Thank you imi, Laura B Writing in the Shadows, Mathew C. Bryant • Horror Poet, Ellis Elms, Nabanita, and many others for tuning into my live video with Becky Hayward and Stefan Pasek! Join me for my next live video in the app.
Transcript
Note: This transcript is too long for email, if you see a partial transcript go ahead and click through to hop on Substack to see the full interview!
Becky: Okay, all right, well, everybody welcome to our podcast Sub-Text. Matthew Holvey was supposed to join us, but he had a work thing pop up, so that’ll happen. It’ll happen to me next time, I’m sure. But, this is what the... one of the few podcasts that interviews Substack writers. Just kidding, if you don’t look very far.
Stefan: If you squint. Yeah, if you don’t look at it. If you squint.
Becky: If you squint. Um, and today we have, I think, one of the most talented poets on Substack, uh, Andy. And so I’m super excited to talk to you. And, and so yeah, you know, Stefan, do you want to say anything before we get started? Other than you haven’t slept.
Stefan: No, I have not. Just I’m very excited to talk to Andy. She was on my short list. My not so short short list.
Becky: This is true. He had some people that he was for sure wanting to get on and you were at the top of his list for sure. And mine too.
Andy: Well I’m only five one, so I’m on everyone’s short list technically.
Stefan: But I was on a short list.
Becky: Okay, so Andy, how long have you been on Substack?
Andy: so I started uh just at the beginning of December. So it hasn’t been, it hasn’t been that long. I feel like I’m starting to kind of get a groove and really just like, just loving the community and loving all the interaction and talking to people and getting to know people better has been great.
Becky: That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t realize you had only been on for such a short time. I just read... oh my goodness I’m like spacing out. I’m going to put the the the poem in the chat. It’s one you did on March 2nd and it is where you did the live poetry reading, and oh my gosh I can’t spacing on the title of it.
Andy: Oh yeah, I think that was Scream.
Becky: Scream. Scream, scream. Okay, so I listened to the uh the the performance which was amazing because I I when when I saw that there was a reading I was like oh I need to hear this in the author’s like screaming voice or however you’re gonna sh- it was it was great. It was great. So was that the first time you’ve ever done a poetry reading like that?
Andy: So it’s not the first time I’ve ever done like an open mic, but it was the first time I did like a competition style poetry slam. so it was like there was there were judges and I mean there were so many readers that night it was intense. I didn’t move past the first round with that one, but it was like I was shaking really bad on stage. Like you can’t really hear it in my voice.
Becky: No, you can’t hear it.
Andy: So nervous and so you could definitely like see me shaking and I was reading it off like I had my paper too which I guess they docu points for that.
Becky: Oh they do?
Andy: Yeah. Uh but overall it was fun and I actually that Josh Datko was there too and I’ve mentioned him a few times, he does Bitpunk.fm Uh he’s actually the one that introduced me to Substack. He does poetry on cassette. So I met him at one of my first, it might have been my first open mic. Yeah, it was my first open mic. I met him in like October and he gave me a cassette tape with poetry on it and we ended up connecting and he was like oh yeah I’ve got a Substack with all these awesome you know poetry this awesome poetry group you should join. So I that’s why I created my account and hopped on. but he did a poetry reading at that slam that night too and it was neither one of us moved forward. But it was a lot of fun just to have the experience and uh I don’t know that I’ll do many more poetry slams because the like but I don’t like the competition aspect of it, that it’s just not really my thing. So.
Becky: That’s cool though. I mean it’s just like stepping out of your comfort zone and and just being vulnerable out there because I like that the poem itself is like wow I can relate to all of it. It was it’s great, you know. okay, Stefan do you want to jump in with any questions?
Stefan: No, you’re doing a fantastic job.
Becky: Andy, you and I are gonna have to carry the show today because Stefan is asleep, okay?
Andy: I promise you that I can talk.
Becky: So can I. Okay, so uh you are also a trauma-informed somatic coach. Can you tell us a little bit about like what that is and and does that I assume that all kind of interweaves into your work as well?
Andy: Yeah, I mean it’s why I started writing again honestly. So uh for those not aware somatic coaching is it’s really similar to meditation in a lot of ways, but instead of taking like the mind first approach, it’s a body first approach. So we get grounded in the body, feeling our you know feeling your feet on the ground, our butt’s in the chair and really just feeling the sensations in the body first. And I think for people that have experienced trauma this can be difficult so I tend to take a very gentle approach to it. And you know that’s what the trauma-informed part is is that you know we just move very slowly. There’s a technique called pendulation and titration where you just kind of dip your toe into the experience okay I like to see it as like a big ice pool you know you’re just dipping your toe in the ice pool because you know trauma is hard to look at. So sometimes even just like the first step is just thinking about how it feels to think about the trauma. Not actually thinking about the trauma just thinking about what it feels like to think about it and kind of just going moving very slowly from there. I got into meditation and somatic experiencing back in well it’s kind of it’s been a common thread throughout my life. I was introduced to meditation when I was like 16 and then it kind of just popped in and out of my life here and there. I went through addiction and recovery and it kind of came back up in in recovery. Uh and then it kind of went to the wayside again and then really I started taking it seriously in like 2017. And by 2021 I had started learning how to teach. just because it had really started impacting my life in positive ways and I started really seeing how it was helping me move past a lot of the trauma that I experienced myself. And yeah and then this last summer it kind of culminated in August I went to a five-day vision quest retreat in the mountains.
Becky: I was gonna ask you about that too. So good, keep going. I love it, yes.
Andy: Yeah, so I did that. It was with the Somatic Nature Therapy Institute of Boulder. And uh, so it was five days up in the mountains in the Roosevelt National Forest. , and you know, we did four day I think it was like three and a half days or so of just intense group therapy of you know a lot of talking a lot of preparing for our solo time. Like in in nature in the wild, you know, yeah, literally touching grass. Yeah we had tents, I didn’t shower for five days, I washed myself in a bucket.
Becky: Wow.
Andy: but the the instructors were wonderful, they they had like one meal for us prepared and then the rest we kind of, you know, would cook our own meals in the little heat pots and yeah it was a really it was a really beautiful experience. And I went then I had a 24-hour solo time where I found a place deeper in the woods by myself, took all my bags and everything backpacking style deeper into the woods and spent 24 hours by myself and I didn’t eat or I I drank some water but it was only like I would say about 4 ounces over the 24 hours so it was a a bit of a water fast too but mostly food fast and I just experienced what it was like to you know be completely disconnected from for 24 hours. And during that five days I read a lot of poetry to the group and everybody loved it and it was actually the first time I’d ever shared my poetry with anyone that wasn’t like friend or family member. And at one point the instructor I read Scream.
Becky: Okay.
Andy: During that retreat I read it and the instructor looked at me and she asked, have you ever heard of Andrea Gibson? And I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Andrea Gibson but they are a poet that they’re a poet that I’ve been following for a really long time they passed away last year from cancer. And like just that moment I was like this person just like I reminded them of someone that’s like a really famous poet and I just read this one poem and yeah they all wanted me to share my poetry so afterwards I was like you know what I’m going to start just trying to see if I can improve my skills. I joined some local groups and workshops and got into doing open mics and now I’m here.
Becky: That’s awesome. So what year was that when you were in the Roosevelt National Forest?
Andy: Uh that was August of this last year. So it was yeah, it was just before I did Substack and everything.
Becky: Oh wow. Very recent. And you had that and I was gonna ask you specifically about your 24-hour like solo fast in the woods. Um, I was that whole experience I mean I it sounds like it completely changed your trajectory of where you were going.
Andy: Yeah, absolutely because I... I’ve been struggling with infertility for the last five years. And I my husband and I went through four rounds of IVF that were all unsuccessful. Um, and so the retreat was kind of an opportunity for me to just kind of say goodbye to that chapter. Of infertility. Um, and not saying that I won’t continue to pursue other routes of motherhood, but just that right now that’s you know that’s that chapter’s closed. So a lot of it was like letting go of that and then just asking you know with this transition you know what comes next? You know where can I put my energy where can I focus my energy? Cause I’ve been focusing so much of my energy for really the last 10 years on getting my body healthy to prepare for pregnancy. Me and my husband had been talking about it for a long time. you know and it just kind of we started the journey and as soon as we started and we hit that you know we went to the reproductive clinic to check and they were like oh you’re too late, you’re in ovarian failure. Uh so it was just it was kind of like it kind of got cut off before it ever really got started. So yeah, so the 24-hour fast I really was able to put down that and start deciding like who I wanted to be and what I you know what I wanted to pursue. But a lot of the growth didn’t really happen on those 24 hours. That 24 hours I mostly just spent resting. Just in a pure state of rest I spent most of the day in a hammock just watching the clouds pass over the sky and just like watching the sun move across the sky. Enjoying the chipmunks running around me.
Becky: Mmhmm.
Andy: And just existing in nature without any expectations. You know not even the concern of what I was going to eat or what I was going to drink. Just ability to relax.
Becky: Right. Right. Just existing and connecting. And I can relate to the infertility so much. My path to motherhood was very, very, very long. lots of treatments, etc., hard conversations, closing doors, closing chapters I never thought I would ever close and and all of that. So I am also happy to talk offline with you about any of that stuff as well. but yeah no I totally can relate to all of what you what you have just said. So yeah and and so I have a friend of mine who does silent retreats every so often. And I it’s so tempting to me and I want to do it. Just feel like I can never carve off the time and maybe it’s just an excuse but you talking to you right now is just kind of convincing me I need to go and do like one of these silent retreats. And that’s exactly what it is, you spend a whole weekend no disconnected and you’re around other people but you’re literally not talking for the full 48 hours. So I might need that.
Andy: I think it can be really good for people. And I mean I think it depends on where you’re at in your journey too because I think it can also be really dysregulating if you do have a lot of trauma and you’re going into it right. Especially if you haven’t practiced. I highly recommend practicing the silence before you go. personally I do my own silent retreats every once in a while where I’ll spend just like a Saturday or a Sunday where I’ll just spend that day in retreat in my home. or just you know I’ll go out and go for walks and whatnot. And then I’ll just let my husband know hey today you know speaking is only for emergencies.
Becky: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, warn them.https://columbinepoetsofcolorado.org/
Andy: Yeah. But I definitely did that a few times before. We had a lot of preparation for the the 24-hour solo portion. cause before the retreat we had about I think I had four or five months of journal prompts that I was given and exercises so one of the things I was asked to do was to go on a nature wander where you just go out in nature and you spend like four to six hours by yourself disconnected just to start helping you prepare. because if you just if you go into those if you go into those experiences and those retreats raw without any preparation it can be more dysregulating and traumatizing in its own right.
Becky: Right. That’s true. That’s true, that’s a good point. Yeah, and you would know. Okay, uh, Stefan, are you awake? Are you with us?
Stefan: I will not be awake at least for 24 hours. yeah, I can ask some stuff. If you prefer I contribute. Um, do you want to talk about the Cerulean Glacier poem?
Andy: Sure.
Andy: Do you have a specific question about it or you just curious about it?
Stefan: I do, but maybe you might answer it and just if you just give me your overall thoughts on it.
Andy: That one, so that one was really interesting. I do workshops on Saturday mornings with my local poetry group. It’s the Columbine Poets of Colorado. And we we did we were reading poetry from different poet laureates. So each one of the poets that’s mentioned in there, I know Andrea Gibson’s in there and a few others but I don’t want to get their names names wrong. So we we were reading poetry from a few different poet laureates. And then our prompt was to choose words from those four poems at random and then to put them as the end words on each line. So basically how I started it was I took I picked like I think 15 words and then I just put each word at the end of the line. On the very right margin of the line and then I just wrote to the to the word and I wrote that poem in about 10 minutes and then I spent about five minutes editing and then I posted it. So it did not have very much like it just kind sometimes it was strange to me that that one kind of came out fully formed even though I had no idea what it was going to be about. You know I just wrote lines to the words and then I was like oh these actually kind of go together. And then I got to the end and I was like oh this actually kind of tells a bit of a story. And it’s like so I I think I even posted a note recently where it’s like sometimes the poem tells you what it’s trying to teach you. And I felt that way very much with this poem where it was just like this yeah you know mix mix the flowers into a tincture and to me that was like what it’s like to like take medicine to try to cure yourself but then kind of this there’s also like this element of suicide to it of like it’s it’s kind of hard for me to conceptualize it right on the fly like right now.
Becky: Because Stefan does. He asks questions like just like knifing you on the side.
Andy: Right. Yeah, but like to me like reading it afterwards I was like oh this kind of feels like someone like being upset and then like creating a tincture to like take their own life. And it it had this flow to it and even if you don’t see it in that perspective cause I think everybody can see these poems in different light it still just felt like it had this through line of a story to it of something was moving forward. And I just love the imagery of my favorite imagery in that one is the the magenta blooming flowers like the heads bloom magenta.
Stefan: Uh do you think the poem was about death in just in general?
Andy: Yeah, definitely. I think it definitely had that feeling of death and I think it feels like a lot of my poems do. They they have like this through line of like both hope and death that kind of sit next to each other and I think that’s very I think that runs in line with a lot of my meditation practice because a lot of my practice has been to kind of make a seat at the table for death. And to learn how to befriend death. Because it helps us to live better. I mean the more that we the more that we accept that death is an an inevitability, the more that we can spend our time today living.
Becky: Yeah. Yeah. And and and that Pink Lemonade, you know, is about your dad. and my grandmother just passed a couple days ago, but same thing, what I loved about her was how we just talked about death. She knew where she wanted to be buried in, she knew, you know, her dog Reba, which was a little Chihuahua, she wants that buried with her. You know, so and and I always kind of was like well death happens to us all like we should be talking about this a little bit more, shouldn’t we? Because I could die tomorrow, I could die this afternoon on the way home, you know, like uh it sounds so morbid but those are the things I think about sometimes. But yeah, yeah. And Pink Lemonade, I saw that too it was about your dad but there you know seemed like hope at the end as well.
Andy: Yeah, for sure, and you know I think there’s a lot of hope in like those little memories too. Like anytime I drink pink lemonade for the rest of my life I’m gonna think of my dad. And it’s just those little things where sometimes they hit really hard and they feel really sad, and then sometimes there’s just like oh but I have this beautiful memory of, you know, sitting with him on the picnic table and watching the sunset together. Cause that’s what we you know I’d spend the weekends with him and you know almost every night he’d be like oh time to go for a walk with the cats and go sit and watch the sunset cause he was the cat man, he always had tons of cats. Four of my cats are from him.
Becky: Okay.
Andy: Yeah, he he was, Ken the cat man is what we called him. but there were times in my life where we legitimately had hundreds of cats and we had like a mobile a mobile vet that would come out and like fix them and do their shots and stuff like that. And we just you know my dad rescued cats and you know sometimes he wasn’t the greatest caretaker because that was just too many cats to handle, but at the end of the day he loved cats and that’s what he was you know trying to do so.
Becky: I’m imagining like uh the cat whisperer version, you know. Okay, I was gonna say we have a question. Uh what is your opinion about what’s after death, hell or heaven or rebirth, or what are your beliefs? Hi Laura.
Andy: I think this can be a difficult one to pin down. I I’ll admit I’m not super religious, but I have I’m I do still believe that there’s something. I don’t claim to know what that something is, but I feel that there is something. I feel like there’s there’s something that happens after we die and I don’t know if it’s like I’ve seen too much myself and experienced too much myself to believe 100% that we just disappear after we die. I’ve cared for elderly women and people I’ve sat with over 12 people as they died through my lifetime. And during that process there are things that happen that can’t be explained. And regardless of what I believe, I know that there’s something that happens after we die. And I don’t think that we’re gone completely, whether that’s an echo or another dimension, I love the idea of quantum theory and having different like dimensional layers that sit on top of each other. but you know I I just don’t have one specific thing that I’m like oh this is exactly what happens after we die. It’s just this kind of question, you know, but you know there’s things that happen like I actually have a story kind coming soon because you know I am moving and I went on a walk on the day a one year after my dad passed. I went on a walk out there and I was walking and this little yellow bird like came down and was chirping at me and like landed on a fence post and just like was looking at me and chirping at me. And I always have had this feeling that like people who have passed on have sent me birds as like a sign that they’re still here. And then the bird flew off and as soon as it did, the song Peace Somehow came on. And that song was also a song that I played for my dad before he passed. And it was so like the moment it happened and the song came on it was just like there’s just this feeling of connection of like oh like there’s something out there that is connecting me to his memory. You know whatever it may be. And it feels very strong when those things happen and you know I’ve seen things that I felt were maybe spirits, but it’s it’s you know I just don’t have a lot of proof for those things. So it’s it’s a nebulous area for me to be in where I’m just like I don’t I don’t really know what comes next, but I don’t think that this is 100% it. And if anything else, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we continue to exist.
Becky: Right. We all come back. Right. And how can we know, right? Okay, so Emmett Tatter says I relate to that. And Laura, OMG I had an experience with a yellow bird after my grandmother passed, it was while I was doing an ancestral ritual. And I feel like if I see a red cardinal, my grandmother loved red cardinals, and if I see one, you know, it’ll always remind me of her. I, you know, I hope I feel some sort of connection when that happens, if that happens, but yeah, yeah, I can relate to all what you said as well.
Stefan: Do you think you’re obsessed with death?
Andy: I wouldn’t necessarily call it an obsession. I don’t know that I’d necessarily call it an obsession, but definitely a curiosity especially because I’ve spent so much time so close to it. I I just feel a very deep-seated curiosity about death and a you know want to understand it. Um, and I’ve I’ve actually considered and still consider becoming a death doula to sit with people as they pass and to help people, you know, help the families of the people that are passing because I’ve had so much experience with it that uh I think that I could possibly lend help in that area. So it’s definitely something that I feel close to in a lot of ways, just because I’ve been there with so many people as they cross over.
Stefan: Uh I haven’t read everything you wrote because I didn’t have time to go through I don’t know how many you have.
Andy: I wouldn’t expect that that’s fine. There’s a lot in there.
Stefan: I only read about 10 of your poems there seems to be an underlying...
Becky: Only 10? That’s still really good. And we are we we want to take questions from the chat too. Uh but go ahead, Stefan.
Stefan: Are you gonna let me talk?
Becky: No. Well, you were saying you were asleep, sorry.
Stefan: Come on Becky. We’ve been doing this for what, all of six weeks or whatever?
Becky: Yeah, yeah, we’re still finding our groove. We’re still working out the technical kinks.
Stefan: Um, oh what was I? I forgot my question now. Um, do you believe that there is a underlying theme of transformation underpinning all of your writing?
Andy: Definitely. And a lot of that also has to has to do with the fact that so many of these poems that I’ve posted so far actually were written when I was younger. So honeysuckle I wrote in 2016. And it was very different. And then it’s kind of like I this poem has transformed to me in transformation because like going back to some of these poems in retrospect I’m reading them and I’m like man these are edgy and just kind of like sad and depressing. Uh so a lot of my old poetry is super sad, super depressing. Um, you know, it there’s very much that through line of like this person probably experienced a lot of trauma and so I feel like when I go through the editing process with a lot of this I’m kind of trying to find the hope in it. And saying okay well you know yes I had all this but like where am I at now? And so through that it kind of I think pulls that theme of transformation just through the process that I’m using to edit and write it.
Stefan: So do you think of death as a form of transformation?
Andy: I do.
Stefan: So is is the underlying theme death or is the underlying theme transformation?
Andy: Why not both?
Stefan: Oh maybe it is.
Andy: I think it depends on the poem. I think some are specific to transformation like Honeysuckle.
Becky: Honeysuckle is from 2016. You also talk about in an interview about a draft that you had for 20 years and you coming back to it. Was that Honeysuckle or was that another draft?
Andy: That was actually Unbound. Which is posted. That one’s a shorter one but that one I wrote when I was 15.
Becky: Okay.
Andy: And I actually initially kind of wrote it about the experience of my mother because my mother experienced a lot of sexual assault when she was a child. And so I I started writing that poem about my mother and then whenever I was a teenager and young adult I experienced my own sexual assault. And had also met people that did. And so the poem itself ended up transforming into kind of a generational poem about just women’s experience. And men’s experience too. But you know our experiences as humans with sexual assault and sexual violence and the strength that we can find in ourselves to overcome it. And to move past it, you know, I think it it’s not everyone is able to move past it and that’s not that’s okay but I think for for some people they’re able to kind of alchemize the experience and use it to make the world a better place. And hopefully prevent it from happening to more people. And then also then it came to, you know, all the Epstein files and everything like that that were coming out and it kind of felt apt to post it and to share it with the world because I it also felt like the story of all of these little girls that have grown up and are starting to speak their stories and, you know, the MeToo movement and it all just kind of feels like it’s it’s a poem that no longer belonged to me because it really just belongs to everyone.
Becky: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. That’s true, that’s a good point. I mean it’s such a unfortunately right the experience is is so common.
Stefan: Section mantra, uh, excuse me if I mispronounce that, they ask ‘Would you like to tell what experiences shaped your beliefs?’ and I couldn’t assume that is in relation to your beliefs on death. It’d be kind of broad otherwise, so.
Andy: Yeah, I think as far as like experiences that shaped my beliefs, and I’m going to take this as kind of about death and maybe about religion and just belief as a whole. I I was raised in a broken family. But one half of my family was very Christian and did the church thing. And then the other half was never really super Christian, but kind of let me explore like they they they were Christian and believed in God but they didn’t do the church thing and they were just like you kind of figure it out on your own. If you want to if you want to be a Christian and read about Christianity go ahead. So whenever I was very young I want to say like between 11 and 15 I started researching religion and I got really, really into paganism and Wicca. And a lot of just ancient religions that I got really interested in learning about and Greek mythology and it just really learning about religion as a whole and what it meant to be religious and how it shaped humanity throughout the ages. I ultimately ended up agnostic. but I think that a lot of a lot of that investigation allowed me to really just develop my own beliefs so I don’t really follow one specific belief system but I do have a lot of my own beliefs about, you know, and faith about how things work in the world and might work in the world. Uh yeah I definitely attribute to being given the freedom to investigate and to to just be curious. I read the Bible front to back just because I I was like well I want to know what people are talking about and then I read the Bible and I was like oh wow this is kind of wild I don’t know if I want to believe this. But then also I learned about the Dead Sea Scrolls so I got really into learning about the Dead Sea Scrolls and reading about some of the books that are not in the Bible. and it’s just all really curious to me, I still love studying stuff about religion, I like studying and looking into things about death and how the death process works and yes I guess that’s about it it’s just a lot of curiosity and a lot of exploration.
Stefan: Do you want to tell me why you have an obsession with free verse?
Andy: I wouldn’t say I have an obsession with free verse. However, uh until October of this year I’ve never actually learned anything about poetry officially. Uh like officially. so I had been writing free verse for 30 years but I’ve never really learned about poetry forms or how to write them. And so that’s one reason I joined the workshops I did so that I could start learning about poetry forms and I started writing them recently, I think my The time is now is my rondeau that I wrote. and like I said every weekend every Saturday morning we have a either Zoom or sometimes it’s in person and we learn about a different poetry form. And then Brooklyn Crane, he’s not here I don’t think he’s here today but me and him have gotten acquainted and I’ve been reading a lot of his stuff because he has a lot of posts about like he’ll post his poem in a form and then give you a really cool breakdown about how to write the form. And I’m enjoying that because personally I think learning poetic forms really helps you improve your own poetic meter and rhythm. I learned myself I learned poetry from reading poetry I was in my mom wrote poetry and she wrote children’s stories. she was never published but she did uh she always read them to me whenever I was a baby and a little girl. And as I was growing up she continued to just read me a lot of poetry, we we had these books called Childcraft books which were full of stories and poems. read a lot of Aesop’s fables and then I got super into like Shel Silverstein and yeah Shel Silverstein was awesome I mean I I think I read A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends like front to back like six or seven times whenever I was young. I’d just check it out from the library, take it back and be like okay can I check it back out again? Just keep checking it out and yeah so that kind of led me to like reading and writing poetry uh but it it kind of always was free verse because I didn’t know what, you know, when you’re reading poetry books they don’t tell you what forms they’re using. So I just kind of like picked up a lot of the rhythm and meter from just reading so much poetry and it just came out in free verse and so now I’m kind of going back and like okay can I learn more about like how these different forms actually work.
Stefan: Was it intentional? When you put metered lines like in The Time is Now you have uh ‘The time is now to take a stand’ and ‘The ship has sailed the cannons manned’ and you you have to know the hour is late, all four iambic meter. Are those intentional?
Andy: Yeah, that one that one is definitely intentional that’s iambic tetrameter.
Stefan: Was that pentameter? Or just iambic? I mean one one they are iambic. Yeah.
Andy: so that one was specifically intended to be iambs.
Stefan: So why did you do that in the The Time is Now poem? Why did you intentionally do that?
Andy: So that one is a rondeau is the form.
Stefan: Do you have a thought on what you would use metered lines for in free verse when you purposely do it in future?
Andy: I think it serves a purpose of it holds a steady beat which can feel very much like a march. I’m also a musician, so I find myself using it I I find a lot of my poems kind of have almost this even if it’s free verse kind of have this three stanza setting where it it kind of follows the same pattern as some uh like orchestral accompaniments where you kind of have the first part is slow and flowy and then the middle part you really go into like a fast march and then the last part kind of slows it back down just a little bit but you’re kind of hitting that in between and I find a lot of my poetry kind of ends up feeling very musical to me and iambs and meters is just a really great way to push the reader forward. It’s like to push their experience forward and to set a speed for how quickly uh they want to experience it cause again I am a somatic coach as well so it helps it helps me to control how someone’s emotions move through the poem as well like giving like cause there’s some things that I do specifically to give a sense of anxiety like I’ll, you know, shorten my lines, add more punctuation and make it really punchy so that it kind of gives that sense of anxiety building.
Becky: Hey Night Lure.
Stefan: Uh what what have you missed asking? Uh what do you think of poetry on Substack? As a as a greater category.
Andy: I love it. I wish we had more of a distinct category for our actual post. But I I love it and I what I’ve been most impressed by is just how many phenomenal poets I’ve found on here that just blow my socks off. I mean really I’ve really been impressed by by that and just yeah I’m I mostly read my poetry on Substack now cause I’m like I used to read a lot of poetry books but I’m like y’all are better.
Becky: I know. I know. Everyone here is so good, so good. Yeah, Night Lure says absolutely for sure. Everyone knocks my socks off every day. I’m like addicted to reading.
Andy: Yeah, same here. I read so much on here I’m like this last week I’ve I’ve had this difficulty because I’m like I feel guilty that I haven’t read enough but I’ve also been really writing a lot. So I’m like trying to find that balance because I love reading and I will absolutely just like spend a whole day reading posts and stuff like I know I’ve had days where I’ve blown through 40 you know 40 posts or more just reading. And I I do I listen to the audio while I’m doing other stuff like if I’m cleaning the house or or whatnot I’ll listen to narration.
Becky: And that’s kind of one of the reasons why I’m like I need to start doing narration because I so appreciate the narration. And if I can hear something in the author’s voice, I love it.
Stefan: You narrate. I narrate when I can.
Becky: Kitty! We can’t have an internet show without a kitty cat coming on.
Andy: No, gotta have the cats. Yeah.
Stefan: There’s been on half the episodes, hasn’t there? I had one last episode I think.
Becky: Mine usually makes an appearance if I’m at home but I’m at work.
Stefan: Yeah, yeah I figured you just weren’t paying attention for half the answer there so.
Becky: Okay, but okay, so we were just talking about uh the wonderful poets and you actually I feel like you build a space for other writers because you offer prompts, these weekly prompts.
Andy: Well with the prompts I’m actually about to be swapping the prompts a little bit. Because I don’t feel like I’m a great prompt writer uh and I don’t feel like I’ve gotten a lot of engagement on the prompts that I’ve put up. But I have found so many people that have amazing prompts so I’m actually working on putting together a post like a resource post that just has all the prompts that I find and I want to use it kind of like I I have my table of contents that I use so I want to kind of have it set up like that where I just kind of add prompts to it. So throughout the week if I find a really good prompt I can just add it and then add that to my subscriber chat every week and be like hey y’all pick a prompt if you want.
Becky: Oh that’s that’s pretty cool. Yeah.
Andy: And I think that also will boost some community engagement because I think the creating prompts has caused me a little bit of anxiety because I just have a lot of a lot of little things going on cause I’ve got the prompts, I’ve got the Sunday share threads that I usually do. and then plus I’m posting once a week trying to get all my notes out, reading and writing. And this these last couple weeks I had this huge idea come up which I will be announcing as soon as I hit a thousand subs so if everybody that’s here right now that’s not already subbed sub to me I’d be really close and that’s going to be a whole thing I am so freaking excited about it.
Becky: You’re close. You’re very close. Yeah. That’s gonna be a whole thing.
Stefan: I’m I’m a professional, don’t worry about it.
Andy: It woke him up.
Stefan: It will.
Andy: But yeah that has been taking a lot of my mental energy the last few weeks because I mean it’s it’s a whole universe that this is so y’all are here you get a little easter egg that what’s coming is an entire universe and uh yeah it’s gonna be really interconnected and I’m super excited about it. but with that I’m trying to find ways to streamline other sections because this is going to become a huge focus. I’m still gonna have a lot of my poetry still is still gonna be coming out some of it’s going to be connected to this some of it won’t be. Uh so yeah.
Stefan: Do you have any future plans for Substack that aren’t secret?
Andy: I don’t think I have any like future concrete plans outside of the new story thing coming up. Um, yeah it definitely feels big. Um, you know, I have been, I am kind of starting to offer more coaching opportunities, like one-on-one stuff. Um, which I’ll be opening my books for one-on-one stuff more in I would say July and after... probably after July, August. just because we have a move coming up and then I also have a surgery coming up so I’ll be kind of out of commission for a little bit. But that’s why I’ve also been writing a lot, because I’m writing to get everything scheduled out. I’m trying to schedule everything out to June 1st right now. So to have a backlog, to keep... to recover, it takes some time.
Interested in one on one coaching?
Stefan: Do you think you’ll be writing on Substack in 5 years?
Andy: Absolutely well, and I don’t know if it’ll necessarily be Substack, but I think the project that I’m about to launch is gonna be something that allows me to branch out outside of Substack so I’ll be able to build a broader audience because I’d love Substack, I do hope that I’m still here in five years, but let’s be honest we’ve all seen what’s been happening. Right? We don’t. And not to mention just like I’ve been reading about like who their investors are and it’s like I don’t know how much you know how much I I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket here because there’s you know I want to build you know I want to build a community that doesn’t have to just be in one place because a lot of people are leaving Substack and I don’t want people leaving Substack to not be able to interact with me anymore I want to continue interacting with them. so I’m working on just like connecting all my socials in and yeah building Somatic Nature Therapy Institute out from there.
Stefan: Do you want to talk about your journey getting published as a poet?
Andy: Yeah, actually I’m still really kind of in shock about that cause I was when I I and I’m not saying this to necessarily brag or anything like that because I think this was a lot of peace of luck. But I I have submitted I I submitted two poems to publications and both of them were accepted and that’s kind of unheard of I think. I was 100% expect you know I was like expecting rejections, ready for it, preparing myself for it and then both poems got accepted and that was really wild to me. The first one is The Gut Punch Literary Magazine which I found out through my Colorado poets and if you guys are in the United States uh the National Federation of State Poetry Societies most states have their own state society and if you join you get access to submit to all these wonderful contests and you get added to mailing lists where you can like be connected with these kind of contests. and then the second one I was also connected it was the US 250 so it’s the 250th year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And the contest was to write a persona poem from the perspective of someone who lived during the Revolutionary period. Okay. And that’s the one that just I just found out this week got accepted and that’s the one I’m super excited about because it’s going into an anthology. It’s and it’s I I based it off of a Cherokee chief from that time period who was really integral in trying to save save his lands and save the Cherokee hunting grounds from the colonial peoples. I really wanted to I I had a feeling that a lot of people would be taking perspectives of you know white men that were really popular of that time. Right. So I really wanted to do something to highlight the struggle of indigenous peoples in the US. And because they were such a huge part of that story I I kind of just felt it was important for me to make sure that that was covered. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m really excited that it got accepted and it’s I mean it’s sitting alongside some of the most beautiful poems I got the draft of the anthology and oh so you got to see some others on there. How cool.
Stefan: And Mack asked caffeinated and you’re ending I’m not careful you might be and yes Mac unlike my unscheduled lives these don’t go three hours. These do have an end.
Becky: ...and oh so you got to see some others on there. How cool. Well we’re looking forward to your big project.
Andy: I’m really excited and it’s going to be announced really super soon and I mean even even when it’s going to be announced there’s still going to be a lot of like secret stuff coming up so just uh there’s going to be a lot of it’s more uh I like to think of it as a puzzle to solve in some ways. So uh that’s I think that’s going to be exciting for some people and hopefully attract the kind of people I’m looking for cause uh I love puzzles.
Becky: Yeah. Yeah. Well awesome. Well I think everybody on here needs to sub Andy if they already haven’t and yeah. I put the link I well you can’t actually click on it. but still if we can copy and paste it. Thank you so much Andrea for coming and talking to us.
Andy: Yeah, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed this and uh yeah if anybody ever wants to do more of this I’m open to that and also open to collaborations.
Becky: Awesome, awesome, awesome. always fun when the the person you’re collabbing with doesn’t leave substack or just ignore you for weeks on end.
Stefan: Ah yeah talking about... yeah. he started about... If speaking of doing this more often Becky the 18th we’re going to talk to labrynthia myth we were inside.
Becky: Oh yeah. Saturday. Saturday night. talking to labrynthia.
Stefan: So yes Mac. we do these at odd times Mac so Saturday night, right? 9:00 8:00 p.m. Central 9:00 p.m. Central Time yeah. 9 Eastern. I think no let’s say say Eastern time because no one cares about Central.
Becky: well I I we’ve got to do time zone math for me and that means central.
Stefan: It’s plus one Becky you can do it. I have faith in you.
Becky: Ezra asked real quick for Andy where can we buy a collection of your poetry? Do you have any books published?
Andy: I do not have any books published yet but I do have a I am being having one poem published in a literary magazine and one poem published in an anthology and I’ll be posting those when they come available right now they’re still in the they’re still being processed so I’ve been accepted but they haven’t been out put in print yet and I am working on my first collection of poetry which I’m hoping to have completed before July August of this year as far as when it’ll get published we’ll see. Uh I’m gonna try to pursue some some traditional publishing first so it may be a little bit before it gets officially published because I do want to at least pursue that a little bit. and then if if that’s a hard no I’ll probably just self-publish in a year or two.
Becky: What is a poem of Andrea’s that we should all read? What’s a poem of yours we should all read Andy?
Stefan: Oh I thought you recommended one Becky.
Becky: I I well I think Unbound. I think Unbound. but I also liked Scream. I really liked Scream. I feel like we ride at dawn after reading Scream, you know like that that one’s badass. But I I think I feel like it’s badass because maybe I’m I’m a woman, I don’t know, but but I think it’s relatable to all genders.
Stefan: I would have recommended Honeysuckle. But that would just have been me.
Becky: See? We have different recommendations.
Andy: I like Honeysuckle, mine Scream, I love Pink Lemonade. I mean it’s a good one too for sure.
Becky: It’s a good one. This is a sad one.
Andy: But yeah I think the other one the older one but it’s really one of my favorites is the Offing.
Becky: Okay. I have not read that one. I’m going to go off and read it as soon as we pop off.
Becky: ...Although I had a blast talking to you, I could talk about death all day. I am not necessarily obsessed with it but I do think about it a lot. And I’m always happy to chat offline cause you and I have had similar situations, so we can definitely chat.
Andy: Yeah, definitely down for that and yeah if anybody I did post up two different interviews one from HP not Lovecraft , Poetry, Somatic and Substack and one from Amber Estwick this week. So if anybody’s curious to learn more about me, those interviews are up to check out.
Becky: And yes I saw your your HP Lovecraft interview and your Hot Seat interview with Amber loved it I sat in the hot seat for Amber as well. Stefan have you?
Stefan: No not yet. Sorry I forgot all I have not slept much either.
Becky: Anyway, yeah...
Andy: I do have to go because I have to go back to work so.
Becky: You guys can stay on but I’m hosting so I mean I have to...
Stefan: I have to go too so.
Becky: All right. Bye everybody.
Andy: Bye.
Stefan: Bye everyone.
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