Seems to me there's two approaches to writing poetry, which can be summed up as "having something to say" and "letting the something say you."

Many poets, I suspect, "have something to say": a subject, either over their whole life, or for a particular work. It could be "capitalism is bad, socialism is good" or it could be as simple as, "I had a really good time on holiday in Greece."

Others - and I sort of count myself among them - actually don't have something to say themselves, but are trying to "listen in" and then record what the world is saying to them. The American poet Jack Spicer, put it succinctly: "you don't speak to the Outside, the Outside speaks to you." He had this idea that the poem didn't come from inside the poet, but from some outside source, as a kind of channeling thing, that you ought to remove yourself as far as possible from the poem so that you can hear what the poem/world is saying to you.

I can see this as sounding terribly mystical and foggy, but I can identify with it as well. Some of my favourite poems of mine are in some ways mysterious to me - I don't know where they came from. I work out what they're about as I'm writing. Or sometimes months later, after I've read them several times or published them in magazines. I still don't know what some of my poems are "about."

That is really why I started cutting and pasting, and why even though I don't use that technique as much now, chance techniques are still really important to me. Poetry to me is not about imposing my view of the world on other people but about seeking what the world is trying to say to me.

All this, of course, is only a partial explanation of what I do. And it doesn't mean that I've totally rid myself of ego in some zen kind of way. I'm still the same bundle of ego and uncertainty I used to be. But it does explain why "meaning" as in something imposed by me on the reader rather than something the readers discovers in the act of reading, is something I might want to get rid of in my own poems.

Sorry about the essay, but I thought the question of having or not having something to say might make an interesting subject for discussion. Do you write because you have something to say, or because you want to discover what can be said? Generally that is (knowing it's never that clear cut.)

My poetry is generally more direct in its approach than yours, Steve. But I still never know what the poem will be about when I start it. This, and the random elements generated by the rhyme and metrical constraints which I set myself (not always, I occasionally venture into open forms), give the poem its 'uniqueness'. Otherwise I might as well just be going on with myself in the pub.
My poems often start with a phrase or word that particularly takes my fancy. It will usually end up in the first or second line and I will build the structure around it. Even this is usually randomly chosen, or should I say 'unconsciously'. I rarely say 'today I'm going to write a poem with eight syllables per line, five four line stanzas and a ABBA rhyme scheme'. Those decisions just sort of evolve as the thing is written. This materially affects not just what I have to say but, of course, how I say it.
I always have something to say, even when I don't think I have. One phrase which was banging around my head for a couple of weeks was, 'architecture and piss'. I sort of had an idea of writing about drunken central Manchester nights and these seemed the central elements. As it turned out, the phrase became the start of a metaphysical poem, architecture and piss being contrasting materials of equal transience etc....so far, so Wordsworthian. But the point is that I never meant to write about that subject, right up until the last moment. And I really only knew what the poem was about after I had written it. Which is usually the case.
I don't want to hint at mysticism. I am an atheist and a materialist. I think it has more to do with some poetry being almost like the mind seeing something out of the corner of its eye, as it were.
Even the occasional narrative poem I write starts with me having no idea how it is going to end. I would probably get bored with the story and not be bothered to finish it if things were otherwise.
As for being a conduit for the world to speak through, I'm not sure about that. But I welcome any new ways of writing poetry. If you look at the way Modernism infiltrated mainstream verse in the twentieth century, it is obvious that all innovations eventually have their parts to play in the greater game, to a greater or lesser degree. No school of poetry has had absolutely no effect on poetry.