a charge that is felt by the writer

Open Book Toronto: What do you do with a poem that just isn't working?

Roo Borson and Kim Maltman: We generally hand it over to the other of us to see what can be done. Often there’s a “charge” that is felt by the writer which fails to be communicated to the reader. It has taken, more than once, twenty years (plus, in a few cases) to arrive at a solution that makes the charge tangible to someone other than the writer. And sometimes an unsuccessful poem needs to be simply consigned, by neglect, to an earlier version of one’s favourite word-processing software, one whose format is no longer readable by any current version of that program.

- Roo Borson and Kim Maltman, in conversation with Open Book Toronto. You can read the whole thing here.