Letter to a Young Nonprivileged Poet by Sandra Simonds

 

Letter to a Young Nonprivileged Poet:

Sometimes younger poets come to me and they want to know how to get his or her voice out there in poetry. I’m not sure why they ask me, but whatever. I’ll take it for what it is. Let me first say, if you are a rich poet or poet who went to an Ivy League school or probably both, or a tenured white male professor, stop reading now. This post isn’t for you. There are tons of resources out there for you and this is not one of them. This post is for ordinary poets, poor poets, adjuncts, and other people who don’t have the means, resources and connections in the poetry world and are struggling to get their voice heard. I totally get it and I want to help you!

First of all, you have to understand a very basic truth: the poetry world is full of rich white poets and being rich and white, having rich white parents, and having connections is a major reason poets become successful. More money, less problems. More white, less problems. So, try to understand this and get that. Let’s say it together: rich white poets are far more likely to become successful poets. That is just the history of poetry and it hasn’t changed much.  If you are a POC who isn’t rich, you have even more of a hurdle, obviously. So, what to do? Here are some tips to help you:

My first tip is to make a community and stop sucking up to authority figures and gatekeepers in poetry to try to get poetry favors because this doesn’t do anything for your poetry and is mostly a waste of time. Why? Authority figures and gatekeepers will almost always favor white males and people who have resources to begin with. STOP DOING THIS. Let me tell you a story. I have been living in Tallahassee for a decade because I went to PhD school here at Florida State University and I cannot tell you the number of students who go through the PhD program spending their entire five years sucking up to creative writing professors they think are going to get them book deals. This is a terrible method, my friends, and a waste of your time! From what I have observed, some students did get book deals from the connections that these professors had but the students who did were….wait for it….white males!  Surprise! Don’t make this mistake. Let’s review: Your professor is more than likely not going to get you a book deal and probably thinks you are annoying for asking because he/ she has more important things to do like relishing in the fact that he/ she has a tenure track job teaching in an MFA / PhD program when the academic job market is literally collapsing at his / her feet. This professor is probably clueless as hell to his/ her class position and the fact that you are probably never, ever, ever, ever going to get a job like his/hers.  If you are a poor or have any other disadvantages,and you are on this futile path, listen to Dr. Sandra and abandon this path now.  Let’s review: abandon path abandon path good god, poet abandon path!!!…..take a new path to...your university’s copy machine…..

Do you get free copies? I hope so! USE THE COPY MACHINE to make chapbooks and send your chapbooks to all of your friends to build an audience and make your own damned connections with people you actually care about who share your aesthetics and politics. Making chapbooks is fun and easy. Google how to do this. I made my first chapbook back in 2005 with a friend I made in PhD school who also came from a fairly poor and unlikely poetry background. Both of us USED THE COPY MACHINE and made a zillion copies of our chapbooks and sent them out to our friends and created an audience for our work. Also, make friends with that guy/ girl in the English department who sits at the front and has to deal with all the professors all day and have him/ her send out your chapbooks FOR FREE. Every year or so, I still make my own chapbooks and send them out to my friends and new readers, even though I have written five full length poetry books. I still really enjoy the process of making books and it connects me to my roots as a poet.

Let’s move on to the next thing: I am 37 years old and I have never won a poetry prize. You don’t need to win a poetry prize to get your poems out there. Sure, send to the prizes since you think a prize will help you to get an academic job you are probably not going to get anyway because…surprise! You are poor or a POC or both or have a disability—but go ahead and try—I did that and still do, but prizes don’t mean very much if you have a politics. Dr. Sandra, what do you mean by a politics???? Let’s move on…..

My advice is that your poems have some kind of politics.  This doesn’t mean you have to write political poetry. I’m not saying that. I, too, write the occasional poem about gazing at a field of daffodils. But you are a poor poet! You are a disabled poet! You are a queer poet! You have something TO SAY and I promise you other poets like yourself want to hear it.

I have long been involved in social justice movements. When I was a graduate student, I probably spent more time as a labor organizer than I did either on my own poems or on my classes. Again, I’m not writing this for rich poets, as this advice is totally irrelevant to your experience and is contrary to your interests but if you are a poor poet or any poet who has come from a disadvantaged background, one without privilege, do yourself and the people around you a favor, join the struggles for liberation of poor people and POCs that are taking place all around you. Do what it takes to fight police brutality, and if that isn’t your thing….free animals from cages like the animal liberation people do, or feed hungry people with Food Not Bombs, or if you are really lazy sign some moveon.org petitions,  but my suggestion is that you get into the streets to fight your oppression and involve yourself deeply in this practice and from this involvement not only will you wed yourself to something bigger than your ego, not only will you flourish as a person, but I can assure you that you will grow as a thinker and as an artist and your poems will be better for it. And, ultimately, if your poems aren’t better for it, then you have done something truly righteous and real. And these struggles don’t have to be within the poetry world—they can be outside of it and that’s fine. But by being poor, you are already a political person and there are millions of people out there like yourself. It may not look like this from the confined and myopic lens of your MFA program, but it’s true. These other poets need and want to hear from you. 

Once in a while, privileged white man or woman will bemoan the fact that he/ she doesn’t have an audience. “Sandra, I feel like I’m getting old and no one is reading my poems,” he / she says to me. My response to this is well, maybe you aren’t saying anything important or don’t have anything that other people can connect to. Maybe millions of people in this world are struggling to put food on the table and you are worried about what kind of car to buy. Maybe no one wants to hear about the dreams and fantasies of a tenured white male professor who has nothing to worry about? Maybe some of us are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt from student loans, ever think about that? I’m just saying! No one cares about your cute little dream poems and that’s why no one is reading them. These people should probably do everything in their power to support people like US but most of them don’t, so why are they crying to me? But this isn’t about them…..

Last thing…. If you have a politics, there will be haters. Some of them will be people you thought were your friends, some will be anonymous trolls, some will be rich poets who don't think you have the right to write poetry, some people are a combo of all the above and some people are just plain mean. Haters are like free verse, there's a million ways to be a hater. If you are a woman writing poetry with any kind of politics, you are going to get emails, mentions on twitter and all the other bs from condescending mansplainers who will do what it takes to silence your voice. My advice is: delete, block, ignore and move on. When I published my first book, Warsaw Bikini in 2009, my first “review” was some douchebag on Amazon who decided that he was going to “review” my breasts. It was humiliating. I had worked so hard on this book. It was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. I thought I had done everything in my power to be taken seriously as a poet, and this was a huge blow to me. But, I had a community and ironically, I had this community because I was an outspoken feminist and leftist so I got all of my friends to flag the review and it got taken down. But the message was clear that this was going to be a hard road to be a poet and it still is. There are all kinds of haters and the best thing to do is form a community or audience (either online or in person or both) who will have your back and respect your art and politics.

I realize that I wasn’t “supposed” to become a poet. Maybe that is the same for you. Being a poet is really easy if you are privileged because you don’t really risk much. If you fail, your mommy or daddy or whoever will be there for you but for people like us, it’s much harder. That’s why we have to bond with each other and support each other and share our secrets. HELP EACH OTHER. You know how hard it is out there as a poet, so help your friends who come from similar backgrounds.

To better assist you, I have rewritten a paragraph of Rilke’s 1903 letter to a young poet and updated it to help the nonprivileged poet (I have struck through the parts of Rilke which are irrelevant to us, and added in bold pertinent information):

 

There is only one way: Go within procure a squad. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does my squad stretch out its roots in the deepest place of my heart poetry and political life? Can you avow that you would die if you or any member of your squad were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Do I have anything that’s important enough to say that will change the lives and material conditions of the people around me? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, “I must," then build your life upon and fight for the liberation of all oppressed peoples. It has become your necessity. Your life, in even the most mundane and least significant hour, must become a sign, a testimony to this urge.

Or you can simply replace Rilke's letter with this if nothing I have said here makes sense:

 Diane di Prima

Hope this helps xoxoo, Sandra

Comments

[Sina Queyras]

Love this. I'll be our squad. xx

[danielle]

lol advice to POC, queers, and poor folks from a middle class white opportunist.

[TomahawkChop]

"Let me tell you a story. I have been living in Tallahassee for a decade because I went to PhD school here at Florida State University and I cannot tell you the number of students who go through the PhD program spending their entire five years sucking up to creative writing professors they think are going to get them book deals. This is a terrible method, my friends, and a waste of your time! From what I have observed, some students did get book deals from the connections that these professors had but the students who did were….wait for it….white males!"

Yes, that is a story. I don't know of any FSU grad, white male or not, who got a book deal because of sucking up to professors. I think most of us got our book deals by persistently sending work to contests (poetry) or agents (fiction). Here's a partial list of non white male FSU grads to publish books during the decade that Ms. Simonds spent in Talahassee: Pamela Ball, Carrie Bennett, Brigitee Byrd, Cara Candito, Susanna Childress, Kimberly Elkins, Deborah Hall, Rebecca Hazelton, Rebecca Lehmann, Terra McVoy, Sara Pennington, Jennifer Perrine, Chelsea Rathburn, Rita Mae Reese, Mary Jane Ryals, Heather Sellers, Sandra Simonds, and Samantha Thornhill.

But I guess having a politics, for Sandra, means signing on to a fashionable oppressors versus victims oversimplification and ignoring those pesky facts when they get in the way of the narrative.

[danielle]

"all my friends are social activists and the min communist at the max and i assure you they will show up for me so i'd back way off with your bs"

Wow, you don't get it. POC and the poor don't need the dreams and fantasies of privileged white female professors either. You're no radical, just an impostor.

[Gerald]

I looked at Ms. Simonds Facebook page most of her pictures are of vacations, writers conferences and readings in cities. Poor people don't get to travel. Poor people rarely get any time off.

I'm curious. What does she mean by "poor" exactly?

[Gerald]

Poor people can't afford to spend 900 dollars on air conditioner. Many poor people can't afford to have a car in the first place. I am shaking my head after reading this tweet by Ms. Simonds:

Sandman Sandman ‏@SandmanSimonds Jun 23
i spent $900 to repair my car air-conditioning and seriously it was only like 80 degrees today wtf!

[SandmanSimonds]

Love you, Sina.

[SandmanSimonds]

Shouldn't you be on Reddit?