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Top 25 Poetry Articles on Substack

Best Poetry Articles


Poetry Bulletin: May 2024

A personal update + important FYI on fee support + new resource with deadlines
Hey poets — this bulletin is late, because I’ve been spending time with family, walking in the woods with my dad, stopping for trilliums whenever we find them. We recently found out he has cancer, and the most honest thing I can say is that when he’s not well, I’m not well… We’re sorting out what this means in the near-term, and I’m listening for where …
Emily Stoddard ∙ 23 LIKES
Andrew Calis
I'm so sorry to hear about your father❤️
I also can't thank you enough for writing posts like this -- even at the risk of alienating readers. Peace will only come from action. I'm still trying to find my own form of action as a Palestinian-American poet; but I admire how emphatically you're using your platform to advocate for peace and change.
Angela María Spring
All of this, absolutely. We so appreciate you, thank you for all you do for our community and standing firm in your ethics. Sending you and your father so much heart energy. ❤️‍🩹

La Chimera

Alice Rohrwacher & film as poetry
A few quick notes to start: My new novel, Small Rain, is out on September 3. Please preorder it by asking at your local bookstore, or from your favorite online retailer. Here are a few links: Bookshop, Powells, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Amazon
Garth Greenwell ∙ 30 LIKES
Camila
Well, what a beautiful review.
Sarah
I loved La Chimera. Can't stop thinking about it! This is a wonderful and very thoughtful review.

Wishes, Lies, and Dreams

Poetry Comics inspired by the work of Kenneth Koch
Lately I’ve been reading the books of poet Kenneth Koch, an acclaimed writer who brought poetry into elementary schools in the 1960s. The lessons he created led to deeply imaginative poems. He shares them in his books ROSE, WHERE DID YOU GET THAT RED
Grant Snider ∙ 96 LIKES
April Whalley
Oh my goodness I enjoy your posts SO MUCH!
Kris Soebroto
The color wheel prompt inspires me to play with my palette and draw my moods.

A Line Cook's Rant About... Recipes

The poetry of lived experience
Hello and welcome back to The Recovering Line Cook, the home for my recipes, personal stories, and essays on all things food. I just want to thank those of you who have upgraded to paid subscriptions recently. I am a restaurant cook who loves to write, I don’t have an agent in my corner or any of that business, and your financial support makes this proje…
Wil Reidie ∙ 80 LIKES
Hanne Blank Boyd
My recipe notebooks contain few method notes, usually just enough to remind me of oven temperatures, goal textures, and things I know I’ll forget like “add potatoes at end of cooking so they don’t go to mush damn it.”
One of my favorite cookbooks is from 1911 and is written in Slovenian with a fair bit of German mixed in for fun. Recipes are mostly ingredients lists and method notes often include the phrase “in the usual way.” As in “whip the eggs in the usual way for binding fish,” in a recipe for what I suppose could be called pike quenelles but are (translated) “lake fish dumplings for clear soup.” The recipes are uniformly good. But you do have to know what you’re doing and as for pictures… it was 1911, go whistle.
dl meckes
I hate cooking with recipes. I love the pictures and ingredient lists as a jumping-off point. There is nothing to compare to a keen sense of smell to know when something is done, timers be damned. I was a pro but am now a home cook. Nothing helps my technique more than cooking every day without leaning on favorites. I have retained few cookbooks. Pepin's La Technique takes me almost everywhere I need to go. I'm never happy with my first attempts, and as Mr. Foydel notes, repetition gets you where you want to go. The last thing I do is make it pretty, but I'm not consumed with that.

The Lifegiving Benefits of Befriending Our Mortality

A new poem for national poetry month
Sweet Community, As National Poetry Month nears its end, I thought it would be the perfect time to share a very new (and very long) poem I wrote about befriending my mortality and the countless ways that process has increased the joy in my life. If you’ve been subscribed to
Andrea Gibson ∙ 1615 LIKES
Wildlifeisjoy
Oh. There aren't enough notebooks to contain the tally marks for the number of times the gift of your words have been my compass away from what I'm convinced every time is an inescapable loneliness. I can't wait to see you read in Denver, I bought myself a ticket the day after I came out at 37 as a gift to myself. I'll be the one sobbing in the front row.
Possible titles that come to mind after my fourth read:
I lost my wrinkle collection can I borrow yours?
One Size Fits Awe
Katie Morrison
Brevity
Name it Brevity.
Thank you for sharing this. My life is so full of love and wonder yet I turn the shoulder to the days, as you say, looking for tomorrow.
I need to be here today. Tomorrow is never promised.
🩷

Cathedral/Grove by Susan Glickman

A poetry review by Michael Greenstein
A cat perches on a bare branch, arched as if to pounce – a menacing image on the cover of Susan Glickman’s latest collection of poetry, Cathedral/Grove. Against a black background the cat appears almost white and moonlit, while the bare branches contour the feral creature. Its feline limbs grasp parallel branches, while its trunk rests as if it were a n…
The Seaboard Review

“They hang in the sky like questions”

Skylarks and buzzards and vultures, oh my.
Dear friends, Reading your interactions to the “Poems as Teachers: Conflict and the Human Condition” episodes this week has been an education too. Thank you for taking the time to engage, to write, to share from your lives — of the violences we contend with, the moments of change, the profound moments of deep disillusionment and unexpected about-turns o…
Pádraig Ó Tuama ∙ 110 LIKES
Jonathan Auyer
My three kids. Wonder embodied.
My students.
The garter snake that I disturbed yesterday.
The bedded dear I disturbed this morning.
The Foliage surrounding my domicile —Dogwood, Japanese maple, magnolia, rose of Sharron, lilac, apple, birch, maple, and oak leaf hydrangea.
Me, harbinger of death to the tiny spider I accidentally killed, which reminded me of perspective and scale and the unforeseen consequences of our actions.
The beaten path I ran early this morning by torchlight, a path created by humans but made of millennia of a changing nature that will out-exist me.
Me—consciousness that stretches backward and forward, held together by something I know not what.
Lee Cooper
There is so much wonder out my window this morning, as the hundred shades of green emerge to create the shades of summer, above the multitude of garden flowers in their various states of colored progression. Mostly though, I sit with coffee in front of an almost superfluous fire, although it is fifty degrees out here on the Maine coast, and watch the ospreys in the nest, guarding eggs for the next generation. It’s always a surprise to see them the first day back, knowing where they’ve been, kind of, and that they return to the same nest, maybe. Last year we had three chicks fledge,a surprise awaiting us for this season.
Thanks Padraig for a full week last week and for providing a soft landing on this almost summer Sunday morning.

SoberStack™ Addiction Recovery & Sobriety Substacks

An annotated directory of Substack newsletters devoted to addiction recovery and sobriety by writers spanning diverse ages, focus areas, and paths of recovery.
Updated 22 May 2024: Find 128 Substacks focused on addiction recovery and sobriety below.
Dana Leigh Lyons ∙ 174 LIKES
Tori H.
I feel honored and humbled that Dana mentioned my publication in her newsletter. I look forward to connecting with others amongst the "SoberStack." If you are looking for quality newsletters regarding sobriety and recovery, I highly recommend taking a gander at some of these publications! I follow several of them already, and I can't get enough of them. Thank you again, Dana.
Tawny Lara
So honored, Dana! I'm going through and following the other folks on this list. It's so great to connect with other folks in the SoberStack (great word, btw!) space.

Doing Theology With Poetry—Abram Van Engen

When I first fell in love with poetry, I had no idea what I was reading. The poem—a compact little thing of two stanzas by Gerard Manley Hopkins—had a series of words that all seemed to make sense individually, but simply confused when they were combined. It was apparent from the beginning, however, that the poet’s goal was not just to convey some kind …
The Rabbit Room ∙ 36 LIKES
Cynthia Ann Storrs
Outstanding analysis with helped me to appreciate so much more! I love the density of poetry-- a poetry says in so few words what it takes the essayist paragraphs to unpack.
Michael Fox
This is one of the most beautiful pieces I have ever read. Not only the poem, but also the lovely literary tour of the poet’s thoughts and words provided by the professor. Thanks for this.

Why Some U.S. Border Agents Are Contemplating Suicide. Plus. . .

The ‘Butcher of Tehran’ is dead. A backlash in Portland. Harvard capitulates to the student intifada. Harrison Butker’s commencement speech. And much more.
On today’s Front Page from The Free Press: The Butcher of Tehran is dead; Francesca Block r…
Oliver Wiseman ∙ 493 LIKES
Running Burning Man
The only thing offensive about the Butker speech was the parade of outrage by idiot leftists. Lead of course by the once again dunce of the year NFL “DEI” official who denounced Butker.
WTF does the NFL have a DEI official for? To try to get more white players into the league?
PSW
I’m sure if Butker had been named Mohammed and given a speech about Sharia law and the subservience of women and the evils of homosexuality, the MSM would be cheering him on, right?

13ThingsLA: May 8

Poetry, Public Art & Painting for your LA Art Calendar
Featured: Senon Williams The Getty Center’s Poetry in the Garden series continues on Wednesday, May 8 at 2pm with Senon Williams. Musician, painter, poet, and sometimes parade leader Senon Wiliams spent several weekends last year heading up the Sunset Hiking Club
Shana Nys Dambrot and HIJINX ARTS | 13 THINGS LA ∙ 6 LIKES

5 ways my poetry brings me an income

And how you can make art and then use it - inadvertently - to sell courses and get new coaching or consultancy clients.
A few years back, I decided to be a poet for a year. I wanted to see if I could be a proper creative and earn an income from it. I discovered that I can do that (I earned £800 in my first week) but that monetising my poetry directly had a negative impact on my inspiration.
Annie Ridout ∙ 34 LIKES
Nicole Jensen
This post took me happily spinning down the rabbit hole of all things Annie Ridout! Thank you for all the links of inspiration and motivation!
Tuğba Avci
This sounds cool. So, will the how-to launch an online course be part of this course? As it says, five courses included

POETRY SLUT RODEO + MY SAGGY TITS

POETRY SLUT RODEO Y MIS CHICHIS CAÍDAS
Guess what? Ashes! is dead…and now, I welcome you to… POETRY SLUT RODEO—an online AND snail-mail multimedia broadcast experiment in eroticism and self-publishing. Project Duration: 1 Year [June 2024-May 2025] We get started on June 27th with Issue 1: Saggy Tits!
Ash(ley) Michelle C. ∙ 2 LIKES

The Youth Rebellion Is Growing

Seven Gen Z Leaders Working to Reduce the Harms Caused by the Phone-Based Childhood
Intro from Zach Rausch and Jon Haidt: The most common argument among the critics of our work is that we are fomenting a groundless moral panic that is no different from earlier panics—from radio and television to comic books and violent video games. It’s a reasonable starting hypothesis, but you can’t cling to it as evidence mounts that
Zach Rausch and Jon Haidt ∙ 176 LIKES
Ruth Gaskovski
What a breath of fresh air to read of these Gen Z leaders pushing back. In our writings on how to navigate life in a digital age, my husband Peco and I noted that in addition to practical advice, people are in search of inspiring personal accounts that model a different relationship with technology. As such we have been planning a post for the end of May calling for submissions of stories that offer insight into how some young people, especially teens, choose to live life differently in a digital age. We will curate a collection of these stories that readers can freely access to gain encouragement for change and inspiration to apply to their own unique circumstances. We hope that this will add momentum to turning the tide.
Anne Lutz Fernandez
Ben's interview speaks volumes to me as a high school English teacher. I keep banging the drum that the problem is not just phones, it's overuse of tech more broadly in schools.
I wrote a bit about my experience this year, which has been to make paper, not machines, the default in my classroom. Ben's attic discovery can happen in schools.

Poetic? Prosaic?

Office Hours
This week’s question is a long one but, I think, well worth it. It’s articulate and detailed and describes a dilemma I’m guessing will be familiar to many of us. The questioner graciously said that I could cut it down as needed, but I like it at its full length:
George Saunders ∙ 217 LIKES
Eóin Dooley
This reminds me of a story I heard from Alan Moore's class on writing. Apparently, Shakespeare, the master of invented vocabulary, used to place his fantabulous inventions right before moments of heightened drama. Per Moore, this let him dislodge his audience's assumptions about the activity taking place, making them more receptive to the story. There are supposedly MRI scans of people reading Shakespeare which light up like a Christmas tree when they encounter these words.
I can't vouch for the veracity of those details, but I think the technique itself is real. It seems to me that when you use more complex or surprising descriptions, you're necessarily forcing the reader to engage more with the text. This is setting aside the aptness of your analogies or the flow of your prose or what-have-you. Rather, it's in the pure and simple terms of demanding more attention to comprehend the language. By adding complexity at the right moment, you're making a request to the reader to dig deeper into the text, to ponder it, and to reevaluate what they have read.
Annemarie Gallaugher
Such a great question and response. I was especially interested in the questioner's observation about the sentence from "The Mom of Bold Action." The questioner writes: "Clearly, 'went all shrivelled-apple' is doing the most work in this sentence to keep the reader in the Positive zone." My feeling is a little different. Just thought I'd share it here in the interests of thinking more about the question of what counts as "poetic" (disclaimer: I'm no poet or poetry expert, but come at this more from a literature and linguistics background). I definitely took note of "shrivelled-apple" since it's such great image, but, I didn't really linger on it. For me, I felt that the word "started" was what did the most work in the sentence. "Started" propelled me to stay in the P-zone and kept my curiosity going. The very word "started" cues or alerts me that something important is about to, well, start. And what starts is what I consider an absolutely beautiful line of poetry: "...started soundlessly and in slow motion pounding his fist into the arm of the couch." Why do I feel like that? For one thing, the alliteration of all those sibilant "s" sounds (partially foreshadowed with the "sh" in "shrivelled": e.g., started, soundlessly, slow, fist. Next the assonant vowels in the following pairs: soundlessly, pounding; slow, motion; started, arm." Third, the rhythm/meter--which I can never remember the technical term(s) for, but I can definitely "hear"--not just with my ear, but with my whole body--in the relationship of stressed/unstressed syllables. There are probably lots of other things going on in that part of the sentence that I'm not noticing yet, but for me, that's the undeniably poetic part of--so skillful, so gorgeous, and I'm guessing, so much work! I know George often talks about making choices and decisions about each and every word, but in this example, I can feel him making choices and decisions about every phoneme.

May 21

Look Before You Leap

The sense of danger must not disappear: The way is certainly both short and steep, However gradual it looks from here; Look if you like, but you will have to leap. ~W.H. Auden, “Leap Before You Look,” December 1940 I never wanted to write a newsletter. It seemed too much like doing the one thing I’ve successfully avoided since I finished grad school: having …
Maria Konnikova ∙ 40 LIKES
Matt Matros
Very exciting, Maria!
Alex Dobrenko`
whoa I'm a huge fan so glad you're here!

#1000WordsofSummer 2024 FAQ

All your questions answered here!
Hi friends. The seventh year of #1000wordsofsummer starts June 1. There are nearly 40,000 of you signed up. I am so dazzled by this number. I am so dazzled by all of you, frankly, showing up here, whether it’s year after year or your very first time. This is a challenging but rewarding project and I can tell you already: you got this. And I will be here …
Jami Attenberg ∙ 164 LIKES
Rebecca Hyman
This will be my first time as well! I tried to get on the Slack and it said the link was broken? I"m very excited to join this community. :-)
Daisy alQahtani
I am so excited to participate this summer! I loved the book so much. So much gold in there!! I just ordered a signed copy. Best of luck to all of us as we write it all down and change the world one word at a time.

announcing this year's poetry theme!

words are hope
Friends, If you’re new here, you might not know that every year we have something at The Liminality Journal called a poem a day in the month of may. It’s almost May, everyone, and I am so ready to lean into a practice of poetry writing with you! It’s one of my favorite things. Each day throughout the month of May, I’ll sen…
Kaitlin Curtice ∙ 76 LIKES
Kathryn A. LeRoy
Hope is a sacred word. A word that reminds me of endless possibility. Thanks for the inspiring theme.
Karri Temple Brackett
So excited!!!

Poems as Teachers

Conflict and the Human Condition
Dear friends, At the end of 2023, I asked if you had particular questions about poetry or Poetry Unbound. Occasionally, I delve into that treasure trove of queries and use it as inspiration for the weekly newsletter. However, there were some questions that felt like they deserved more attention, namely questions about poetry and conflict:
Pádraig Ó Tuama ∙ 142 LIKES
Thomasin LaMay
I've followed this substack for a long time, but never made a comment. But I wanted to share how writing a poem can be an act of mutual healing in violent spaces. I teach in a trailer school in Baltimore with teens who are in very challenging neighborhoods, and one way we work out disagreements when they happen is for them to write a poem together about their differences -- make it one poem even if it contains disagreement. I do lots of other writing with them, but this one has led to lots of openness. A few weeks ago one team then used the erasure technique to make the poem, in their words "take out the hate but leave the hurt."
Jonathan Auyer
I am so looking forward to these episodes. I always try to incorporate art into the classes that I teach, especially when the classes don’t directly deal with art— it affords students a chance to re-orient themselves to new sets of experiences, to apply past learning to new contexts, to embody their knowledge and experiences.
But poetry is so my wheelhouse , and it is such a challenge for me to discuss. I don’t really know how to analyze or interpret it. Maybe it’s a fear of feeling like I need the answers before I pose the questions, and as Pádraig wrote, poetry isn’t here to give us the answers.
So I’ll throw a question back to the Substack crew: how would you introduce poetry in a non-poetry class?

Do you have an instinctive aversion to mob psychology?

This one's for you.
Dear You, Since I was a very little girl, I’ve believed deeply in the love contained in the hearts of individuals - while also having an acute awareness of and revulsion to mob psychology. I’ve never known whether this came from (a) being not personally bullied but a bit socially uneasy; (b) knowing that mobs had killed many of my family mem…
Susan Cain ∙ 191 LIKES
Kate Stanton
I cannot even watch the scenes in movies or read them in fictional books. Bullying instantly makes me hyper-vigilant. I look forward to Dr. Amy Cuddy’s book and Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts! She announced she was researching for this book at the same time I left a toxic workplace where I was being not only bullied, but harassed. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. I share in case it may help another. I was always a very quiet and focused child, so I think people feared that and made up their own stories inside their heads of who I am or what I’ll do. My husband calls my grade school days “after-school special” as I was verbally abused & sometimes physically abused nearly daily. I’ve done some therapy which helped me reframe—“weird”, “quiet”, “snob”, and others were often used. What hurt the most throughout all my experiences are those that were spineless in defending me. Those I thought were friends or colleagues that I never expected the vitriol to come from. The rumors that were spread. Lies I believed for a long time.
I think anyone who stands out threatens the status quo/groupthink/order, so they try to beat you back into submission. It only made me more sensitive, compassionate, resilient, and wisdom. I’ve been told I’m an “old soul”, but what many don’t realize is I had been to hell and back several times before I reached double digits. I’m a survivor that has made mistakes and lives to share my lessons with others! Spin.
Leslie Herbert
"nothing a mob does is clean" hit me like a punch in the gut. Even people with best intentions, in a large and restive crowd, can succumb to the mob mentality. I have a severe aversion to cruelty of any kind and a mob is diffuse, anonymous cruelty without having to bear full responsibility for what you do. Terrible.

April is for Crying (and Poetry)

my collaboration with Drew Jackson, Seattle tears, and BBQ pork
April is for crying in public, or maybe it’s just me. Every year around this time I fly to Seattle to spend a few days with my favorite people at the Inhabit conference. As part of the Parish Collective fellowship, I’m always asked to contribute in some way. Being in that room each April, among people who see the world through the lenses of faith and pl…
Shannan Martin ∙ 42 LIKES
Beth Mork
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing about parish collective as well.
What a beautiful theme to pray into. Solidarity. This is my favorite quote so far. So true. So beautifully Jesus. Reframes it all for me when I pay attention. Thank you!
His life was tuned to the rhythm of ordinary, relentless, togetherness. Slow and often boring.
He shows us a way of being that it so basic, we risk missing its magic
Megan Sciarrino
Thank you for sharing these stunning words and a bit about how you stitched them together across long roads and shared sky.
I’m holding onto this one for sure. ⭐️

May 21

Bookworm, no. 44

Mobólúwajídìde D. Joseph reviews Howard Douglas McCurdy’s autobiography. Ray Reid reviews John MacLachlan Gray’s latest mystery. J.R. Patterson remembers Alice Munro. Poetry by Dorothy Nielsen.
A Feathered Cap Black Activist, Black Scientist, Black Icon: The Autobiography of Dr. Howard D. McCurdy Howard Douglas McCurdy, with George Elliott Clarke Nimbus 324 pages, softcover In February 2018, Howard Douglas McCurdy died at the age of seventy-nine. Seven months prior, the politician and activist had asked his protegé and friend George Elliott Clarke …
Literary Review of Canada ∙ 5 LIKES
Andrea Sakiyama Kennedy
Many thanks for J.R. Patterson's piece about Alice Munro. With her passing, I am reminded of how little time I have devoted to reading her work, but it is equally fascinating to read about the impact that Munro and her writing has had on others - readers, writers, creatives.

Make Money with Poetry

In which I make ink for an International Poetry Prize
I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music. —Joan Miro
Toronto Ink Company ∙ 41 LIKES
Michelle Lubash
I'm not a poet, although I've written some poems (of the variety that mostly speak to me). But have always felt that poetry is the only kind of writing I could ever possibly do, should I ever seriously try to. I get why you feel that ink making and poetry making are related - both seem to involve distillation and essences and illumination, or putting one's finger exactly on the tender point.
Lisa de Nikolits
I’m so curious why the crushed pink carnations wasn’t allowed. I agree - the stories it held!
I’m a constant, enthusiastic and consistently failed poet.
I’m also concerned about money. I also realized last year, what with the relentless march of the AI (among other factors), that I just couldn’t hack being a graphic designer/art director in the corporate world any more. I just don’t have the stomach for it.
So I got a grant and now I’m six months into becoming a PSW. Last week was my first stint in the LTC home and I’m already in love with all my residents and I just want to look after them forever.
This course is insane though - the sheer volume of materials - and I’m not used to studying and I’ll be so relieved if I can pass the exam in July and have my life back.
My idea was to do something more meaningful while hoping that the tide of the small book presses will turn so I can carry on writing my oddball books (self publishing isn’t an option I want to explore - I’m not judgy, it’s just not my thing).
Finding a new publisher may be a futile dream and my authorly life may well die along with my once having been a magazine art director which was, for 24 years, the reason I got out of bed.
Anyway!! Sorry!! This is just to say (and no, it’s not about the plums), that we have to somehow forge on, forage on - and keep creating and writing.
And I ❤️ Poetry Forever.

Terrified of poetry? Why yes, I am.

My experience with poetry and a review of Maya Popa's new collection
Welcome to Beyond the Bookshelf, a community of readers and writers sharing unique perspectives on life and literature through thought-provoking essays, captivating interviews, and influential books as we explore the challenges of life's transformative journey.
Matthew Long ∙ 99 LIKES
Maya C. Popa
I am floored by this beautiful, thoughtful, generous review and loved reading all of your personal reflections AND the useful historical context. Thank you, thank you. 🫶🏼
Kristine Neeley
I think one of the great beauties of poetry is that no matter what we believe about it (and ourselves in relation to it), it’s really only asking us to bear witness to it. For a long time, I forgot that poetry is less about what it meant to (or about) the author when it was written, than it is about what it brings up in and the meaning it takes on for the reader.
Thanks for sharing this review with us!

Essay Predictions 2024 Literature Paper 2

I think these are nearly all free, and will give you just the right last minute revision! Power and Conflict grade 8 essay on war: Click here Inspector Calls prediction and essay: Click here Inspector Calls FREE grade 9 essay: Click here Inspector Calls FREE 30/30 essay:
Dominic Salles ∙ 5 LIKES
skib
thanks mr salles really helpful
Alex
what are these random quotes from random people on your language guide lol