Skip to main content

Followers vs. Friends

 Every single person who has bought one of my chapbooks has been someone I personally know. A friend. And honestly, I hope it stays that way. 

I value accessibility, definitely. I want my poetry to be available for anyone and everyone who needs it to find it. But that's not the same thing as fame. 

I don't want fame. I don't want a huge follower count that's half robots & scammers. I don't want an inbox full of brand ambassador requests. 

I just wanna keep sharing my poetry with my friends. 

And I wanna make new friends! I wanna engage with other artists and writers and musicians and Richmonders and parents and queers and survivors and activists. I wanna know what they value. I wanna support them and uplift them. 

I wanna give back. I wanna pay forward. 

So I spent a lot of time today going through my follower lists and reaching out to people or removing scammers. I'm planning to continue this process for a while. I want to be really intentional about my interactions on Instagram. 

Plus, doesn’t everyone love getting to engage with the artists they admire?! I know that's part of what I love about supporting Cloud Cult on Patreon. And think about the importance of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet!  

Artists make better art in conversation with others! Y'all make me a better writer. You, Lovies. You, my very dear friends. Thank you for everything. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mary Oliver and This Week's Despair

No celebrity death, no crisis, no tragedy, no political issue (not even the 2016 election!) has gotten so many of the people in my social media feeds talking about the same thing the way that the death of Mary Oliver has my friends talking. My incredibly varied friends. Conservative Christians, Progressive Christians, Pagans, Polyamorous, Monogamous, Straight, Queer, Cis, Male, Female, Nonbinary, Black, White, Latina, Middle-aged, Millennial, Parents, Nonparents, Poets, Artists, Writers, Teachers, Small Business Leaders, Nurses, still-haven't-figured-out-what-I-want-to-do-with-my-life-ers, you get the point. They're all mourning for Mary Oliver. Because Mary Oliver wrote about the human condition. She wrote about the universal experience of life as simultaneously sorrowful and wonderful. She could reach a vast and varied audience, because she was writing about things that are true for everyone. Oh and what a good thing it was that she did reach such a vast audience. Some...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spoken Word on Spotify

Until recently, when I looked for Spoken Word on Spotify, I got a lot of Levi The Poet, Shane Koyczan, and Neil Hilborn. Now these poets are great, and I appreciate a lot of their content. But they are also all white dudes. The human experience - the American experience - is so much more broad than any white man can express.  But then I found out that Sarah Kay was part of a compilation called 27: The Most Perfect Album. Then I found out that Andrea Gibson has a bunch of content on Spotify, and most of it is set to pretty music! Then I found out that Button Poetry started making Best Of albums and putting them on Spotify! Huzzah!  Sure, I could figure out how to make playlists on youtube of all my favorite Button videos, buuuuuuut I'm not gonna. I'm on Spotify more often than I'm on youtube, and Spotify doesn't have ads. So, if you're like me, and you love Spotify and Spoken Word and the opportunity to understand perspectives that are different from your own, pl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Are They All Yours?

Him: How many kids do you have? Me: 5 Him: Like all 5 are your kids? Me: What do you actually want to know? Him: What? Me: I have 5 kids. They are my kids. Do you want to know how many pregnancies I had? How many births? If some of my kids are adopted? If I breastfed? What do you actually want to know? Him: *silence* OK, so I barked at the dude. But he is neither the first nor last person to ask me some variation of the question, "Which of these kids are REALLY yours?" Yo. I just told you. They are all mine. I cook their meals and wash their pee-soaked clothes. I bandage their scrapes and clip their finger-nails. I zip up their coats and braid their hair. I read with them and play with them and sing with them. I hold them and comfort them. Every. Single. Day. They call me Mama. All five of them call me Mama. And why shouldn't they? Aren't I doing everything to fulfill that roll? Look, I'm happy to answer your earnest questions. One woman said, "...
Post a Comment
Read more