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The best advice I’ve ever heard on writing came from Stephen King: “Read a lot. Write a lot.” Today on the Substack we are tweaking King’s sage and pithy advice for our audience of poets and poetry lovers.

Read a lot of poetry about poetry. Write a lot of poetry about poetry.

Below you will find ten offerings from poets who are wrestling with, celebrating, and reveling in the topic of poetry in their work.

Remember, in the words of one of the fine poems below:

Your job as a poet is to find what is ordinary,
reveal it to be offensivily miraculous, and lasso it
just near enough to be ordinary again.

by Heather Cadenhead

I heard a writer say there is no excuse for not writing – wrote her first book, single mom, baby screaming in time to the sound of keyboard clacks. Another writer agreed; they preached a gospel of write always – write in war (word count is the real war). Don’t speak of bombs, babies or bills (excuses). My mother told me that prolific writers are neglectful parents, that their children will curse their bones. That a blank page is no better than brown-bagged liquor. 

by JJ Brinski

Take poetry in sips like fine, florid drink. Swirl it around in mouth and brain. Chew it like tender meat or morsel, let every bit of its flavor and flare collide, coalescing with every taste budding. Work it around, with tongue used for telling and talk. Make. Those. Sounds. with…………………………… Breath. Movement. Thought. Back & forth, forward & behind, swallow with savor and sigh. May this wad of words be sweet sustaining to your gaping, hunger-sown soul. 

We use the funds from paid subscriptions to this Substack to commission new work from poets and support the other creative offerings of the Rabbit Room.

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