Poetry Is Doomed #38: Why You Should Stop Calling Yourself a Professional Poet
(Note: This column usually appears on Got Poetry.com, but there appears to be some technical difficulties lately. You can see previous columns (except last month's) here: http://gotpoetry.com/News/topic=24.html
Onward! - S.)
Poetry is Doomed #38:
Why You Should Stop Calling Yourself a Professional Poet
“professional”
adj.
1. Of, pertaining to, typical of, or practicing a profession.
2. Engaged in a specified activity as a career.
3. Engaging or engaged in for pay: not amateur.
“profession”
1. An occupation usu. requiring advanced study and specialized training.
2. The entire group of persons practicing a profession.
What makes a profession in this day and age is very clear: it’s a job. It’s a thing you do to generate that which you need to sustain livability. No one says it has to be your primary career (though profession certainly implies it) but it should go without saying that if you aren’t making ANYTHING at something you probably shouldn't suggest it is your profession or that you are operating at a professional level in that field.
What I mean is, if you are going around calling yourself a professional poet you should probably stop.
I know some professional poets, and I don’t mean the poets who say they make a living off of poetry and then proceed to move the goalpost on the definition of “living” (eg. out of their car, without a permanent address, regularly asking for donations for basic things, particularly things that one might use in one’s profession, like a laptop, a bus ticket to a gig, etc.). I’ve known some poets right on the edge as well, poets who are making a go of it and run hot and cold with success, vacillating between periods when they’re professional and periods when they’re “between gigs”. But let me be clear: I am NEVER calling someone who works - let alone someone who HAS to work - in a cubicle or behind a cash register a “professional poet”. *
While there is no magic amount of money one has to earn to flip the switch on that makes one a professional as opposed to an amateur, it should go without saying that if you aren’t actually making ANY money at poetry you shouldn’t be calling yourself a professional. I would personally go so far as to say that if you can’t afford to buy a $8 or $10 chapbook** of poetry a month - just one - solely with money you earn from poetry on an ongoing basis you should erase the phrase “professional poet” from your vocabulary.
Wanting to be a professional poet is a perfectly fine dream to have, even a goal. But Emily Dickinson wasn’t a professional poet. She didn’t publish twenty poems while she was alive. Walking around calling yourself a professional poet sounds ridiculous in part because it reveals you don’t have the faintest idea of what it would take to become an actual professional in the modern poetry industry, which is exactly what you’re trying to convey when you call yourself one.
While on a quest to determine what a professional poet actually was I came across someone’s blog who comes in frighteningly high on a Google search for context for the phrase. It basically lays out a treatise that says being a professional poet is more about a commitment to art and craft than it is to any payment one might derive from one’s work, that you can essentially call yourself a professional so long as you try really hard and spend a lot of time thinking about, existing in and supporting the poetry world. It is not the first time I've come across this interpretation, and the problem here is (at least) two-fold:
First, there’s no bottom to that pit. By that author’s purely subjective and overly personal definition of “professional poet”, he could write one poem a year. So long as he FELT supremely dedicated to that one poem he could call himself a professional poet. Inversely, he could write one poem during his entire life, constantly revising it every day, never quite getting it to the supreme state of “complete”, and call himself a professional poet. There is no content consideration, no audience consideration, no recompense, no gauge for whether or not this is a professional level of commitment, or whether this is all just the ramblings of a loon. It leaves us to ponder whether or not this person would still be a poet if they were on medication.
Even more sinister: we have to remove this idea that just being a “poet” isn’t good enough. No one tells me they’re a professional fireman or a professional pizza delivery driver, not even the best fireman or pizza delivery driver. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone describe their full-blown job, profession or career as a “professional” anything. Only people who want to make it clear that they want special consideration make it a point to label their activities “professional”. I’ve heard someone I know for a fact is a professional poet say “I’m a professional poet” only in conversation with other poets to make a point, not as an introduction. What I don’t know is if when someone ever asked him what he does for a living, he described it as being a “professional poet” without further prodding. I’d bet good money he just says “I’m a poet” and then waits for their response. Knowing this poet personally, I imagine this is EXACTLY how this exchange occurs. He’s funny that way. What a glorious day it will be when someone hears that response and doesn’t feel the need to follow it up with “I’m sorry, you do that for a living?”
My point is that just being labeled a “poet” is somehow not enough for the “professional poet” clan. I don’t know what they think calling themselves a “professional poet” is going to net that being published in journals every year, being asked to perform at notable venues or being broadcast on national outlets won’t. I cannot recount how many times someone has come up to me after a featured reading and asked, “So do you do this professionally?” More times than not that’s a person who really liked what they saw and genuinely believes that if I say “yep” that it’s the right answer, that wants to believe that the world is in fact a place where people can make a living making people feel and think the way I made them feel and think in that moment. If THAT’S happening, they think, then the world is a lot better off than they thought. Unfortunately this person is too often met with someone who says, “Why yes, I’m a professional poet” and is then inundated for months with emails and calls to help their new professional poet buddy out of a financial bind.
Maybe the arena football player possesses the answer. Are arena football players - who largely have day jobs and play football for meager sums of money on weekends - PROFESSIONAL football players? They couldn’t live off of their football checks, so they have to hold on to their jobs as truck drivers and bouncers and beekeepers. So where do they fall? And is the “professional poet” at your open mic an arena football player or just a shop teacher who plays football on the weekends?
I’ve got a better idea: how about we all agree on a minimum level of income that all of the poets who call themselves professionals must meet? How about we use the U.S. national poverty level? I mean, if you’re a professional anything and you don’t even hit the national poverty level, you should probably stop using the phrase “professional” anyway. In the U.S. for 2012 that would be $11,170 for a 1-person household. We’ll call it the U.S. National Professional Poetry Poverty Level, or N3P. If you can’t make $930.33 a month with poetry - publishing, writing, gigging, touring, featuring, dialoguing, blogging, White House Jamming…whatever - then you don’t ever get to use the phrase “professional poet” to describe yourself.
What’s that? Too stringent, you say? Publishing market is too tough these days, you say? Fine, I’ll cut it in half: make $465 a month and you can call yourself a “professional poet.” I mean, come on, at this point you’re beyond legally broke…you’re destitute. You’re indigent, son. Utterly impoverished.
But hey: you'll still be a professional.
NOTES:
* Exception: If, on the other hand, you’re homeless and do no other work than write poetry and you still have nothing to show for it, you might be tempted to consider it acceptable to call yourself a professional poet. You’re obviously not good enough at it for anyone to pay you anything, but then you aren’t exactly trying to be anything else either. You may as well be a professional architect or a professional acrobat while you’re at it. Of course, this theory falls apart when we go back to the original definition of “professional”, which ties into actually having a job, so you’re more like an “unemployed poet”, not a “professional poet.” Job descriptions abound once you remove reality from the table.
** ...which is what poets - yes, even you - should be charging for chapbooks instead of $5, but that’s another column.
Onward! - S.)
Poetry is Doomed #38:
Why You Should Stop Calling Yourself a Professional Poet
“professional”
adj.
1. Of, pertaining to, typical of, or practicing a profession.
2. Engaged in a specified activity as a career.
3. Engaging or engaged in for pay: not amateur.
“profession”
1. An occupation usu. requiring advanced study and specialized training.
2. The entire group of persons practicing a profession.
What makes a profession in this day and age is very clear: it’s a job. It’s a thing you do to generate that which you need to sustain livability. No one says it has to be your primary career (though profession certainly implies it) but it should go without saying that if you aren’t making ANYTHING at something you probably shouldn't suggest it is your profession or that you are operating at a professional level in that field.
What I mean is, if you are going around calling yourself a professional poet you should probably stop.
I know some professional poets, and I don’t mean the poets who say they make a living off of poetry and then proceed to move the goalpost on the definition of “living” (eg. out of their car, without a permanent address, regularly asking for donations for basic things, particularly things that one might use in one’s profession, like a laptop, a bus ticket to a gig, etc.). I’ve known some poets right on the edge as well, poets who are making a go of it and run hot and cold with success, vacillating between periods when they’re professional and periods when they’re “between gigs”. But let me be clear: I am NEVER calling someone who works - let alone someone who HAS to work - in a cubicle or behind a cash register a “professional poet”. *
While there is no magic amount of money one has to earn to flip the switch on that makes one a professional as opposed to an amateur, it should go without saying that if you aren’t actually making ANY money at poetry you shouldn’t be calling yourself a professional. I would personally go so far as to say that if you can’t afford to buy a $8 or $10 chapbook** of poetry a month - just one - solely with money you earn from poetry on an ongoing basis you should erase the phrase “professional poet” from your vocabulary.
Wanting to be a professional poet is a perfectly fine dream to have, even a goal. But Emily Dickinson wasn’t a professional poet. She didn’t publish twenty poems while she was alive. Walking around calling yourself a professional poet sounds ridiculous in part because it reveals you don’t have the faintest idea of what it would take to become an actual professional in the modern poetry industry, which is exactly what you’re trying to convey when you call yourself one.
While on a quest to determine what a professional poet actually was I came across someone’s blog who comes in frighteningly high on a Google search for context for the phrase. It basically lays out a treatise that says being a professional poet is more about a commitment to art and craft than it is to any payment one might derive from one’s work, that you can essentially call yourself a professional so long as you try really hard and spend a lot of time thinking about, existing in and supporting the poetry world. It is not the first time I've come across this interpretation, and the problem here is (at least) two-fold:
First, there’s no bottom to that pit. By that author’s purely subjective and overly personal definition of “professional poet”, he could write one poem a year. So long as he FELT supremely dedicated to that one poem he could call himself a professional poet. Inversely, he could write one poem during his entire life, constantly revising it every day, never quite getting it to the supreme state of “complete”, and call himself a professional poet. There is no content consideration, no audience consideration, no recompense, no gauge for whether or not this is a professional level of commitment, or whether this is all just the ramblings of a loon. It leaves us to ponder whether or not this person would still be a poet if they were on medication.
Even more sinister: we have to remove this idea that just being a “poet” isn’t good enough. No one tells me they’re a professional fireman or a professional pizza delivery driver, not even the best fireman or pizza delivery driver. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone describe their full-blown job, profession or career as a “professional” anything. Only people who want to make it clear that they want special consideration make it a point to label their activities “professional”. I’ve heard someone I know for a fact is a professional poet say “I’m a professional poet” only in conversation with other poets to make a point, not as an introduction. What I don’t know is if when someone ever asked him what he does for a living, he described it as being a “professional poet” without further prodding. I’d bet good money he just says “I’m a poet” and then waits for their response. Knowing this poet personally, I imagine this is EXACTLY how this exchange occurs. He’s funny that way. What a glorious day it will be when someone hears that response and doesn’t feel the need to follow it up with “I’m sorry, you do that for a living?”
My point is that just being labeled a “poet” is somehow not enough for the “professional poet” clan. I don’t know what they think calling themselves a “professional poet” is going to net that being published in journals every year, being asked to perform at notable venues or being broadcast on national outlets won’t. I cannot recount how many times someone has come up to me after a featured reading and asked, “So do you do this professionally?” More times than not that’s a person who really liked what they saw and genuinely believes that if I say “yep” that it’s the right answer, that wants to believe that the world is in fact a place where people can make a living making people feel and think the way I made them feel and think in that moment. If THAT’S happening, they think, then the world is a lot better off than they thought. Unfortunately this person is too often met with someone who says, “Why yes, I’m a professional poet” and is then inundated for months with emails and calls to help their new professional poet buddy out of a financial bind.
Maybe the arena football player possesses the answer. Are arena football players - who largely have day jobs and play football for meager sums of money on weekends - PROFESSIONAL football players? They couldn’t live off of their football checks, so they have to hold on to their jobs as truck drivers and bouncers and beekeepers. So where do they fall? And is the “professional poet” at your open mic an arena football player or just a shop teacher who plays football on the weekends?
I’ve got a better idea: how about we all agree on a minimum level of income that all of the poets who call themselves professionals must meet? How about we use the U.S. national poverty level? I mean, if you’re a professional anything and you don’t even hit the national poverty level, you should probably stop using the phrase “professional” anyway. In the U.S. for 2012 that would be $11,170 for a 1-person household. We’ll call it the U.S. National Professional Poetry Poverty Level, or N3P. If you can’t make $930.33 a month with poetry - publishing, writing, gigging, touring, featuring, dialoguing, blogging, White House Jamming…whatever - then you don’t ever get to use the phrase “professional poet” to describe yourself.
What’s that? Too stringent, you say? Publishing market is too tough these days, you say? Fine, I’ll cut it in half: make $465 a month and you can call yourself a “professional poet.” I mean, come on, at this point you’re beyond legally broke…you’re destitute. You’re indigent, son. Utterly impoverished.
But hey: you'll still be a professional.
NOTES:
* Exception: If, on the other hand, you’re homeless and do no other work than write poetry and you still have nothing to show for it, you might be tempted to consider it acceptable to call yourself a professional poet. You’re obviously not good enough at it for anyone to pay you anything, but then you aren’t exactly trying to be anything else either. You may as well be a professional architect or a professional acrobat while you’re at it. Of course, this theory falls apart when we go back to the original definition of “professional”, which ties into actually having a job, so you’re more like an “unemployed poet”, not a “professional poet.” Job descriptions abound once you remove reality from the table.
** ...which is what poets - yes, even you - should be charging for chapbooks instead of $5, but that’s another column.