Dear friends,
For the absolute majority of the poems we feature on Poetry Unbound, I don’t know the poet. I might know someone who knows them, or know their publisher, but the poet is usually a stranger, encountered only through their work. I read “Hijito” by Carlos Andrés Gomez a few years ago and loved it. We made a Poetry Unbound episode about one of the poems in that brilliant book. Since then, Carlos and I have had occasional contact, accompanied by threats to meet up… which we did, this very week in New York. He’s from here, although he lives in Georgia now; I’m not from here, although I live here now. (This might have led to a friendly scuffle as to who would pay at Caffé Reggio.)
We did the usual (do you know? you do? how? etc.) and the other usual (when? how has it been? do you miss?) and then we easily landed into poetry. Neither Carlos nor I felt like we had a career trajectory to be poets, but both of us wrote poetry like our lives depended on it. I had notebooks filled with forms that I carried about with me for years in the fear that anyone else would find them. In my mid-twenties, I decided I needed some way to share, so I started going to an utterly bonkers midweek poetry open mic in a smokey basement in a Dublin bar on the Northside of the Liffey. It was run by an Irish-Mexican woman named Delta, who specialized in avant-garde jazz improvisatory poetry while walking around the room.
(If you need to read that last sentence again, that’s okay. Imagine what it was like to be a green poet there.)
Anyway, I went, and loved it. People read poems about their sex lives, about war, about survival, about change, about Ireland, about language, about whatever they wanted to read about. It was deliciously anarchic, and I smelt of smoke, sweat, and poetry after every Wednesday night. I made friends there who’d come up and offer ideas about what worked in a poem, or its reading, or something that might change the poem if I wanted to consider an edit. I can still remember a Canadian tourist in 2002 standing up one night and reading a poem about leaving a pot of water filled with lavender on the warm kitchen hob all night so that the house would smell of welcome in the morning. I don’t know who she is, but I remember her: temporary intimacies of language and sharing between strangers whose words showed what was possible in words.
Carlos, too, found homes in New York City’s readings: Bar 13, the Nuyorican, and others. There — not because of upcoming publications or strategic connections for future blurbing possibilities, but simply because people liked each other and wanted to talk with each other about what they’d read — he met poets who, too, helped the art he was writing to deepen in its craft.
Just this week, in a class, someone said to me, “I’ve written stuff that’s so personal I don’t think anyone else would get it.” I asked him if he’d shown it to anyone. He said he hadn’t. I think art always knows more than we think it knows, and a line of a poem can do more than the writer thinks the line can do. Somehow, it is always in the showing and the sharing — the risk of that — where something happens. What you think was extraordinary might get an editing scalpel; what you thought was mediocre might be seen to be subtle and insightful.
Carlos and I, together this week, praised the people who helped us along the way. And praised the school of poetry: few people expect to make much of a living out of it, so people are generous with each other as we go, knowing we write for reasons that drive us.
A question I have is:
Where have you found such accompaniment in your own writing and work? What were your resistances? What helped you look at your resistances and try something new?
Underneath all of this is a praising of those people — those who’ve become fast friends; those strangers whose names have faded, but whose influence hasn’t — who have borne witness to our art and artistry and courage along the way. And also, those people — like Carlos — who become friends through the page by the art they make.
I’ll look forward to seeing you in the comments,
PS: If you’re yearning for some places to share your poems, local libraries, universities, and online forums are great places to go searching for poetry groups with whom you can share your work. You might want to try a few, to find out what suits your style and interest. Some will offer quick and clear edits, others will be more about making appreciative space. Different things will support different people, so give a few a go, and stay with what meets and pushes you best.
Poetry in the World
ONLINE
Strange Stories of the Bible
There’s still time to register for this Sunday-evening series, October 8, 15, 22, 20, and November 5. Learn more and sign up here.
U.S.A.
Lexington Community Education | Lexington, MA
I’m giving a talk about the “You” of poetry at Lexington Community Education Project, on October 19, 7pm. Details and registration here.
EUROPE
Journeying Into the Common Good | Patmos, Greece
Together with Krista, Allison Russell, JT Nero, and Joe Henry, I’ll be one of the speakers at a small salon on the revelatory Greek island of Patmos next summer from June 27 - July 7. More details and registration here.
thank you for the lovely write-up Padriag!!!
i’ve found a lovely friend and poet-kin in Mary Oliver, who i’m sure is a friend and poet-kin to many reading here.
specifically, her closing notes at the end of the book ‘A Poetry Handbook’ were illuminating for me. they made me realise that poets are a community that need each other and that the world needs.
please find her words quoted below:
“Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves.
“None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it—indeed the world's need of it—these never pass.
“If it is all poetry, and not just one's own accomplishment, that carries one from this green and mortal world- that lifts the latch and gives a glimpse into a greater paradise then perhaps one has the sensibility: a gratitude apart from authorship, a fervor and desire beyond the margins of the self.”
— Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook
Blessings,
Julian
This question couldn’t be better timed. I have written here before about the fact that I write poetry but don’t share it with anyone, for much the same (admittedly foolish) reasons you cite from conversations with others. But it’s basically just fear which says “you won’t be as good as the poets you love” and “your deep feelings will be made silly by appearing in a mediocre poem, so keep them to yourself.” I am glad I know that these are lies, but they are still powerful.
I recently began sharing my poems occasionally with a playwright friend of mine, who has so tenderly nudged me toward a practice and into a class, and only three weeks ago I started my first ever poetry writing workshop. I have a busy travel schedule this Fall, so rather than put it off any longer, I am doing an online workshop/class that allows me to work asynchronously. This works for now until I can be in a live room, which I now crave. And tomorrow, I’ll submit my first poem for critique by the class. Three weeks in, I already feel the muscles of vulnerability developing and I am not afraid, and am actually quite excited. All it took was a friend to tell me, “I did it, it didn’t kill me, and it changed my life.” As always, we heal and we grow in relationship. Here goes.