Trees die without water, sun, or wind. A poet dies without community.

By necessity, the act of writing requires interaction from other human beings. This is definitionally true: writers write for others to read, just as cooks cook for someone to eat. Yet, this requirement is often difficult for the poet to understand and manage. Most poets are inflicted with a severe level of introspection, one that will typically drive them away from others during the creation process. They often undergo a concerning amount of agony when having their words read by others, especially if one of these so-called “friends” suggests that they read it out loud! Yet, despite these fears and insecurities, the writer is compelled to have their words read by others - they have no choice.

With the internet we’ve been able to soften this trauma by having our words distributed and read in a non-face-to-face encounter. Yet there are many problems in how our current internet communities arrange themselves. This article seeks to highlight one of the core ingredients missing in our online dealings, providing two proposals to remedy them.

As a poet, I am naturally thinking through this discussion through the lens of poetry and the current state of journals and publications. Yet, these principles are broad enough that they could be applied for any form of writing or art-making. So with that said, let’s begin.

The Cost of Community

Any true relationship or community involves some type of cost on the part of the members. In a marriage, there is a strong cost for both participants: they are bound in a life-long contract of exclusive love, committed toward each other’s good in a sacrificial exchange. This cost is so strong that both members fundamentally change because of it.

A larger community also requires some level of cost. Be it a church or a bowling team, a workforce, a family, or even the attendees of a Saturday BBQ, all these interactions involve cost. To be included in these communities you often need to be bodily present for the engagement. You may need to prepare for the event (bring a bag of chips) and you will need to “perform” when the time comes - socialize, laugh, play games, help carry the lemonade from the kitchen to the porch. You are not allowed to be a sour slug and just sit on the sideline, watching the neighbors mow their lawn. If you don’t pay the cost, you don’t belong in the community.

So why do we pay these costs? Well, as obvious as it is, because the benefit is far greater than the alternative. Contributing something into a relationship gives us a feeling of belonging, a mutual attraction that binds us to others. It’s a “putting your money where your mouth is,” investing something of yourself into something other than yourself. The root of this truth smells a little like sacrifice. Be it small or large, sacrifice and cost are a requirement for any community to form.

How the internet avoids this

One of the great tricks of the internet is how it spoofs community without any cost. With social media, you can get all your updates from your “friends” without having to engage with them at all. With a few swipes, you can see their house, their new kid, their new idea, their new (and shocking) haircut. You get all the benefits of a close friendship without doing any of the hard work that it would typically require, all the while thinking that it still counts for “socializing.” What a great lie this is!

In my opinion, we see the same in online blogging and content engagement. On Substack (or any other blogging platform) all I need to do is to click “Subscribe” and I have access to all the writings of that individual. I get their publications fresh out of the oven, delivered to my pocket robot with astonishing speed. But did that cost me anything? Was any real, human bond formed here? Besides the dopamine hit that the author gets when receiving that notification, there’s typically nothing else. There’s no commitment to reading the articles by the author (though we try our best). And even if we do read the article, we can just as easily leave it exactly as we found it, without any trace of interaction. If we’re thoughtful, we may leave a like or a comment. But there is still no community, just a bunch of boats out at night, bumping into each other.

Of course, exceptions can occur and real friendship can begin on the internet. Groups can form that eventually meet in person. Discussion boards can form that allow space for deeper conversation and connection. Comments can be thorough and constructive. But I would say that these are not typically the norm. Do you see yourself still engaging with the same people online in ten years?

For writers, this can be very discouraging, especially for amateurs. All we want is for people to truly engage with our words, to give us good-natured criticism and support. We want to know whether our readers actually liked our poem, or if they just felt obliged to click a button because they were in a friendly mood. This type of engagement is often worth more to us than money. We need a better feedback loop.

With this in mind, I have two proposals that could potentially lead to a better community, each of which have cost as a core ingredient.

Proposal #1 - Committed Subscription Model

Current subscription models are one-way transactions, where writing flows from the author to the receiver. It’s a good way for the receivers to be informed whenever the author produces something new, and it is a good tool for disseminating an author’s work. But the receiver is not required to give any feedback to the author. For the reader, it is a cost-free interaction.

One solution for this would be to offer a subscription that requires commitment from the reader when they subscribe. When they click that button, they are agreeing to engage with the author’s content when it comes out. This could be anything from a comment, a reaction, or a full review. The reader is required to engage with, say, 3 out of the 6 most recent articles by the author. If they drop this commitment and miss an extended number of articles with no engagement, then they are dropped from the subscription(!)

This may seem a bit harsh, aye? A bit too much of a cost? Yes, it may, and your subscriber counts are going to drop dramatically with this type of model. But, wouldn’t you rather have a few highly engaged subscribers than hundreds of others that never crack open that email?

I believe that this would be beneficial for both parties involved. For the author, they would receive regular feedback on their writing, hopefully both encouraging and critical. And for the reader, they are called to actually commit themselves to something, to not just doom-scroll their brains into chewed-up gum. If I have 6 subscriptions that I’m committed to, I’ll be reading those right away, not scrolling endlessly for something novel.

The implementation of a subscription model like this wouldn’t even be that difficult. As the reader, you could easily get notifications if you are in danger of being dropped from a subscription. As the author, you could easily enable this as an optional subscription tier, in the same way that many offer paid subscriptions with perks. I would be willing to bet that most accounts on Substack would value this type of subscription over a paying one. I know that I would.

Proposal #2 - Poetry Guild

The second proposal is for something a bit larger than a modified subscription model. Many of us are blessed with people who read our work and give us good feedback. These are often people who don’t write poetry themselves, but enjoy reading and have a genuine love for the art. This type of feedback from the “non-poet” is extremely important. Poets tend to get caught up in themselves, so having this feedback is a good grounding wire, keeping up safe so that we don’t build up too much static charge.

Yet this feedback sometimes is lacking in terms of discussion around the craft of writing. Enter the Poetry Guild.

A Poetry Guild would be a group that is composed of members who are all poets themselves, who regularly write and are concerned with growing in the craft of writing. There would be frequent analysis and discussion of the poems that are produced by each member, along with a periodical publication released to the public.

Membership in a guild would entail a strong commitment by each person, along with a series of required “duties.” Each month (or week, or two weeks) each poet would be required to complete a poem and submit it to the rest of the guild. Following this submission, each poet would also be required to review a number of poems by the other poets. These reviews would be thorough, discussing what the poem says, how it says it, and how effective it is. Finally, the review would end with a declaration of whether the reviewer believes the poem is ready for publication. If a poem passes all reviews, it can be presented to the full guild and, pending approval there, can be included in the guild’s next external publication.

This design would have many compelling benefits for the poet. They would receive regular, honest feedback on their poems by other poets. They would get to practice reviewing other poems, exercising their ability to judge the good from the bad (along with how to articulate that). It would create a good bond between the guild members as they all work toward the common goal of excellency. 

Additionally, there would be many benefits for the readers of the guild’s publication. First off, the publication is necessary because poets exist for the world, not for themselves. If the group has no output, then it has lost its touch with reality and its reason for existing.

Secondly, this design would decentralize the editing process for the journal. Sifting through poems would no longer be the task for one over-worked editor, but the responsibility of everyone in the guild. Readers of the publication would know that each poem passed the rigor of multiple editors, not the whim or tastes of a single one (as good as he/she may be). They could also be treated with access to the reviews produced for each poem, giving them insight into how to understand the poem and how the guild judges poetry.

This submission, review, and publication would be some of the main mechanics of the Poetry Guild, but there could be many others as well. Every publication, a few members could be tasked with writing a short article. Also, the guild should be meeting regularly, potentially in person depending on the locality of the members. There’s no greater way to build bonds than to see another human in the flesh, to hear their voice, watch them laugh and sneeze and eat a piece of pizza.

It would also be important to establish what the boundaries of the guild would be and how large it would be allowed to get. Are you free or formal verse only? Are you Christian or non-religious? There needs to be good commonality between the members, while also retaining enough difference to allow for good, challenging discussions.

Conclusion

These are all ideas at the moment, so I’d like to hear from other authors if they would find any of them compelling. Creating a guild would likely require the most work, yet I believe it’d be the most fruitful. It is, by far, the idea that I’m the most interested in.

But in summary, whether the modified subscription or the guild ideas are any good, I still believe that cost is one of the true measures of a good community. So don’t be cheap. Give yourself to others, engage, offer (and request) real feedback, send people books, dedicate a poem to someone. If you’re writing for yourself, you won’t be a writer for long.