Hi! This year (2022), I’ve decided to share a poem on my blog and podcast and read it aloud. It’s all a part of my quest to be brave and apparently the things that I’m scared about still include:
My spoken voice
My raw poems.
Thanks for being here with me and cheering me on and I hope that you can become braver this year, too!
No one wants to admit that the moment they are home alone,
They start singing show tunes or childhood hits,
Pretending the crowds are adoring as they slide in socks across a hard wood floor
That isn’t actually a stage and there is no TikTok video being made.
Only we, random humans with our ridiculous bodies,
All gangling and bulbous, opposable thumbs a highlight
Want to be famous in secret—so many dreams sung off-key
Into the space of the kitchen, the only audience the dogs
Since the cats wisely look away.
Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.
The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called “A Feather” and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.
While Carrie only posts poems weekly here, she has them (in written form) almost every other weekday over on Medium. You should check it out!
And I think that my poetry is a bit like my voice. It is imperfect. It sounds like a Muppet. I slosh my s’s a lot. It’s not a typical poet voice. It’s raw.
Over on Instagram, I share the motivations quotes of my dogs and cats, which is weird, I know. It’s weird that I give the animals words to hopefully help people instead of Oprah or Tony Robbinsing it and just doing it myself.
I would say it’s because I post pictures to get people’s attention and my animals are much cuter than I am.
I think that’s part of it.
But the other part is that I have a hard time letting advice and inspiration and motivation just come from me. Shaun says this is because I lack ego, but maybe? Maybe it’s really that I can’t hit that level of brave yet.
I’m not sure.
But also, the animals are cute.
Also on Instagram I’ve started putting out poetry snippets, which is really challenging because I’m not a short poetry sort of person. When I wrote poems in my twenties, I wrote longer ones and the gatekeepers liked to tell me that my voice was too raw.
“Too raw for poetry. Beautiful. True. But too raw.”
I heard it over and over again.
And I think that my poetry is a bit like my voice. It is imperfect. It sounds like a Muppet. I slosh my s’s a lot. It’s not a typical poet voice. It’s raw.
And that rawness, I think is why it’s hard for me to share poems (short or long), but I’m starting and that’s something, right?
I am often angry in my poems. People don’t think of me as angry, but oh my gosh, I get so self-righteous sometimes. It’s amazing. But I think that part of the beauty of poems, of the form, is that it gives you space for that even when it’s too raw.
There should be a place for raw. And I think that the place is happening now. I think the raw spot has been growing and starting to be more seen, more accepted. Because the thing is that the raw is just as real as the well done and polished.
Staring at the blank page,
“Maybe I can write a poem,” I said,
“Because poems are simple.”
Hahahaha.
Ha.
Anxiety tells me that
The car will crash on the way to Canada
Or that the child will get kicked out of school,
Finally, for hitting a teacher and refusing to do her work.
All the labels they give her.
So many labels.
It tells me that the kennel will lose our dogs;
The kittens will eat each other,
That I will never make money again
And end up what? Living in the car.
I’ve been there. Done that.
Lose a house? Have people mock me?
Become a cautionary story
in the tale of writers.
“She was once
a NYT bestseller, international
bestseller.
Look at her
now.”
Look at me now.
A bee could sting me and I could die.
A man could strike me and I could die.
A plane could crash. An ego could burn. A Twitter troll
Could take it all down.
Why don’t I just save them all
The trouble and do it instead.
I could write a poem.
That should be simple, right?
I am so scared.
So. Scared.
loving the strange the podcast about embracing the weird
HEAR MY BOOK BABY (AND MORE) ON PATREON
On one of my Patreon sites I read and print chapters of unpublished YA novels. THE LAST GODS and SAINT and now ALMOST DEAD. This is a monthly membership site (Hear the book chapters – $1/month, read them $3-month, plus goodies!). Sometimes I send people art! Art is fun.
On this, my second site, WRITE BETTER NOW, you can do a one-time purchase of a writing class or get two of my books in eBook form or just support our podcast or the dogs. It’s all part of the WRITING CLASS OF AWESOME.
It’s a super fun place to hang out, learn, read, and see my weirdness in its true form.
Hey! Welcome to a bonus interview episode of Dogs are Smarter Than People, the usually quirky podcast that gives writing tips and life tips. I’m Carrie Jones and with me today is
Fiona Cameron Mackintosh is a poet from Toronto and manages Elderwood Coaching who doesn’t believe in tame language for wild things, which is possibly the best thing I’ve ever heard.
What do we talk about? You’ll want to listen but here’s a heads-up:
Poetry. Why do you think people are so scared of it?
What was the first poem that you remember that rocked your world?
Is it okay to misquote poetry?
How do you become a poet?
Fiona is absolutely amazing. You’ll definitely want to listen.
