Punching Clocks and Breaking Lines: Celebrate Poetry at Work Day with Legible
by Tania Runyan
I may work as Legible’s Community Engagement Specialist by day, but at night (or, more realistically, on the occasional weekend retreat far far away from my noisy household), I write poetry. I know: I’m wonderfully sensitive and complex.
I’m not the only poet to hold down a steady job. Some slightly more famous examples include Wallace Stevens, an insurance executive, and William Carlos Williams, a pediatrician. While both of those poets would go on to become two of the most influential writers of their generation, most of us can’t cover the oat milk surcharge on our lattes with royalties from our poetry collections and appreciate the more steady income a “job job” provides.
But it’s not just about money. My years of higher education and experience in creative writing have helped me approach a number of other careers — teaching, content writing, editing, even starting my own business — with resourcefulness and imagination. In turn, the rhythms of work, personal interactions, and problem solving in the world “out there” inform my poetry and other artistic pursuits.
Poetry at Work Day, observed each year on the second Tuesday of January, was launched in 2013 by Tweetspeak Poetry, a poetry Grand Central of sorts “committed to nurturing totally fun literary citizens.” I’m partial to Tweetspeak and their publishing arm, T.S. Poetry Press, because they have published a number of my guides to reading and writing poetry — books that have earned me several more gallons of oat milk than my own verse — and have excelled at making poetry something to celebrate every day.
But today we are talking about Poetry at Work Day in particular, and you can find abundant resources surrounding the holiday at Tweetspeak, including articles, poems about work, and tips for incorporating poetry into your work day and space. And right here at Legible, you can read a number of books by or about poets who brought their creative sparks to a number of workplaces lucky enough to hire these brilliant weirdos. So browse, click, and savor a poem or two on your coffee break today — and every day!
- Jorge Luis Borges: Poet and Librarian. A Personal Anthology
- Robert Frost: Poet and Chicken Farmer. The Road Not Taken and Other Selected Poems
- Anne Sexton: Poet and Model. (I tried this, but my enormous success as a supermodel started to detract from my poetry.) The Complete Poems
- Charles Bukowski: Poet and Postal Clerk. Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life, by Howard Sounes
- Langston Hughes: Poet and Busser. Langston Hughes: The Value of Contradiction, by Bonnie Greer
- Margaret Atwood: Poet, Barista, and Inventor. Morning in the Burned House: New Poems
