Spoons

(I don’t know who created this image, wish I did so I could credit them!)

Hello hello. I’m writing you from a bed with two cats curled up on either side of me. It’s chilly here today, and rainy, so they’re happy to be inside and close.

Tomorrow, I’ll be a guest at a class about entrepreneurship. I’m going to talk with them about why I created Nine Syllables Press - about my internship with Perugia Press, where I tallied up the major literary prizes, and how many of them had gone to men vs women. I’ll talk to them about the VIDA count, and the #publishingpaidme spreadsheet. If I had more time, I would share with them the articles I shared with my class last week, Fuck the Poetry Police, Why the Submission Numbers Don’t Count, and Black authors are on all the bestseller lists right now. But publishing doesn’t pay them enough.

I’ll talk about how in a field where resources are already scarce, and where career paths are unclear and limited, that can concentrate power and resources even more. Sometimes we like to pretend that poetry and other arts are above capitalism, above racism and sexism and discrimination. To pretend this, allows inequity to persist and grow.

I’m here for more and more open conversations. For authors self-reporting what they got paid for their advances. For literary friendships and cohorts who decide that when one of us succeed, we all succeed. For organizations like the VIDA count, Women Who Submit, Cave Canem, Kundiman, and more, who connect groups that have been intentionally excluded from the literary landscape, and isolated from each other. Who share resources and create new ones.

My beloved friend Jen sometimes describes trying to take on the oppressive society all around us as having a tiny spoon in her hand, trying to chip away at a huge wall. When we come together, we all bring our tiny spoons. We all chip away.

It’s an image that brings me comfort, without being unrealistic. It’s still just spoons. But I’d rather have her spoon join mine. And yours, too.

-Adrie