Adventures in the Kiln
What it's like to be a poet on Substack. I was going to write advice but realized I'm probably doing some of this WRONG! Plus: Scharl vs. AI, Popa quotes Le Guin, and complex thoughts on monetization
My youngest daughter came bounding over to the car at the end of school one day.1 She was wearing her Tokidoki backpack and clutching a new piece of art she made in class.
“What’s this?” I asked as she handed it to me.
“That’s Bill,” she said, buckling up.
“What happened to his other leg?”
Her eyes got really big, and she leaned forward excitedly to tell me….
“He has a tragic backstory about his adventures in the kiln!”
Young artists like my daughter could have easily gotten all perfectionist and sad. Instead she figured out that she had an even better story to tell. Coping with unexpected things happening in our lives is a necessary survival skill if you are an artist. You have to trust the process even when — or especially when — things don’t go as planned.
That’s been my relationship with Sustack. I certainly have enjoyed writing here, but my goals of having a schedule fell away after a year (the weekly deadline was making me too anxious). Now I’m sending out a post two times a month, without a steady rhythm. Several friends suggested I write shorter pieces, but everything I write ends up expanding into something much larger and more difficult to complete. (This is how I’ve ended up with over 45+ essays in my drafts folder.) However, I’m willing to give shorter posts a go if you want me to try it.
I’ve also thought of reviving my two audio podcasts: recitations of favorite poems and a reading of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Some of you will remember I stopped doing this due to neighboring construction during my prime recording times, but now the house behind ours is pretty much built so the worst noise is over and I can try again.
Would you like to hear a short (5-10 min) audio post once a month?
What have been your favorite posts? What would you like to see more of?
“So you’re thinking of writing on Substack?”
I’m sure you can tell, I love it here. During a recent talk on The Chained Muse YouTube channel with
and I was so enthusiastic about Substack that my friend and fellow New Verse Review contributing editor, , decided to migrate his presence from WordPress. He now has both a Substack newsletter and a podcast where he is, among other things, promoting his latest poetry collection, Apocalypse Dance. Ethan is a fun and talented writer, and I think he will do well here, but he also has the benefit of already having an existing readership.Unlike Ethan, I started in 2023 with absolutely nothing. I had a barely-touched WordPress blog with virtually no following, and I had not published a single poem or substantial essay anywhere. Over the past 2+ years I have managed to develop a modest but engaged readership with over 850 subscribers.
I was talking to
, a friend in my MFA program at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, who just started her own Substack. She asked for some advice, and I thought I would post about my experience. Generally speaking, I think Substack is a great place for writers, but there are some considerations particular to poets.Tips the Internet Will Give You for How to Write on Substack
Be consistent
Quality over quantity
Know your audience
Be authentic
Write what you want to read
Network with other writers
Get paid for your work
All of this seems fairly straightforward, but what does this actually look like in practice? I can only tell you what it looks like for me:
Consistency will be different for each person. Just as I have touched on above, this will depend on who you are, what you like to write (like, short lyric poems vs. long form critical essays). For example, I’ve been enjoying
’s work, and he manages to publish multiple times a week, but his posts are often much shorter than mine. Many of my other friends publish once in a blue moon. You won’t know your rhythm or style until you’ve been writing for a while.
I’ve also known people who have published regularly for a long time but then have to stop due to dramatic life events. Births, deaths, moves, and employment issues can wreak havoc on writing consistency. Life happens.Substackers, how often do you publish?
Do you have tips on how to you manage your workflow?“I want more digital content, said no one ever.” This quote is from a great conversation that
had with and about finding your Substack’s DNA (i.e. what your Substack is really about). I highly suggest watching the whole video if you are just starting out. Many Substack readers are managing over 100+ subscriptions. (I just looked at my profile, and I am subscribed to 250 myself.) We are in an age where a high a value is placed on capturing readers’ attention, and your main goal is to be worthy of it. That means writing well.Engage with your readership. One way to know your audience is to interact meaningfully with them. Sometimes it is in comments, and other times it is in chats or emails. However, writing publicly also means that 1-sided parasocial relationships will likely form, especially as your audience grows. It’s a phenomenon I’ve experienced years ago when my husband and I had a podcast called Secrets of Battlestar Galactica.2 Many of our listeners felt like they knew us and could come up talk to us about the latest cylon theory, but we would have no idea who they were. When you have more readers it will be harder to connect individually with them. Enjoy a smaller readership while you have it. Slow growth allows you to really get to know your long-term readers well.
Be vulnerable… but not too vulnerable. The problem with being “authentic” is that writers often feel like they are rewarded for sharing details that one normally wouldn’t tell strangers in real life. This accelerates the development of wide-spread parasocial interactions. Although there are predatory forces who want to violate one'’s privacy and steal information, social media companies have engineered an environment where people are rewarded for giving their private information away for free. Self-exploitation can hurt not only ourselves but may also impact those we know and care about. I’m not even sure how to navigate this myself.
Write what you want to read… but perhaps you shouldn’t publish it? Poets obviously want to write poems; however, we have to consider that posting work on Substack may likely prevent us from submitting to many publications, except in the cases of Rattle, New Verse Review, and other journals that accept poems that have appeared on the poet’s own social media or blogs.
If you know any other venues that have adopted
the “uncurated” submission policy please let me know.Here’s another issue: Copyright. When I write a post or record audio I always use a poem in the public domain or ask a poet’s permission to reproduce their work. My friends
and use these guidelines at their excellent Substack . Before I decided to follow suit, I consulted Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry. I’m very skittish about legal matters.
In a way, I like the limitation because it either 1) forces me to look at poems I would normally not encounter in the wild, or 2) gives me an opportunity to connect with a poet whose work I admire. The author can also tell you which poem they prefer you use since a lot of times there are multiple versions in print and online.
However, many of my friends have poetry podcasts where their recordings of poems fall under “fair use” which is any use of copyrighted work done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a work. However, this is a bit too much of a gray area for my liking.If you have a poetry podcast or you are knowledgeable about fair use,
here’s your moment to convince me!
Would it be okay for me to recite a poem under copyright if I provide criticism about it? How much criticism is needed?
Ready… set… go!Likewise… here’s your chance to scare me off!
Cross-pollination grows the literary ecosystem. A number of my friends from grad school have written on Substack, either on newsletters of their own (like
, , , , , , , ) or as guests on other Substacks (like and ). Tagging each other creates greater visibility in the online literary community, and cross-posting essays, guest writing for others, conducting interviews are all opportunities to expand audiences and help each other’s visibility.
It is also good to go outside your communities. My first advocates on Substack are great writers who appreciated and supported my work when I first started out. Anya Leonard, , , , , , , and are generous and talented writers, and I’ve looked to them as role models of how to support others here. Being on Substack doesn’t mean just writing on your site but also engaging in other comment boxes, notes, chats, etc. Recommending newsletters and restacking posts you like is a way to support writers you think are doing good work. It’s good to be a good literary citizen.Making money here is wicked hard.3 I know a lot of writers who have tried to make some type of meaningful income on Substack and have been disappointed — all despite having putting in the work, hiring consultants, and doing all the “right” things. There is a weird silver lining to being poet in that many of us work on a poem for years just for the privilege of publishing it one day in some journal — and often for no pay. However, Substack gives you more money for your work because even one small subscription is better than no money at all. Any business professional will tell you that poetry has a crappy ROI, but that isn’t why we write poems, is it?
The Gratuity of Art
Jane Against the Machine
I was recently watching my friend
and his buddies and have a conversation with the about David Jones — a poet whom I have been meaning to read. I usually don’t watch many long videos, but this is well worth your time from beginning to end.
There is a moment where
asks Jane how she has taken Jones’ work to heart and how it has affected her poetry and other aspects of her life. She replies,I've been wrestling a lot with what do you do as an artist now that we've made machines that can make art. What do we do with that? Because it's pretty devastating actually to find out that maybe we aren’t the only things that can do this art thing. […]
The thing about the anathemata is that they're all burned. Holy things are burned on the altar. Profane things are burned outside the camp. But all of them are burned.They're all ultimately destroyed. And thinking about my art as an anathemeta, it's either going to be a sweet sacrifice before the Lord, or it's going to be something profane that has to be burned out of me in purgatory. You know, it's one of those two things. I don't know which one, but I do know it's going to go up in smoke. And thinking about your work that way, for me at least, is pretty transformative.
Now watch what she says here in this short 52 second clip:4
If we have AI make art for us “it’s like making the machine participate in the nature of God. And it’s excluding ourselves in participating in the nature of God which is the nature of just making things.”5
Poiesis is derived from the ancient Greek term ποιεῖν, which means "to make" which is also where we get the word poetry. As humans we didn’t start writing poetry for economic benefit. We made poetry for sacred purposes and as a way to remember what was most meaningful to us — people and history, values and virtues.
Maya Popa and the Profit Motive
recently wrote this post about reclaiming your love for writing on Substack. 
She directly addresses how miserable her readers are feeling about the pressures of monetization — that if they aren’t making money then they are not successful. We see the stats on our Dashboards and the arrows fluctuate up and down and somehow tie that to our self-worth. So often we look at quantifiable data like income and numbers of subscribers/followers as a means of judging the value of our work, or worse, ourselves — and that unhelpful and anxiety inducing.
Popa quotes Ursula LeGuin’s acceptance speech for National Book Foundation’s 2014 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters:
We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings…Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.
LeGuin bemoaned the state of the publishing world, how writers are being told what to write for market forces rather than craft and how money gets siphoned away from the artists to profiteers instead. Her speech was given over ten years ago — before the disruption of AI which is causing artists to get bypassed altogether.
Writing poetry and literary criticism is not enough to pay the bills anyway. It’s better to become an educator and teach high school like Rhina Espaillat or become a college professor like so many other poets. Go get your MBA like
and work in business. Study your ass off in medical school and earn a living as a doctor like or William Carlos Williams. Go into the insurance industry like Ted Kooser or Wallace Stevens.Our best selling poets aren’t even alive. Shakespeare, Rumi, T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and Rainer Maria Rilke are doing fairly well on the book market.
And don’t forget merchandising. Consider the fact that Mary Oliver, who passed away in 2019, has a store!
writes:Mary Oliver died without becoming a brand and yet became one anyway and maybe that’s inevitable. Maybe we don’t know how to love anything anymore without turning it into something commercial. Maybe we don’t know how to admire a person without turning them into a one-dimensional persona either: a collection of quotations devoid of context, a bumper sticker, an inspiration.
If poetry doesn’t offer fame or fortune unless you’re deceased or extraordinarily lucky, then why do it? Because we are made to make things. We are creative beings and the process of making — of poiesis — helps us understand the world. It is a form of communication — of communion with the humanity around us.
The Art of Paying the Bills
And yet… learning the craft and being able to hone it often doesn’t come for free, especially for someone like me who is trying to study something most MFAs don't teach: metrical verse. Some people can learn meter without an education, but I tried for years and couldn’t. I am in the program at UST because it is the most flexible and affordable option for me, but I could not do that without Substack’s help — and I have my paid subscribers to thank for this. I appreciate your help so much!
Unfortunately, I’ve gotten messages and phone calls from friends who have had changing economic situations. The fact that people reach out personally like this is a sign of how genuine their support is, and that is not lost on me. That said, dealing with the attrition is difficult. This graduate degree means so much, and I’ve written about my previous discouraging undergraduate experience. I was dissuaded from pursuing an MFA when I was 20, and now at 50 I am trying to make up for lost time.
Since starting my studies at the University of St. Thomas, my writing has exponentially improved, and I think you can see it through my evolution here on Substack. I am looking for new paid subscribers6 to help me with tuition and fees for my Fall semester.7
Getting this education is one of my highest priorities, and The Beauty of Things is providing me with that. Other than caring for the welfare of my family, this is one of the most important aspects of my life right now because the arts gives me a reason to wake up in the morning. It is my mental health care. It has given me community and a way to express myself through philosophical study and a deep immersion in the craft of language.
As the artist John Sloan once said,
Though a living cannot be made from art, art makes life worth living.
I am not asking for a living wage but for some money for the education that has proven so valuable thus far. Even if you cannot financially help me at this time, I appreciate that fact that you are reading this. So much of the world wants your attention, and I am honored that you have bestowed some of it to this post.
I feel like my days on Substack and in my MFA have been my time of firing in the kiln. I feel the heat and haven’t lost a leg yet, but if I do I may write a decent poem about my adventures here.
Yes, she bounds. She even went through a phase a couple of years ago when she would literally cartwheel into people’s homes.
I just found out Secrets of BSG is still available for download from SQPN’s archives for $10. The first shows have really crappy quality, but I was really happy with the episodes toward the end. I did all the post-production and bumper creation. Being a podcast host in the early 2000’s was a very different experience than what it is now. In many ways it was harder (tech wise), but in other ways you weren’t competing with the polish of media-sponsored content. In some ways it was easier to find your audience.
I’m from Boston. Sometimes I say wicked.
And yes, I may have created the clip just to show my friends that they can make these cool clips of longer videos. You’re welcome!
This section happens 50:26 minutes into the video.
Actually, I need 8 new subscribers. I am not sure how many of my readers can help, but I have to ask at this point.
The number of subscriptions I am hoping for still doesn’t cover the cost of books, nor does it provide for conference fees, travel, etc. My first year I did well enough to receive a fellowship to participate in a Spring workshop, but as of right now I will be entering August dipping into personal funds for my Fall class. I am paying for my Summer residency out of money I have saved as well.
Thanks so for the mention--my support for you has been from my heart, Zina.
Here's my approach as expressed here: https://alisakennedyjones.substack.com/p/the-empress-questionnaire-theres
"What happens here is simple: I write. You read. You comment. I respond. And if you have a Substack, I read yours too. Think of it as literary reciprocity. Or karma, with footnotes."
On the Film Sack podcast, they always do what they call a “Star Trek connection” for that week’s movie, where they somehow cross-reference the movie’s cast against the casts of all Star Trek episodes and movies. There’s always at least one actor or crew member common to both.
Have you mentioned your BSG connection before? That came as quite a surprise to me. Even bigger than learning that Ethan McGuire is a Dylan fan. Will wonders never cease?
How about a BSG essay?