A spiral bound notebook lay in front of me, a faint coffee stain on its worn red border and a dash of ink from a pen slip. Inside this unassuming cover, dated 27th of August 1987, lay the first drafts of the poem “Eley’s Bullet” by former poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, which I had chosen to research.
The first entry that touches the story of Eley’s Bullet was found on a page dated September 4th , titled “A Story”, and follows the tale of a man who finds a bullet with his name on it, sound familiar? While this was clearly the draft of the poem Eley’s Bullet, it had a few marked differences. Eley did not yet exist; that is to say that the story centered around “a man” rather than Eley, which creates the question, why did specify a name in her final drafts? And why Eley?
A Google search of names would return with no result of Eley, heightening the sense of singularity upon finding a bullet with that name on it. However, on the top of her first draft was written, “find out maker of bullets”. After seeing this I decided to search for Eley, not as a name, but a company. With this, I was able to find the company Eley Hawk, which produces shotgun cartridges. If considered a variant of the name Eli, a new, biblical meaning is introduced to the poem.
As well as the introduction of the name Eley to the story, some subtractions were made through the drafts. Most notably, in the earliest draft, the line that starts “The woman was married”, which we see in the final version, continues with, “but the man knew that inside an hour he’d be inside her. The whole house seems to ache at the thought of it. Suddenly, the man laughed out loud”. Why did she choose to forego this passage?
She chose to exclude this because, in my opinion, it is too blunt. This story is cool and detached, with limited insight into Eley’s thoughts. This passage, if it had been kept, would be too revealing, too early in the poem.