Welcome to In Our Own Write ❤️
Poetry — the making & sharing of it — is one of the most ordinary, brilliant, lovely things we do as humans. Always has been.
Poems are places we can meet each other, places we can laugh or rage or heal or set our grief. Explore the unspoken, name the unnamed. They are antidotes to hustling and numbing out. But for so many reasons, we often feel resistant to, intimidated by, excluded from, or maybe even just embarrassed about poetry— reading and especially writing it.
Hi. I’m Brinn.
I’m in the cringy, gangly adolescence of my poetry abilities. Not a total beginner, and also nowhere near where I’d like to eventually be. I love poems. I’ve published a few, shared a few live, but I’m not an MFA grad or professional writer. I’m just someone who found in poetry a place to hold and explore the complexities of girlhood, motherhood, child loss, long love, and evolving faith.
I (we?) sometimes think poetry is an exception to the rule that improving takes time, practice, and devotion. That it’s a mysterious, magical gift bestowed upon the chosen few, rather than something any of us can learn to do, like learning to speak a new language or play an instrument.
There’s so much nonsense around what it means to be a Poet, and what even counts as poetry anymore. And then if you do decide to try, there’s pressure to be constantly creating and posting content that will immediately be brilliant and liked and shared by thousands.
In Our Own Write is a response to this. Because poetry? Its so old, and so human. It lets us wonder and hunger and feel. It is something we have every right to do, no matter who we are or our current ability. And yes, despite what we might believe, like any craft, it’s actually really hard at first.
Especially for any of us who have trained ourselves to be in and see the world a certain way, or internalized that only certain people (not us!) have authority or wisdom or lives worth writing about.
I’m starting this little Substack because I want to make poetry a regular (meaning both ordinary + consistent) practice, and do it in a way that feels playful, honest, somewhat structured, and not overwhelming or intimidating. While acknowledging the time and familiarity required for fluency. And that time can be hard to come by for most of us.
This is not a master/teacher shows you the way sort of situation. At all. More of a writing-is-powerful-but-a-lot-of-us-don’t-do-it-for-a-million-reasons-so-lets-look-at-those-and-explore-some-stuff-and-do-it-more-together type scenario.
Let’s help each other engage in the quiet, life-giving practice of hearing ourselves, paying attention, speaking honestly, creating, making room in the world for each other and our own evolving.
What you’ll find here:
In short: lots of poems.
▻ One Monthly Post
We can’t read 112 Substacks every week, and I want to keep this from feeling overwhelming. So I’ll share a post just once a month with a small collection of poems &/ a bit of poemy inspiration.
▻Sharing & Connection
The last week of each month, we’ll gather to share. I’ll send out a thread where you can share a poem you came across or a learning you loved that month, get/give feedback on something you wrote, or just connect a bit with others. If you prefer a more intimate/personal audience, message me to join our Marco Polo group. You can also use the chat anytime as a place to share—fragments, starts, poems you love, questions, poetry-related anything.
Mary Oliver taught:
“Writing poetry is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart and the learned skills of the conscious mind. If they make appointments with one another and keep them, something begins to happen.”
“Whatever can’t be taught, there is a great deal that can, and must, be learned. Good poems are the best teachers. Perhaps the only teachers.”
“We must begin with imitation. You would learn very little in this world if you were not allowed to imitate. And repeat your imitation until some solid grounding in the skill was achieved and the slight but wonderful difference– that made you you and no one else– could assert itself. I think if imitation were encouraged, much would be learned well that is now learned partially and haphazardly. Before we can be poets, we must practice; imitation is a very good way of investigating the real thing.”
So that’s what we’ll do together: begin, imitate, investigate, practice, share, repeat.
