Fucking Poets, Man
I wore my @Barrelhouse shirt on this Southwest flight from AWP, & the flight attendant pulled my cardigan over the words & said, “There are children on this flight.” I was too stunned, but “friend,” I wished I’d said, “their grownups have more to worry about in 2026 than what’s on my fucking shirt.”
PM: Carolyn Forché: I trust a poem after it’s been moldering in a desk for years.
We are here to do the work of the soul. It’s slow and difficult.
DB: If something in your poem bothers you a little bit, let it bother you a lot.
There is just no hurry.
PM: Robert Cording: Stay close to the language. Let it lead you.
Metres: Enjambment is my jam.
KH: Read a lot. Read you own poems aloud. There is something intuitive happening that can’t be taught.
PM: Write a lot of bad shit, and don’t be afraid to fail.
KH: Your recklessness and patience can walk together and create a powerful dynamic.
PM: Thai proverb: Life is so short; we must move very slowly.
A poem is a dream of a house with rooms we never knew existed.
Live the questions— Rilke LtaYP.
LG: We are portals for the future becoming the past.
We are made to feel that we will have been there.
Memorize poems. There is something interesting happening in the places that will trip you up.
KH: Editing her new & selected poems felt like mentoring her younger self.
DB: Every word is a memory of itself.
Instead of writing a poem a day in April, revise the same poem every day. Stop seeking affirmation.
Geoffrey Hill: That which is difficult preserves democracy. Pay respect to the intelligence of the citizen.
Notes from AWP (badly paraphrased) Slow Down: Patience, Poetry & Poets:
David Baker
Linda Gregerson
Kimiko Hahn
Philip Metres
DB: Stop trying to commodify your poetry, poetry life. Are you making a poem or a project?
Re-re-re-re-read
In a poem there is a deep geology to every word
Ebony Flowers grew up in Turner’s station. Her dad went to high school with Elmo. Her art in Flying Couch focuses on her grandmother’s house.
AK: Learned to draw by copying the artists she loved.
Drawing her family history connected it to her body.
KE Draws something from every day as a visual diary.
“I don’t need perfection. I need what I can do by Friday.”
AK: I couldn’t handle the nihilism of the 90s. I wanted something more sincere.
Everyday has students draw a self-portrait as a way to take attendance.
Notes from AWP: Four Women on Making Comics (paraphrased badly)
Kelcey Ervick
Ebony Flowers
Amy Kurzweil
Jesse Lee Kercheval
JLK: Have to start with art instead of words, otherwise there are too many words.
KE: Give yourself permission. You don’t have to be an artist.
Notes from AWP: Crafting Silence in Poetry.
Couldn’t get in because the room was overfull. I guess it will remain silent for me.
MS: Take the time to render your characters as fully human. All of them exist outside of the main character’s narrative.
Use of dialect:
CM: It’s annoying and obstructive. Mention it early and move on.
Carole Bell: Don’t write characters from oppressive groups as a form of revenge, e.g., Spike Lee’s white NYers.
Be in community. Be immersed. Be curious and observing. Carry a notebook and write it down. Be humble.
RS offers Yellowface as an example of an oppressor who’s written well.
learns through fiction and reality.
Carol Mitchell: Acknowledge that what you’ve written is only one viewpoint.
Quoting Alexander Chee: Why this story? Why you? Why now?
MS: Bring in others in every step: writing, editing, revision.
RS: Be in community with people who don’t look like you.
Because during the HBO adaptation, TP heard that the character was poorly written and allowed the character to be re-written with a trans consultant.
Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to know.
CB: studies show that the human brain can’t distinguish between what it …
Miranda Schmidt: What perspective can you embody well enough to carry you through a book?
Where are the collaborations that can come in?
RS: It’s OK to ask naive questions. Be willing to make mistakes and correct them—Tom Perrotta’s portrayal of a trans character was offered as an example …
What you produce is simply one interpretation. Don’t focus on getting everything right. Do it well. You’re going to make people mad. Be prepared for that.
Your not being in a community is not a reason to exclude people from that community in your writing.
Rone Shavers: Sensitivity reader does not mean “I talked to my Black friend.”
CB: You need more than one sensitivity reader.
RS: people within the same community have different experiences. Even siblings have different experiences.
Interview many, many people. Pay them.
Friggin’ read.
Notes from AWP: A Framework for Writing (or not Writing) the Other (outside of writer’s identity):
Asking “Should I write this?” is the first important step.
Carole Bell: Representations of others in media have real world consequences.
Can’t remember who said:
GenZ is more open to showing themselves (in writing) being an asshole.
The Luddite revolution is coming.
And now don’t recognize that as writers they are stepping in to a conversation. This is a direct result of No (Every) Child Left Behind.
Betts discovered Huey Newton by looking him up in the library after listening to Public Enemy.
(YAY libraries!) GenX ed was also lacking.
Does GenX exist without Boomers? There are no Boomers in the UK.
Paisley Rekdal: I’m GenX; I don’t trust anyone … We are latch key kids. If our parents didn’t see us, why would institutions?
Tara Betts: is Many GenZ were (are) not required to read a full-length novel in school.
Notes from AWP: GenX perspectives on the writing life (paraphrased badly)
We are a small generation because we were born when birth control was invented.
Rebecca Faulkner: The idea of generations is distinctly American. Most Brits don’t know which generation they’re in.
There is no government language for an Egyptian prisoner.
To acknowledge the ghost is to risk becoming one.
What does it mean to look? To unghost what the empire makes ghostly?
Creative reclamation.
: Write into erased heritage as if it’s always been acknowledged.
Abdelrahman ElGendy:
Had to flee the US at the threat of deportation to Egypt where he would have been imprisoned.
Issam Zineh: The museum is built on bones. The archive is an active system of inclusion and exclusion. Empires are archival machines. Are we interrupting historical violence or contributing to it?
The sonnet has Arabic roots: Is writing against the sonnet a form of resistance or reclamation?
Jameelah Lang: We need to interrogate our imperative to write. The urge to control, usurp, win, the expectation of a cohesive, linear, redemptive (story) is a colonial model handed down from Ben Franklin as propaganda.
The marginal space in a book invites the reader’s participation.
… We know ourselves to deserve a better world.
What is our song in our isolation? How do we (empower?) each other’s songs?
This wall will be demolished by our refusal to (normalize) it.
Notes from AWP: Mizna presents HUNA— writing resistance in the now
Sarah Aziza (paraphrased badly):
The impulse to exhort to hope … can be harmful. Quoting Mahmoud Darwish— In despair we begin creation anew.
Why doesn’t the jailer sing? He forgets his own solitude…
Sandy Yannone, Anya Kirshbaum and me
Nancy Miller Gomez, Lynne Thompson, and me
Kathy Huang, Annie Stenzel and me
Simmons Buntin and me
Goodbye, AWP. See you next year in Chicago ❤️
