Summer Break and Some Poetry & Pop Culture Tidbits to Get You Through
Summer Break and Some Poetry & Pop Culture Tidbits to Get You Through
Looking forward to logging off for a bit so I can reemerge refreshed with some great new material before Labor Day.
Happy summer, y’all!
The warmth and long days are both relaxing and busy in my neck of the literal woods. I work year-round at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, and summer is our high season, as you might imagine. At a time when many folks are slowing down, things are speeding up for me.
After a very busy year of work travel and travel to support the release of my first book, I’m feeling an uncharacteristic need to take a break. This summer, I’m going to take time to focus on my family and nurture my creative pursuits offline as much as possible.
I’ve published PopPoetry weekly for almost four years with very few exceptions. My hiatuses have mostly been during the winter holidays for a week or two, but now it’s time for a longer period of rest.
PopPoetry will return to its fullest form in August.
This was a hard decision to make, and I’ve been thinking a lot about my creativity and my relationship to so-called “content creation.” Ruby Warrington, author and now-age speaker, got me thinking about what it means to expect consistent creative production from oneself (linked below). In pondering a more permanent offline move, she writes:
The longer I spend being “very offline,” the more I find myself grappling with the belief/fear that my ongoing relevance as an author requires my ongoing visibility.
But I am choosing to breathe into this manufactured sense of scarcity and go with my gut on this for now; which means that for as long as it feels like the healthiest option for me, I will be choosing my creativity over my visibility. I’ll just have to trust that my work will find its audience the next time I have something to say.
I don’t plan to make the shift to “very offline” permanent, but this refusal to participate fully in the “manufactured sense of scarcity” and take a breath feels right.
The good news is that I also plan to use the time away to make some much-needed tweaks and improvements to PopPoetry, including subscription tier realignments and new features. Paid subscriber benefits have not been delivered effectively or as regularly as of late, and I know many of you are missing the weekly postscripts and writing prompts. I plan to revise the way these offerings are presented as well.
As you know, I’ve been toying with audio and have released some voiceovers of the articles. I hope to record some old posts and even explore the podcast route in the future if possible. I’d also like to grow the number of guest posts and features like “Poets Wearing Headphones,” and having time to regroup will help to make that a reality.
If you read nothing else in this post, read this paragraph:
THANK YOU. Thank you so, so much for continuing to read and support PopPoetry. It’s such a thrill to have this audience and write about an important cultural niche that has significance for writers, educators, creative types, pop culture enthusiasts, students, and others. Your subscriptions, views, and clicks might not feel like much, but they show up on my end like tiny sparks of electricity. I know it sounds a little woo, but money is energy, too, and if you’re a paid subscriber, your dollars are directly supporting me as a writer and creator and my little family here on Michigan’s west coast. I can’t wait to see where it all goes from here, and with your help, the future is wide open.
Subscribe to get the first issue back from summer break delivered right to your inbox in August.
For now, here are some poetry and pop culture tidbits to tide you over until we meet again:
Poetry & Pop Culture Happenings
David Duchovny wrote a poem after the death of his beloved dog. Twitter is impressed and moved. They should be! It ain’t that bad. Less stilted than another famous actor’s tribute to his dog. Remember: Duchovny has a B.A. in English Lit from Princeton!
ICYMI: Vulture offered up a list of film and television’s finest “tortured poets” in the wake of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department album release.
Speaking of Taylor, country musician Zach Bryan is pulling a mini-TS and releasing “16 songs and a poem” on his next album (!)
Ben Whishaw, star of another well-known poet biopic, recently tried his hand at a film portrayal of enigmatic Russian poet and politician Eduard Limonov.
Blake Maddux interviews Maggie Smith for Boston’s The Arts Fuse and discusses her poem’s star turn on Madam Secretary. The video in the article? Yeah, I made that :)
A Hallmark movie about the love story of an aspiring poet and a photographer IF YOU DARE. I need to lie down.
Things I Have Read (& Listened to!) and Enjoyed
Ruby Warrington’s aforementioned article, “Creativity in the Era of ‘Peak Content’”
If you haven’t read Diane Seuss’s recentish interview Hanif Abdurraqib yet, I beg of you. Please bookmark this page and come back later.
I don’t remember the precise route that brought me to this 2001 ArtForum article about Aspen magazine’s “White Box” issue, but I’m glad I found it:
This interview with Lucas Mann about his new essay collection, Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances, was a great listen.
See you all soon! Feel free to reach out in the comments or at poetrygoespop at gmail dot com. Until then—
enjoy your break!!