control of lyrical spacing from staff

[Edward Sanford Sutton, III]

  I have a score with a piano and 2 voice staves. The lyrics for the first 
voice seem closer to the dynamics of the second voice than they do to the 
notes of the first voice (which doesn't go below middle c if I remember 
right). Even if it isn't quite right to do so, I wanted to move the lyrics 
closer to the staff since I think it could make it look better and it should 
be easy to get that last staffline off of page 3 when printing individual 
singer parts. Should I really just squeeze horizontal spacing instead to make 
it work out?
  It's a copy of a copyrighted publication that I put into lilypond to correct 
mistakes, print off individual parts to make it less confusing for the 
elementary school kids to read, and be able to put together midi recordings 
for accompaniment and so they can hear how the melody of their part goes 
based on pitch and rhythm. As such, I assume it wouldn't be the wisest idea 
to just post the whole thing up as an attachment to a publicly available 
list, but if snippets are OK, I'll do that. I could also write up equivalent 
short samples to express any issues I'm trying to sort out if those would 
help.
Thanks again,
Ed Sutton