout, rhyme, and translation. The HP focus group idea isn’t mine any more, and I do hope that others take up the baton and create them freely, and with similar intent.

After all, feedback is a gift, and everyone likes presents, right?