johanna e. hall

Welcome! I don’t want you to have to be dependent on Instagram to hear from me (nor for me to be dependent on Instagram to reach you), so here we are. 

As I’ve spent the past week redoing my website, I’ve been thinking a lot about the why. Why make a website centered around myself, why assume people want to read about me or see everything I’ve ever done, why make a list of “accolades” when my favorite review of my poetry is from a niche podcast and half of my awards are from high school? It feels like the most self-centered thing in the world—at least on my Tumblr I am clearly writing for others, usually in response to their direct questions. Here no one has asked, and here I am, making space for it anyway.

Of course it comes down to publishing work in the first place, which always has at least a touch of vanity in it, to think that someone else might want to read it. I can let a lit mag filter it for me, so there’s plausible deniability that it’s not my fault it’s been published—see, they said it was good enough! But I sent it in the first place, I wrote a cover letter, I sought it all out. (And I put work up all April that not even I have filtered. With hashtags.)

And that’s the thing—the dream of not having to seek it out, of having people read you without doing anything, of someone rifling through your drawers and making your journal a NYT bestseller without you having to admit you want anyone to read it—it’s appealing. But it’s a fantasy, a self-centered one. Chen Chen put this marvelously into words:

“i used to think self-promotion was a really icky concept & practice, until i realized that the actual self-centered thing is to believe that people will just flock to your work (based on talent/’merit’) without you having to say anything about it/support readers in finding it

‘the work speaks for itself’ —well, maybe it does, but how will readers come to that conclusion themselves if they have no idea the work even exists?”

@chenchenwrites

A poem is a dialogue. I need just enough vanity to seek the other party out, and the rest of it is the honest work of realizing people have much better things to do. Do I expect people to set a Google alert of my name? See a poem title and go through five different links to find it? My job, in entering the dialogue, is to give my art freely, and the only people who don’t do their own self-promotion are those privileged enough to have someone else do it for them.

It’s also true that self-promotion is inherently also a promotion of community—after the official Escapril stopped posting prompts, my recent drafts credited various other prompt makers, as well as directing people to the hashtags to see others’ poems. Any promotion of a publication that I’m published in advertises that magazine/organization and brings people to other writers.

Perhaps this is an plea for forgiveness. A shift of blame. See, it’s not out of vanity that I’m writing about my own vanity! I have good reasons for it all! But regardless, I owe it to myself to take myself seriously as an artist—and, at the same time, less seriously!

I got to see Donika Kelly speak this past spring (in conversation with Rita Dove!), and I can’t stop thinking about something she said: she wants us to lower the stakes. That we are just one drop in the stream of a practice that’s thousands of years old. And what are the stakes for a drop? The risk of writing a poem is the existence of a bad poem. But to extend her metaphor to a different part of the artistic life, the risk of self-promotion is a lack of audience—or one that laughs, that doesn’t see the vision, that doesn’t get the references. In terms of the stream that is being a poet, the drop of my complete body of work is, rightly, a skimmed-over email. I might as well.

My most recent poem, “‘Hope’ is stronger than feathers,” is about my sister’s English homework, her pet bird, and Emily Dickinson (a seemingly ironic poet to mention in a conversation about putting yourself out there, but she did seek out publication in her lifetime, and while she ended up physically isolated, she communicated often through letters). I love when kids encounter acclaimed art and are completely honest about it—I love that my sister thinks one of the most famous metaphors in the English language is inadequate. It is, to her. That’s poetry. Read it for free here.

My other recent work, “Spread Out,” was the Editor’s Poetry Pick in the Bedroom issue of Snowflake Magazine—it’s about a lover working the night shift and the speaker circling them. There’s still a few print issues left, or you can purchase the digital version. 

I’m honored to have been shortlisted for Eavesdrop Magazine‘s Resist poetry contest—I’ll let you know when/where that poem will be available to read. Congratulations to the winners!

I also have four poems forthcoming—and there’s now a page to snoop on them! “Junior High Trinity” is probably the most personal poem I’ll have ever published (excluding a couple Escapril drafts), which is kinda terrifying. But what an honor to have something ripped from so close to my heart chosen to reach others. 

I’m thankful for anyone who listens, and in moments where it feels silly to tell you my own stories, when people are starving, I remember there’s never been a poet writing when people weren’t. There’s never been a period in world history where there was nothing more important than some guy’s poems—and also, poems are needed. If I believe this, if I have found this to be true in my own reading life and study of history, I must write as if I am “some guy”—not expecting anything, but speaking loud enough for people to hear.

If you’d like to receive occasional updates in your email from some guy, there’s a space below. I’ll also put links to new updates on my Instagram story, if that’s the easiest way for you to look out for them. Thank you for receiving this self-promotion bid for connection. Feel free to send your work my way in return. 

❤ Johanna