I believe in invisible strings, the uncombed hair of toddlers & complicated miracles. And I always will.
Lit Salon | My work will appear Invisible Strings, the new anthology inspired by the music of Taylor Swift, and here's how it happened!
Hi, friends, this post contains an amazing story + an invitation to write with me in August for our next 4-week intensive for paid members—Strange Containers: Flash, Hermits & Other Oddities.
So, first, the amazing story!
I am overjoyed to finally share some exciting news I’ve been sitting with since April: my work is being included in a forthcoming anthology—Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift—edited by an extraordinary poet, scholar, and friend, Kristie Frederick Daugherty, who is also a passionate Swiftie (she is currently completing her dissertation on how Taylor Swift’s lyrics intersect with poetry).
Kristie was uniquely prepared to begin the process of manifesting this anthology from the very moment Taylor Swift first announced her Tortured Poets Department album at the Grammy’s.
And manifest, she did!
This anthology has been a breathtaking project, and it’s available for pre-order now! Here’s some of the book description from the publisher:
The collection showcases a diverse and accomplished array of writers including the 23rd US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, Pulitzer Prize winners Diane Seuss, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips, Rae Armantrout, and Gregory Pardlo, National Book Critics Circle Award winners Mary Jo Bang and Laura Kasischke, and bestselling poets Maggie Smith, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Kate Baer, Amanda Lovelace, Tyler Knott Gregson, and Jane Hirshfield.
In Invisible Strings, poet, professor, and dedicated Swiftie Kristie Frederick Daugherty has brought together 113 contemporary poets, each contributing an original poem that responds to a specific Taylor Swift song.
In a spirit of celebration and collaboration, poets have taken a cue from Swift’s love of dropping clues and puzzles for her fandom to decode, as each poem alludes to a song without using direct lyrics.
Friends, I am so OVER THE MOON.
So many of these 113 poets are the very people whose work I read and read and read and also teach, the people whose words I turn to when I forget who I am or want to be, when I ache from the old smoke of my own becoming, when I “know
how desolate the landscape can be /between the regions of kindness” (thank you, Naomi Shihab Nye).
It’s the honor of a lifetime to have my words in these pages with so many writers whose words feel like friends—and some of whom, the humans, I mean, are friends in real life! I’m also so excited to discover new writers whose words I cannot wait to learn and revel in.
And I very much want to tell you the story behind how this anthology came to be, because it is a story that fits right in with the conversation we’ve been having here since my post on literary citizenship, which you can find here:
Writer Ethics & Literary Citizenship: An FAQ
The Writer Ethics post dives into …
…the ways we all benefit when we lift each other up and treat writing not as a competition but as the holy creative act it is, an act through which we remake ourselves and the world.
But the story of how this anthology came to be is also a simply beautiful illustration of how the magic of attention, play, curiosity, vulnerability & surprise … plus a heaping dose of generosity + connection can help unspool real magic in our work and our lives.
And I almost told you everything last Monday—which is when Penguin Random House was originally set to announce this beautiful book—but then it was decided last minute to hold the announcement until today.
But, the plot thickens … and I’m not actually telling you the whole backstory I was set to share last Monday, after all, because, when I shared that draft post with Kristie, she loved it and wants to use it in a whole different way, which now has to unfold along its own path.
I’ll keep you posted, of course!
Meanwhile, I’ll tell you a different version of the story (every story has a million angles), in the form of a very impromptu, imperfect, unpolished, from-the-heart list essay, in honor of our upcoming August intensive for paid members, Strange Containers: Flash, Hermits & Other Oddities.
Twelve Random Things To Know About My Invisible Strings Poem: A List “Essay-ish Thing”
When I say my writing is driven by desire, I mean there is heat. When I say there is heat, I mean there is obsession. When I say there is obsession, I mean there is an engine that always hums. Monet said, “Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.” I hear this and know that feeling in my bones and will follow it until my dying day. In this I find purpose, solace, and, yes, love. And I watched that kind of love-fueled obsession unfold for my friend Kristie in the most breathtaking way with this anthology: her twin loves for Taylor Swift and poetry combusted like a firework finale that was all about preparation and devotion, both of which look like luck from a distance but often are the opposite.
The premise of this anthology is so playful, so collaborative, so communal, and so apropos to what we do here at Writing in the Dark! The idea of writing a poem in response to a Taylor Swift song, and having to keep the song secret, and having to plant clues and “easter eggs” just as Taylor does for her fans—all without using direct lyrics—was such a terrific writing constraint, so full of mischief and mystery! I loved it very much. I know how much playfulness can blast open our work, even our hardest, darkest stories. I’ve written about this a million times at WITD, including here: “From Playful to Profound: How Tapping Into Joy Brought My Hardest Stories To Life on The Page.” How amazing to see this principle spring to life in such a gigantic way.
I didn’t know very much about Taylor Swift before this project. I mean, I knew “Love Story” and “Exile,” but not alot else. What an adventure to try to do my assigned song justice, with so little Taylor Swift background knowledge or experience. A little scary, to be honest. Or a lot scary, to be even more honest.
Scarier yet? I am not a poet! My one published poem (in Up the Staircase Quarterly in 2015) was a looooooong prose poem at 1500 words, which is really more of a lyric essay. And although my memoir The Part That Burns is a lyric memoir, it’s decidedly prose. Still, when Kristie said, “Would you like to contribute a prose poem to the anthology?” I said yes immediately! In fact, I shouted yes. I was very scared, but also …. very excited.
I worked on my 197-word poem for the 75 days straight (in other words, all of the time I was given before the deadline), and wrote approximately 13,001 drafts.
I turned in the final draft the day of the deadline, because, as Leonardo Da Vinci says, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” This could not be more true for me.
I’m glad I didn’t stop at the 13,000th draft, because a scrap of language I discovered while searching a specific topic online—in attempt to better understand a specific aspect of what I was trying to say in my poem—cracked the whole thing wide open. Not only did that scrap of language help me understand something unexpected about my own words, but it also made my poem’s ending work in a way I just couldn’t accomplish earlier. I was able, thanks to this one little string of words, to rewrite the beginning in a way that also completely transformed the ending.
This is why I truly believe writing is life, and life is writing. The way we shape our words, pushing and pulling to find meaning, is also the way we shape our world, pushing and pulling to find meaning. My poem addresses a topic that goes deep for me, and writing it changed, even if ever so slightly, my relationship to my own life. That’s feels like a complicated miracle.
Last but not least, invisible strings are real strings. Everything really is connected to everything else. I’ve written about that before, too, in my post Let’s see ourselves as fragile daisies in an iron chain, strung painstakingly by children at a green painted picnic table behind a Victorian house by a lake that we loved but can never find again.
I wrote that Fragile Daisies post years and years and years before Z came to be in our family. I have always known invisible strings are real. It’s part of my philosophy in life and sometimes, the world pulls those strings so hard you can feel them with your whole heart. Here is Z with Frannie a couple of days ago at our BWCAW cabin.
So yes, I believe in invisible strings and the uncombed hair of toddlers and complicated miracles. And I always will.
I can’t wait to share my poem with you in the company of so many other amazing poems, and, if you are a Swiftie, I hope you can guess which song I wrote in response to, and I hope you pre-order Invisible Strings!
Strange Containers: Flash, Hermits & Other Oddities
Four Weeks of Highly Specific Flash Writing Starts August 7! Join Us!
“I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe
There are millions of ways to tell stories, and sometimes, a straight line from start to finish is not the best or most beautiful option. Sometimes, we can tell our stories in pieces. Fragmented, nonlinear, and other inventive forms can be both powerful and artful. Plus, it’s fun!
Strange Containers, the next WITD seasonal intensive, starts August 7, and we’ll read some outstanding flash—short, fragmented and broken things in strange containers—and study the techniques behind these nontraditional forms.
Then we’ll gather bits and pieces of our own stories and begin to list, braid, collage, erase, and rearrange these items into... something else. We’ll examine how to combine multiple subjects, images, and motifs within a single piece, and we’ll look at how fragmented structures can add complexity and amplify meaning without confusing the reader.
This intensive is based on the most popular Writing in the Dark live workshop of all time, The Art of the Fractured, which I also taught through Catapult back when Catapult still had writing classes. Art of the Fractured sold out every single time it was offered, and many terrific published pieces were born in that workshop, some of which you can peruse on this big, beautiful list of published work born in WITD:
Born in WITD: A Big Beautiful & Growing Directory of Work Published by WITD Writers
Strange Containers will be fast, playful & inventive, meant to help writers break out of the same old, same old and try some new ways into their own work.
Participants can expect the kinds of craft essays you usually find from me here at WITD, plus inspiring resources (especially the readings of published work you might not stumble across otherwise), detailed writing exercises, and lots of opportunities to share and read each other’s work, which is a beautiful facet of this community.
The Strange Containers intensive will be very accessible yet also oddly challenging and inspiring for all levels because … it’s just so weird.
To note, Strange Containers is not a writing class per se (there are no class meetings, no Zoom, no “assignments,” etc.), it’s an intensive on Substack, where all the material is delivered through four consecutive Wednesday posts in August. I draw this distinction because I do ALSO teach writing classes! Which are different, which are tuition-based, and which are adjacent to and supported by but separate from the WITD newsletter on Substack.
Anyway, for Strange Containers and all of the other WITD intensives (we run several a year!), everything happens right here on the posts, and all you need to do is be a paid or founding member of WITD—so if you already are, you’re all set for this adventure! Your subscription is all you need to participate.
Subscribed
What’s Included in “Strange Containers”
Paid members:
Full access to all Strange Container posts, sent via email on Wednesdays, and rich with readings, writing exercises, direct instruction and inspiration for trying your hand at some unusual new short work.
Access to our incredible comments—WITD comments sections are what makes this place so damn beautiful, because of the amazingness of the Writing in the Dark community. Each week, participants share questions, insights, and snippets of work in progress—and your guides, Jeannine and Billie, actively participate, as well.
Founding members also receive extra cool stuff that’s interactive, like:
Voice Memos and Video Notes.
Live Write-Ins and Live Salons on Zoom w/open mic readings to celebrate the intensive when we’re done (these are so fun).
All participants come away with:
A storehouse of valuable new ways to think about approaching short work, and why we might want to, plus specific tools to apply long after the the intensive is over.
A collection of new work in progress that you can continue to develop on your own.
An archive of flash and hermit crab readings and writing exercises that you can repeat as desired.
A deeper understanding of the ways these forms can work to enliven your writing practice.
Join now to start poking around our giant archive and maybe even dip your toe into our thriving Thursday Threads, or explore the full archive of past WITD intensives.
What People Say About Writing in the Dark Intensives
I can’t believe what I’m getting out of this intensive. It’s changing my writing in the most unexpected ways, and I am beyond grateful. You are the most generous teacher.
You are magic. Pure magic.
I have learned much from you in the last year, through your weekly posts and seasonal intensives. The depth and quality of your content is unmatched on Substack (IMHO). That, plus the network of subscribers you have garnered is why I look forward to Wednesdays! (And Mondays for Lit Salon and Thursdays for the new Threads!) I have been involved in workshops that cost more but provide less. Thanks for all you are producing and the community you have created in an effort to bring the out our best writing selves.
As always, there's more to these exercises than I first anticipate.
I’m thoroughly enjoying this challenge and truly appreciate all the ways you’re helping each of us become more thoughtful and evocative writers.
It's actually been super helpful to work through the exercises in quick succession, like a little writing course... But so much more inspiring and thoughtful and generous and fun than any I've taken before. THANK YOU Jeannine, you are brilliant.
These assignments are like magic.
Your post gave me a giant AHA moment. You’ve unlocked my understanding of tension and storytelling in memoir.
This post was wonderful. Love the first quote especially. I had a couple of deeper realizations with this exercise.
Reading all the comments on my writing today, so full of enthusiasm and encouragement, really made my day! One of the things I will treasure most about this challenge is learning to trust myself and others with my writing.
I know now from the experience of the Lyric Essay Challenge and Story Challenge and The Visceral Self that these things evolve and change along the way, but these are the main points as far as we can see, and I’m happy to answer questions if you have them! Just throw your thoughts into the comments or respond via email to this post.
I cannot wait to write with you!
This is so, so cool! I am a Swiftie by proxy. When my daughter was in middle school, she made it a mission to get to a ridiculous number of plays of the Romeo and Juliet song on her iPod (her iPod!), and by the time she moved on we could all sing all the lyrics by heart!
When she came back to live with me two years ago, (after 6 years away)TS became part us weaving ourselves back together. I've listened to so many songs on one of Grace's ear buds while we skate together and she tells me all the back story/lore. I cannot wait for this book to come out! What a great story!
So very exciting Jeannine! Can't wait to read Invisible Strings! I have a fun story to share - My DIL was eight months pregnant when she attended the ERA's tour in Nashville May 2023. After our granddaughter was born and for the first eight months of her life, my son and DIL lulled their precious bundle to sleep with the tracks from Taylor's Folklore and Evermore albums. So, to celebrate her first birthday, we threw a "Lily's 1st ERA" party, complete with backstage passes dangling from lanyards with the titles of all of Taylors albums and friendship bracelets. We had the ERA's tour playing on the TV in the background. It was so much fun!!!