In my earlier days of writing poetry I had a very fixed view on when a poem was finished or not and once I had 'let it fly' so to speak, I would never change it.

Many years later I have recently found myself re-looking at old work and re-writing it and (to my mind) significantly improving it.

This led me to think whether this was typical practice or not amongst poets? Does anyone have a view?

A very good subject for discussion, Graham. WH Auden, apparently paraphrasing the French poet Paul Valery, said: 'A poem is never finished, only abandoned.' At the beginning of the year we reviewed a book called The Process of Poetry, where a number of leading poets discussed in interviews their different drafting and re-drafting methods https://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=133371