September Newsletter — OLLIE SCHMINKEY

Happy September!

WHAT’S NEW

Come write along in one of my most affordable workshop offerings! We’ll start October 4th and run for 4 weeks!

We’ll talk about what makes an effective “after” poem, how to properly credit our work, and how to find writing inspiration in all kinds of places. Most of all, we’ll enjoy writing in community with one another and exploring new poetic ideas, forms, and styles. By the end of this workshop, you should have eight new drafts (we’ll write two poems per class) to continue on with as you see fit.

https://buttonpoetry.com/product/button-university-ollie-schminkey-workshop/

(P.S. If you tried to sign up for this previously and it said it was “full,” it’s not! There was a little glitch in the system that said it was “sold out” for a while).

I’ve got a poem in this anthology (a contrapuntal, no less!) but you should check it out for all of the other cool poems/poets in there as well. (Folks like Amanda Gorman, Ada Limón, and an incredible range of Minnesotan poets who I’m privileged to call my friends).

https://birchbarkbooks.com/products/witness-poems

If you’re planning ahead, I’ll be offering my comprehensive manuscript course beginning in January! This 10-week intensive course will provide you with all of the tools you need to draft your own full-length poetry manuscript. We will focus on not only how to write a manuscript, but how to write a good one.

This class is truly “intensive,” so if you’re looking for a serious place to get the bulk of the work done on a manuscript, this is the course for you! (Plus, right now there’s early bird pricing).

https://writers.com/course/mastering-the-manuscript-completing-a-full-length-poetry-manuscript-from-start-to-finish

PROMPT

POEM

I have been writing a lot of poems lately that are alive, in love, and so sexually explicit that they could kill your grandma. Here’s a poem that lacks any of that spice (sorry!) I am certainly not shy talking about or sharing these things, but I do feel like I have to move with a little bit of thought and intention since the internet is forever. (Should I have a paywalled Substack? Are you hungry for the details? AO3 poetry?)

PETE

As the weather gets cooler, the cuddles grow stronger!

OLLIE’S THOUGHT CORNER

Catch and Release: Creative Exhaustion in the Time of AI

I was talking with a dear one the other day who asked, “Do you ever think about posting videos of your poetry on your social media?” They went on to say incredibly kind things to me about the impact of my work, and the potentially even bigger impact it could be having if I was sharing more of it. (I myself am not always sure about where to place my work’s impact-- surely it falls between “not nothing” and “but still keep your day job, though.”)

Here’s a list of things that are true: 1. I am writing a ton of new work. 2. I am excited to share that work with people. 3. My relationship to and trust of social media has eroded to a point where I am feeling incredibly demoralized.

If you are an OG follower, you might remember that, back before Instagram had videos, I used to post a poem every Friday (I called this Fresh Poem Fridays). These poems were nothing particularly special, just first drafts of things that were on my mind-- but I enjoyed sharing work this way, and it felt like it was reaching people. It was a really nice, low stakes way to toss around new poetic ideas/respond to the current moment, and I believe deeply in sharing both new work and work that is “unfinished.”

So much of writing, for me, is imagining the audience on the other side. Who are those people? What might they get out of this poem? What conversation will I be having with them? Every once in a while, I write a poem just “for me,” but a lot of the time, I write to connect with others.

But since the rise of AI, I’ve found that the audience in my imagination has shifted; instead of lovely, engaged, tender-hearted real people, my new audience is--? An AI program? A greedy algorithm? At best, my new imagined audience is no one, posts lost because I don’t feed the beast enough. At worst, my poems are being used to not only train AI programs, but the content of them is being analyzed and filtered, possibly landing me on some government watch list. (Does this sound paranoid? Maybe, but I know poets who are, with pretty good evidence).

A lot of artists/poets/creatives in my life have made the choice that it’s still worth posting; I respect the hell out of those people, and I don’t think they’re wrong by any means. If everyone who has ethical substance stops speaking, then we would only have people left who want to say bad stuff, and that sounds like shit. Hopefully without coming off as self-important, I don’t want to contribute to that imbalance. I have seen it proven that a single voice can be meaningful, especially alongside other voices, and I’ve often been a person who prioritizes feeling like I’m doing “my part,” even if that part is something small, of sometimes questionable value. (And if that “question” of value were to be answered, I’d normally answer it with a shrug and a “why not?” and hit post).

But I also feel so beaten down, friends.

I’m sure I’ll settle out into something that eventually feels like hope, or balance, but right now, I’m finding it incredibly hard to imagine a future in which I ever want to widely and publicly share new work via social media again.

All of that said, social media isn’t the be-all-end-all, and a bigger audience doesn’t necessarily mean a better one. Of course, one thing I’ve always valued about social media is how accessible it can be: it’s free, it’s easy, a lot of people have it. There are no paywalls or different websites to navigate. There’s a centralized community, things are pretty easy to find. The prospect of figuring out how to reach people without it feels intimidating, and I struggle with the idea of leaving so many people “behind.”

Then again, maybe this is just a bit of a season to “stay inside,” creatively speaking. Maybe it’s time to compile a special little DIY chapbook of poems and hand stitch something nice just for the folks who happen to know about it. Maybe it’s time to return to an older, slower way of doing things for a while. I’ve been thinking of poem-writing lately as “catch and release:” each poem is only in my hands for a brief while, whether that is a performance or a workshop, and then, I let it go. Maybe that’s all a poem needs to be. Maybe the 10 or 100 people in that room are enough. Maybe hearing that poem once is enough. Maybe I’m allowed to wait until I grow more certain. Or maybe, I’ll remain uncertain and simply choose something different later than what I’m choosing now.

Either way, thanks for letting me talk this out, and thank you for being part of a safer home for my work in the meantime. I’m looking forward to sharing more with you.

Xo,

Ollie