photo by Robb North

Writers! Greetings again from Primal School, where I’m spooling up on my first clutch of interviews with poets as diverse and enlivening as my time was at AWP 2016 in Los Angeles.  In the last two weeks I’ve connected by email and phone with a number of poets across the country, traded work with others, conducted three interviews, and have just been inspired over all by the enthusiasm and response to Primal School from poets of every age, background, and level of experience. If you stopped at the Primal School and Inked Voices table in LA, thank you – and if you joined our newsletter recently or have been following the blog, I hope that the content that gets shared on here is useful in your growth and explorations in the world of poetry.

In launching this project I’ve learned a lot of things – for one, how genuinely diverse as well as huge the universe of poetry is (ignoramus that I am, I didn’t even know until AWP what a poetry comic was). The field of possibility around what makes a poem a poem seems elastic and dynamic and changing all the time, and it’s broadened my own scope in terms of thinking about what's possible in an online experiment such as this. Another surprise for me has been the level of interest in the democratization of poetry learning — a notion that I thought was somehow fringe, but which turns out to be shared and advocated for by many. Not only have those others who believe that a life of poetry and serious practice of it are entirely possible outside of the MFA system been willing to engage me when I approach them; they’ve appeared out of the woodwork to talk to me. Those people have included everyone from professors in creative writing programs to editors of literary journals to poets who have been practicing for years without a degree. The give and take of the whole process has energized me both as a blogger on this site and as a writer.

There’s another human piece to all this: in only the first month of working on Primal School I’ve been humbled by how much I have to learn from all poets, not just the poets who are known and have several books out, but anyone who loves poetry and is passionate about the craft. That is to say that whether the subject is an interview or feedback on the site, I want to hear from everyone, from the rock stars with plenty of press attention to those with only a publication credit or two to their name. This is because I think poems should be carried by all, and because no one who seeks to be the conduit for the song that is a poem should be excluded from the privilege of sharing that music because they never connected with a community that could help them grow. I’d love to help expel loneliness from the world of poetry writing as much as possible; the life of writing and publishing is tough enough without courting it.

Anyway, I’m still working to get on a schedule with posting interviews, but look for a first interview this week, with the whip-smart and talented Niel Rosenthalis. With the grace of time I hope to hit a steady biweekly rhythm. In the meanwhile, happy poetic trails, and here’s a great video of Taylor Mali, who puts the primal back into poetry like no one else I’ve heard read. Enjoy.