on becoming a poet
1. Community is Everything but Also Doesn’t Really Exist
Community in the writing and art world is important. But at the same time, there is no such thing as "THE poetry community" or the "THE writing community." More like there are multitudes of communities and groups of practitioners that dot the lit world like tiny constellations, some connected by style lines or people or publications, others just existing all on their own. .It can be divided by genre. By location. By types of poems you love and write. Maybe even by subject matter. By aesthetics and MFA schools and bars or bookstores you like to read and hang out in. When I first moved to Chicago, I felt like I was simultaneously part of three different communities, none of which overlapped even the slightest. There were the web poets, who were popping up everywhere in the new bloom of online journals and poetry blogs. There was the more open-mic centric community of local poets in Chicago, who were also distinguishable from other groups of local poets like poetry slammers, who read more competitively at places like the Green Mill. Even the local community was subdivided with some poets, like me, who crossed back and forth depending on style. More traditional poets and more experimental poets who each had favorite reading venues and journals/presses of their own. And then there were the MFA program poets and instructors I encountered in grad school, who had entirely different sets of idols and publishers and journals they were trying to get into. Some people, like me, moved back and forth between these groups, or straddled one or two, but mostly they were distinct. There were entire groups of poets I only found out about later writing very similar work but that were more insular. Entire pockets of Chicago poets I had no contact with until years later. Poets I shared a city with who I had never met even though their work and styles were actually very similar.
2. Leap First, Figure it Out as You Go
There is one school of thought that you should, as an artist, make sure everything is perfect before you do things like sharing work publicly, like via open mics or publications. That you should take certain steps and measures before undertaking things like submitting work, compiling books, applying to programs and awards and residencies. There is another, one I espouse regularly, that says just fucking do it. Want to start a poetry journal or small press? Figure out how to make it happen and do it. Want to start submitting your book to presses or indie publishers.? Do it. Want to start a reading series or a writing group? Go for it. Sometimes, things get stuck in the planning stages or the preparation stages and never get out of it. Never wait until you're "ready" or you'll be waiting forever. If you wait for permission or someone to tell you you’re ready, you may never get it. Figure out the best way to start and roll with it. My worst ideas have sometimes turned out to be my best ones. Everyone warns against the writer who publishes too early, when the work is green, but I am a poet who feels that way even about my more experienced work sometimes, But then it changes / is always changing.. All the work is a document to the time and era of you as a creator, so honor it and stop worrying about achieving some imagined perfection before you start taking your work and writing career seriously.
3. Don't Get Distracted by Goal Posts and Miss the Ball
I write this knowing full well I was once guilty of this in spades, and maybe, even occasionally still. It's a slippery slope when you are just starting. At first you want that initial publication if you haven't yet gotten it. Then you want more--bigger name journals and harder mountains to climb. Then you want chapbooks and books and prizes. Teaching gigs and fellowships and residencies. You want to be taken seriously. You want “legitimacy.” These things are all nice to have and fun to pursue, but they should just be frosting on the cake of what you are doing as an artist. Certainly not requisite and not the focus of how you get your work to readers. If you wait for that big goal--that premium journals or big prize, you may be waiting forever to feel like you have arrived. You have arrived the minute you put serious efforts into getting words on the page and finding readers (and for some people, maybe even that second part is superfluous depending on your goals.) As you go, the goal posts get harder and further apart and so many poets I know sort of float in between them. It leads to dissatisfaction and sometimes, stopping the writing altogether.
4. Be Careful with Mentorships
Great creative friends and mentors can be invaluable when you find the right ones. Even if they are just the people you can talk projects and shop with. There was a trend on FB among younger women writers I knew from around 2009 onward, though it started in blogs much earlier, who kept looking for guidance and mentorship with male poets, who were usually older. They had in common that they were usually claiming to hold some magical key to the poetry world or the publishing community. Inevitably, even in the best scenaroio, these led to weird dynamics and terrible relationships/marriages and sometimes outright harassment, stalking. and sexual assault. I don’t think men experience this quite as much, but I do know it's possible. I've also seen and experienced writers as gatekeepers or teachers who view other new poets as rivals in some fucked up way and then proceed to just give really bad advice and shit talk behind their backs the poets they have taken under their wings. Be careful of these relationships. Your friends and cohort will often be your best cheerleaders and your best critics, as will the things you read and poets you admire from afar..
5. Promo is a Bitch, but Make it Fun
There is an almost unspoken requirement, in both indie and traditional publishing, that you are responsible for promoting your work in a time when agents and publicists and other people who used to be responsible for these things have fallen by the wayside or are not really attainable for most poets. Many poets feel like social media promo is ever at odds with time they spend writing, especially if that time is also limited by day jobs and families and caregiving. Like it's some other thing that doesn't ever yield enough for the time that you put into it. And this may be entirely true, but so much changed for me when I started looking at the endeavor of sharing and promoting work as its own kind of creative outlet. Over the years I have, in the interest of poetry, taught myself web design and graphic design and video making, all things I otherwise would probably not have delved into. They are a kind of creative fun that is not necessarily separate from my writing and artmaking. Now they are kind of second nature.
6. Teaching is Not Always the Best Way to Make a Living
I get it. We love books and words and teaching feels like one of the best ways to make a living and still be immersed in it.I have two kinds of writer friends who teach, One are the adjuncts who spend a great amount of time working underpaid and part-time with no benefits at multiple institutions and barely have time to write. The others are tenured and established, but spend so much time devoted to students and advising committee work and administrative things like department chairing that they also bemoan never having time to write. Many have turned to other lines of work entirely. Some are very dedicated teachers and are really good at what they do, and by all means, see teaching as a passion and calling, Others are just hoping to make the rent and really want to focus on their writing instead of wrangling undergrads into writing essays they don’t want to have to grade. We all have to have jobs usually, unless blessed by well-paid spouses or trust funds, but teaching is often proposed as the first line of inquiry when making a living (and academic institutions sell this by employing grad students to do the dirty work for little to no money, locking them into the system.) I had a grad school teacher at DePaul who warned me that she saw on the horizon for the college/university teaching track in the next couple of decades. In my case, the subject was literature,, not writing, but it still holds true across the arts and humanities. She did not see it getting better and warned me I should know what I was in for as I pondered getting my Ph.D.. It was 1999. It did not.get better but far, far worse. And yet there are a wealth of skills that use writing and poetic abilities, even outside more obvious flight plans like freelance writing and editing. Libraries are great places to work as are non-profits. PR and marketing are something that fit nicely. If you love academia, while my experience was underpaid and overworked, there are administrative and support jobs that are more stable and have a fixed work week. Look for something that doesn't deplete your soul but fills your bank account and you will be fine, even if that means writing in the in-betweens.
7. Find a Way to Engage the Community and Give Back
Whatever you feel is your community, your people, find a way not just to take, but also put something back in. Not everyone wants to or can start journals or presses, but in that case, talk other people's books up, write reviews, teach community workshops or start a reading series. So often I meet poets who seem to expect that the world is just waiting for them and their work to show up and be awesome. When actually, you're creating / are responsible for creating the community that you want to be a part of. Otherwise it doesn’t exist. Not everyone has bandwidth for larger work loads, but everyone can do just a little something to help their lit community along, even if it's just boosting a social media post or writing an Amazon review.
8. Write and Read A Lot
I often encounter discussions of productivity and how to still feel like an artist or writer in those following periods. Fallow periods are good for growing and planting, even if the harvest is small. But even if you are a slower writer, and take a longer time being happy with your results, you need to keep going and feeding the creative machine. It doesn't always look like we think it should, writing entire poems or stories or publishing, More often it looks like living and thinking creatively, reading and observing, thinking out loud. You don’t have to be churning out poems on the hour or daily, but don't’ put aside your work entirely for months or years at a time. Keep it close, ponder it, go over it, stay connected. Because life is crazy and forging out that time to really focus is so rare, it is easy to lose track of your creative mojo so easily and lose momentum. Even if it doesn't mean getting words on the page, foster and feed your creativity every day by reading or doing other kinds of art or journaling.
9. There is No One Way to be a Poet
When I was in my late 20s I watched carefully and intently the poets I knew who had begun to do the things I wanted to do. who seems to have it all together. Getting those high tier publications, landing book deals, winning prizes, and garnering rave reviews. Everyone else was wondering when it was going to happen for them. Were worried that they weren't on the right timeline for success or that they started too late or had been playing the game so very long with limited wins. There seemed to be a traditional path, especially among MFA poets–the ones I was reading, the ones I knew and studied with. You waited for someone to notice you and lift you up and maybe some people did, but even that was no guarantee you'd stay there. Second and third books could be harder to place. Writing trends go in and out of fashion. So many mid-career poets are wondering what happened to the energy and enthusiasm they perceived around them in their early days. But then again, if you looked around there always poets who did not seem to be on that particular track, or maybe picked some aspects but disregarded others, Who cherry picked the best parts of the poetry world and business, or others who eschewed it altogether. These poets were often as worthy of emulation as the ones you were looking to. Some had much better and happier relationships with their career. Watch those people too. There is not one way of being a poet and also no one way of "making it" whatever that means.
10. Don't Be an Asshole
This one should go without saying, but just don't. Don't berate editors in lengthy response e-mails who didn't take your work for their publication. Don't use people for what they can give you and then discard them. Don't approach poetry as a transactional thing, like you publish me, I'll publish you. In over twenty years at this things, the worst cringe-worthy moments were watching people beg, barter, crawl, and trample their way to a top that doesn’t even really exist.
Comments