Publishing Personal Poetry: A Journey

Publishing Personal Poetry: A Journey

The Personal Process

As a teenager, I’d occasionally write sad and dramatic poems. Most of them were about disillusions of some kind—relationships, formal education, having to eventually “join the workforce,” and life in general. 

Writing was one thing that stayed constant throughout the ups and downs. It wasn’t just a hobby or thing to do at the end of each day. It was a literal lifeline that kept my sanity afloat during extremely intense and disorienting experiences.

My voracious journaling often took on an obsessive quality. Perhaps it was a reflection of my extremely obsessive romantic style at the time. While the proliferant pages acted as a cheap, therapeutic salve, the occasional poems I wrote acted as a succinct summary of each long journal “chapter.”

As an INFJ on the MBTI scale: I’m idealistic. I envisioned making it through the world as a poet. When I hit my early twenties, I disregarded older adults’ well-intentioned advice to focus on a career instead of full-time creative writing. I thought adults had lost all sense of dreams and wonder when they said things like writers being “unable to make a living” through their writing or poetry.

After more ups and downs with freelance and non-commercial writing, I eventually caved and tried to figure out a more practical way to live my life. Buried in my subconscious was the old teenage dream of getting at least one poetry book published, as a tangible form of being a poet.

Several years went by when I did very little creative writing. Inspiration struck in the middle of 2023 where I gathered and spruced up a small collection of poems.

I was a little bemused when a small press—Bottlecap Press—expressed interest in my chapbook titled let it rip, a collection of heartbreak themed poems. Some pieces were written in my late teens, some were written very quickly, and most were scribbled down via pen on paper. All of them featured a raw element to get to the heart of the matter quickly.

I questioned myself before signing with the publisher. Why should I share and publish the collection? Weren’t there more than enough poems on this topic out there already? What would people think of me? Should these private poems have all just been kept in a drawer to never see the light of day? 

Looking at the collection made me remember the isolation of those despondent, depressing moments. If I could reach out to just one reader and make them feel a little less alone or unseen through any of the poems, that made it worth it to me to have them available in the world.

The Publishing Process

I self-published several novels under a pen name slightly over a decade ago. How time flies!

Earlier this year, I thought about what I’d been writing and publishing since then. I had a few poems and flash fiction pieces published in online literary magazines, and I was feeling a little bit stuck in terms of direction.

While I enjoyed the full creative control that I had with self-publishing, I felt like trying something new with this particular chapbook project. I wanted to build a bit more credibility that I found difficult to get as a self-published author, which was during the early days of eBook publishing. 

In recent years, I slowly began to reach a better mental space as I decided to pursue something other than fiction writing as a full-time career. This freed me up to do whatever I wanted creatively, in a way that wouldn’t be heavily dictated by commercial genre definitions or sales metrics.

Trying out a chapbook publication through a small press seemed like a logical next step to try, since I didn’t have a full-length poetry collection yet.

The mistakes during my helter-skelter, scatterbrained twenties eventually showed me the importance of focus and cohesion. I’d say that that was the most important first step when it came to selecting and presenting the order of the poems in my chapbook.

I chose the following micropoem to open the collection to set the tone—

1000

a thousand kisses

a thousand apologies—

we aren’t meant to be

I looked around online for small press publishers that might be a good fit. I scoured Twitter/X accounts, bios, and threads to add to my small list of publishers in a personal spreadsheet to keep track of the submission dates and statuses.

Websites like Poets & Writers helped me to learn about other poets and their unique publishing journeys.

With a bit of luck, timing, and intuition, I had a great debut chapbook experience with the publisher of my choice. Setting clear goals as to my aims and wishes for the chapbook was a helpful piece of the project, too.

Viewing the final product felt a little strange. In terms of page count, a chapbook is small, but it certainly isn’t insignificant. I’m happy with the renewed sense of writing it’s given me, and hope it might act as a spark or stepping stone to equally fun and fabulous future projects. 

Looking back on some of the poems took me back to the beginning, during those tumultuous adolescent years when nothing was going right.

I still remember the fiery passion of wanting to make my way through this world as a poet. I was drawn to the honesty, integrity, and defiance of expectations that I associated with the role.

It took me a few weeks to get in touch with this side of myself again. I’d say it’s worth it to feel like you’re living your own life authentically, in an artistically rewarding way that makes sense to you.

—

Jess Chua is an award-winning writer and poet. Her debut chapbook on heartbreak, let it rip, was published by Bottlecap Press in late summer 2023. She’s aiming to eventually finish a short story collection. She enjoys art, yoga, and taking care of her cat and dog. Her website is jesschua.com

BOOK INFO

let it rip

let it rip showcases the implosion of relationships that aren’t meant to be. It’s about peeling off the band-aid from a relationship that has run its course. It’s also an ode to the freedom we gain from truths we learn through heartbreak. 

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing