Why I write the worst possible version of a poem first, on purpose

My first draft of any poem is deliberately bad — overwrought, obvious, full of the exact cliché images I know I'll cut later. I do this on purpose because trying to write something good in the first pass makes me self-conscious in a way that blocks the actual idea from getting down at all.

The bad-on-purpose draft exists purely to locate where the real poem is hiding. Usually it's one image or one line buried in three stanzas of throat-clearing, and the entire revision process is just excavating that one true thing and cutting everything built around it out of nervousness.

Nobody sees the bad draft. That's the point — it's not a poem, it's a shovel.

Related reading: The Guide to Reading and Writing Poetry Without the Intimidation.