Writing Poetry in Times of Crisis (From the Notebook #14)

From getting out there in the world, I know the past two weeks have been some of the harder ones for Americans so far in 2025. It has been a few months since I published one of these link round-ups, and as usual when some time passes I’ve built up a backlog of items. Now seems like a great time to share a few in particular.

“How to Live Like the World Is Ending” by Margaret Killjoy – This essay – written by a podcaster, novelist, and musician – does not directly address writing, but in it I have found some wisdom about how to think about writing poetry in the current moment. It explains four (admittedly sometimes contradictory) principles that she has come to live by: “Act like we’re about to die. Act like we might not die right away. Act like we might have a chance to stop this. Act like everything will be okay.” For me, these principles capture, and help me more deeply consider, the inherent tension in life between living in the moment and preparing for the future, and helps me overcome the thought that poetry is a luxury. Don’t let the anarchist politics dissuade you – even if you don’t quite sit in that space, I think there’s something here for anyone who feels the dire urgency or grieving frustration of the moment.

If you like it, I’ll make two additional recommendations. One is Margaret’s most recent post, “I Can’t Tell You What’s Coming:” “I can’t tell you what’s coming and I can’t tell you that it’ll be okay but I also, really, really can’t tell you that ‘everything is fucked’ or anything like that.” The other is a recent episode of her podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff (a counterpart to the better-known Behind the Bastards), which talks about the to-me-unknown fact that the Beat-adjacent poet Kenneth Rexroth was involved with the founding of public radio: episode and related essay.

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Eco-Justice for All! Reading and Interview with Brenda Hillman – In addition to her notable career as a poet, Brenda Hillman is also a devoted activist who has for many years been a member of CODEPINK. This makes her an excellent voice to listen to when thinking about how contemporary poets can create or participate in political change, especially if, like Brenda, your work is seen as “difficult” and not the sort of thing likely to move the crowds at a rally. Googling around you’ll find plenty of Brenda’s words about her life as an activist, but that work is foregrounded in this August 2021 interview with poet Celeste Gainey, and it contains a number of gems. Here’s one:

In terms of policy…poetry is not necessarily going to have an effect, BUT POETS can have an effect because we’re powerful beings, we’re sensitive beings, we have great skills with language, we can take poetry outdoors, we have these ways of writing and advocating and of getting out of our sensitive zones and going in, and even doing maybe what seem like magical actions…It matters. We’re not going to change the policy. So that’s my mixed answer [as to the relationship between poetry and activism].

Some timestamps:

5:50 – Celeste’s introduction of Brenda

12:24 – Brenda’s reading begins

27:03 – Interview begins

38:45 – On the role of doubt in poetry and activism (note that this interview took place shortly after the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan): “The certainty of the outcome [in Afghanistan] is what people keep talking about. ‘Why didn’t you make sure that the outcome was going to happen like this?!’ Well, that certainty I think is actually an enemy. We should be in uncertainty in our relationship to our actions and our poetry.”

54:00 – “No matter how odd [your poetry] is, you will have readers.” On how lucky we are to live in a golden age for poetry.

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The residency for the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (more about the program at the link) is in full swing. While you have to live in Iowa City to get a chance to meet one of the foreign writers in attendance and hear them read from their work, we are lucky that the program’s panel presentations, in which the writers share their perspectives on different topics, are livestreamed and saved on YouTube. When I’m spiraling about American politics, I often find it helpful to listen to non-American voices for some grounding, perspective, and wisdom outside of what I commonly encounter.

The IWP does not immediately post the panels to their channel, so there’s no convenient way to link to all of them, but I’ll call out the two that relate to the theme of this round-up: “Writing as a Form of Activism” and “Reflections on Trauma in Writing.” (The other two that have occurred so far this year are “At Home in the World” and “Literature in the Age of Streaming.”) If you are free on Friday at 1 PM Eastern / 10 AM Pacific / 7 PM CET, you can catch the panel livestream on the Iowa City Public Library’s YouTube channel. Panels are saved at that link too for a time, and at some point (I assume based on the recent past) will be saved to the International Writing Program’s channel, once the chaos of the residency has died down. For the last panel of the residency, the writers informally share their reflections on their time in the US in a presentation called “Images of America,” and I think this year’s will be particularly interesting and recommend keeping an eye out for it. Last year’s, which happened on November 1st, is on my Watch Later list. See short bios of this year’s participants here.

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This final item is outside this post’s theme, but it’s time-sensitive and given the therapeutic potential, it may fit in anyway. This year it’s felt like there’s an abundance of online summits and other events, enough to seemingly attend weekly. But next week there’s a free workshop series entitled “Dirty Messy Alive” that’s unique for its focus on embodied writing / somatic techniques. The series covers narrative-driven memoir, not poetry, and I see a number of familiar fiction coach faces among the participants. However, there are many coaches and teachers I don’t know, and talks on some fresh topics that I haven’t seen covered at your typical summit this year, if ever. Here are some I’m curious about, many of which I think could potentially be valuable to poets too:

• “Avoiding the Villain Edit: Writing the People in Your Life as Full Humans (Even If They Were Awful)” by Sabrina Estudillo Butler
• “Sitting with the Bones: Talking to the Dead as Memory Keeping” by Charlotte Henay
• “Giving Our Body a Voice Through Poetry” by Heidi Rose Robbins
• “Write It Anyway: A Tarot-Led Writing Workshop for Tender Writers Who Feel Afraid to Begin” by Giselle Vriesen
• “The Invitation of Pain: Navigating Our Body Stories” by Ali Emerald
• “Muscle Memory: Writing Memoir Through the Body” by Mikala Jamison
• “Rest and Write: Reclaiming Your Inner Voice” by Gursharn Rait (who has the intriguing title “Rest Mentor and Storyteller”)
• “Invoking the Holy Witness: Writing Hard Truths in Memoir and Knowing What to Leave Out” by Samantha Wallen (who in part identifies as a poet)
• “Micro Memoir: Publish Your Tiny True Stories” by Nadine Kenney

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May the above links help you ease up on the doomscrolling (I too could use the reminder of how much there is out there that may not make it to my social media feed), or at least bring you something useful.