Poetry Pamphlet Appreciation Department
this post is about poetry and only slightly snarky about Taylor Swift
Hello readers. I intended to keep this edition of hot mushrooms much shorter than the last few, but then I started writing and just didn’t stop. Which kind of ruins the original intro paragraph I wrote which concluded, rather naively: “I’m keeping this week short and sweet with the shortest and sweetest kind of writing out there: poetry!”
Anyway, let’s do this.
First, I don’t think one can call their art “tortured” if one has only flown by private jet since 2009.
Second, my history with poetry began and ended in a Poetry 101 class in which a woman said my poetry was bad because it wasn’t dark enough. I’m not paraphrasing. I knew she was wrong and pretentious, but I also knew she said the quiet part out loud when it comes to literary opinions. The class was fun; I enjoyed working on the final project of a mini poetry zine, even asking a high school friend to contribute a poem because I knew that would impress both my professor and that woman. And when it was over, I took my elective A and moved on.
I am firmly against any kind of gate-keeping, especially for creative pursuits, but I still think that if one has ever owned not just one, but TWO private jets, one can’t really call their creative output “the tortured poets department”.
Between Poetry 101 and 2019, I almost never thought about poetry. I felt I had more important things to write about. Things that I thought could help make society a bit kinder. Until finally, at age 34, I learned just how little society cares about anything. Except money.
There is no money in poetry. There is barely any money in fiction. But there is a rich community of people who write, and work on their writing, and share their writing with (mostly) full knowledge of how economically doomed that pursuit is. I believe all humans are creative. I believe that the pursuit of creativity is not something for a select few, but is human behaviour in the same way that building a nest is bird behaviour. (And I still think Taylor Swift is too billionaire to call her album The Tortured Poets Department).
I’ve only had one set of poems published, and a lot (a lot) of rejections, but I don’t feel rejected. I feel creatively energised. I feel confident. Confident that I will continue to work on my writing, that I will eventually have enough published pieces to put together a little poetry pamphlet, and that some strange and cool little independent press will want to publish my poetry pamphlet on actual paper! (Is this manifestation?)
In North America, little poetry books are called “chapbooks”, but I prefer the English-speaking European term “pamphlet”. Like I’m taking my poems to the next village over where they have a working printing press. Like I’m hand sewing the binding and handing out the pamphlets to people entering and exiting the bookshop.
To learn more about the actual reality of writing and publishing a poetry pamphlet, and to be a good #writingcommunity member, I’ve acquired a nice little collection of little poetry books. The books and their authors almost certainly didn’t receive enough press upon publication, so I’m using my micro platform to praise them as they deserve:
The Woman’s Part, by Jo Gatford. Published by Stanchion in 2022.
The summary on the back of the book sold me on this pamphlet immediately: “Using a combination of original prose and erasure poetry, The Woman’s Part reimagines the lives and desires of Shakespeare’s women — their unspoken opinions perspectives, and unwritten endings.” The only thing that would make this more appealing to my heart would be if there was some kind of Ancient Greek or Roman stuff… and lucky for me, Shakespeare wrote some Ancient stuff plays! Really, it’s a miracle I don’t sleep with this book under my pillow each night.
Cleopatra’s poems are my favourite; especially the prose poem Gatford wrote for her, especially this line:
“Reduce her to a snakebite and a bared breast, as if the way she left the world meant more than her time in it.”
Girl Parts, by Betty Doyle. Published by Verve Poetry Press in 2022.
I bought this pamphlet from the writer herself, after finding her on Twitter. I love paying women for goods and services directly, no middleman (literally, why is it always a man?). Her pamphlet is about both the biological parts that make up a girl, and, like The Woman’s Part, the parts girls are expected to play in society. And I wonder if that is why this book has a kind of centrefold. Not a naked girl splayed across the two middle pages, but a poem that appears to be created out of an NHS handout about polycystic ovary syndrome. In my mind, that is exactly why she put that poem as her sexy centrefold.
Though my favourite poem is called To Emin and starts out, deliciously:
“I, too, have felt the power of eyeliner wings, their sorry twins stained blue-black across the cling-film of a pillow case;"
Echolocation, by Sally Bliumis-Dunn. Published by MadHat Press in 2017.
Unlike the other pamphlets listed here, this is a little book I bought a few years before even thinking about writing poetry myself. In fact, it was probably the first time I’d thought about poetry since that 101 class. Tom and I were on a day trip outside of Amsterdam and we found a cool bookshop/cafe for lunch. I’d say about a third of the store was English-language books, so to stop myself spending hundreds of Euros on depressing non-fiction, I made myself choose exactly ONE book of poetry. And this was it. It isn’t quite confessional poetry, but it is deeply personal — a style that I find myself most drawn to in both reading and writing.
The poem Pregnant at the Beach is my favourite; the language and sentiment in this section have been particularly sticky in my head:
“I laid out my beach towel on the soft sounds of her words, my friends' tales of labor like freighters in the distance— didn’t remember any pain. And I lay there basking, eyes closed.”
Hotel Ghost, by Stephanie Valente. Published by Bottlecap Press in 2015.
I’ll be honest, I went through a few months where I bought a few too many poetry pamphlet pdfs with the best of intentions, including intending to overcome my inconvenient inability to read fiction or poetry on my phone. This is nothing against the books or their authors, this is an entirely me problem. So the fact that I not only finished Hotel Ghost, but that I go back to it when I’m looking for a bit of inspiration for my writing.
My favourite poem in this book is called Oysters on the Half Shell, because every time I read it, I find a different phrase or word that transports me into a new scene. And it has just the most truthful closing stanza:
“she sighs it's the same voice that tries to fit words inside human sized holes.”
I was going to conclude this (overly long) post with another dig at Taylor’s next album, but I’d rather you read these lines from the movie Dead Poets Society:
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer: that you are here; that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
Thanks for reading this edition of hot mushrooms! Like and subscribe and all that. See you next week.