Writing the Perfect Beast #35
Accepting you may be at Ground Zero is not an easy task…
Starting in October 2025, I decided to talk honestly about the business of how I write poetry. There are people who teach how to create poetry, how to format it, how to submit and how publishing in general, works. I am not seeing that many people shining a light on what you need to do with your brain and mental attitudes to make all of that knowledge stick, grow and then evolve. HI THERE.
On what now becomes a new, regular on Sunday post, LET'S GET SERIOUS.
This is happening a lot later than had been hoped for or anticipated, but it is happening. That’s the win today, the Thing that Should Happen will, albeit not in the form I had anticipated, Actually Happen. I’m still massively overstimulated after an exercise class that, I am now accepting, is no longer for me. The instructor that made it doable has moved onto pastures new.
The new instructor makes me anxious, in ways that are very specific to me, and I am very, VERY aware of this. She is loved by her regulars for being on time, no-nonsense and pretty much telling you what to do at every step of the way. This has inspired fierce loyalty, and much new blood. I am being triggered, because her vocal motivation is very loud. For many, I know it is what they are paying for.
What do you do when a source of enjoyment becomes problematic?
You’ll be wondering now what poetry has to do with weekly exercise: well, this class was part of a coping strategy to keep me in the right headspace to succeed effectively in my writing tasks. Now it is doing more harm than good, there are obviously two choices. I can tough it out and use it as a new journey in resilience, or we find something else to do while my husband cycles.
The likelihood is that the latter will happen, because it is the easier choice. However, sometimes there isn’t such an option, and you need to keep going at the stuff that cannot be altered, for whatever reason. Knowing what stresses me out in the poetry ‘process’ and being able to identify those issues has become one of the most useful things I have ever done to maintain my sanity.
Amazingly, they may not be what you imagine them to be.
The wait to hear if you've succeeded or not used to be what killed me most. However, this year we've found a way to rationalise the submission process that had a lot to do, it transpires, with my own self worth. What I find now so very frustrating is a lack of obvious organisation. The last bugbear I've had was the form that never allows me to submit my poetry with the spacing I'd like to have.
It's the publisher who says they'll announce something on a certain date and lets that lapse, who is terrible with comms generally or simply expects you to jump through 102657 hoops when most other subs are simpler. Mostly, I realise, I'm getting frustrated with the lack of consistency in my industry, and the acceptance that most of this is, like it or not, my own subjectivity at play.
Sometimes, even though you don't like to admit it, you are actually the problem.
Putting stuff in boxes is both beneficial and highly problematic. Yes, it's good to have stuff organised and labelled. It only works if what is in that box matches the description it has been given. When your life often involves opening a box you labelled a decade ago as one thing only to find something else is inside... well, it is hard sometimes. Trauma likes altering labels. It also hides in odd places.
I also know there is more to my meltdown in class today than the Instructor. Other things are at play. The best way you can come with the difficult stuff in your poetry 'narrative' is to be as honest and transparent with yourself as possible. It will, in the long term, allow you a freedom to be the most authentic poet you can be. If poetry stops being fun, go do something else.
Go do something that allows you to feel happy without judgement.
