Welcome to the Newsletter!
In case you missed it, here’s my first newsletter that went out to folks; if you’d like to subscribe, you’ll get an email in your inbox every 1-2 months. It’s free!
Hi everyone, and a sincere welcome to my newsletter! Thanks so much for being a part of this!
This will be a fun and low-key, monthly-ish space for me to share what’s new-- whether that’s classes, prompts, poems, a spicy opinion, or pictures of my cat, Pete.
If you want to read more about why I’ve created this newsletter, I’ve put a few thoughts at the end of this email (TLDR; social media is letting me down on many levels, and I’m seeking a source of more sustainable and genuine connection).
Starting Off: A Note of Love
I want to start with a genuine thank you for being here. There are a thousand things I want to say, but I also want to keep this newsletter to a reasonable length. So I’ll just say this: I really appreciate your support, and I’m really looking forward to connecting with you in this new medium— it means a lot to me that you’re interested in hearing what I have to say.
Onto What’s New: Upcoming Classes
I’ve got a few classes coming up through Writers.com that I’m really excited about!
Mastering the Manuscript: Feb 6th- April 10th, live over Zoom.
This class is a great fit for you if you want to make serious progress on a poetry manuscript, whether you have an existing idea or want to start from scratch. We will cover everything (yes, everything) from ideation to metaphors to form to formatting. All of my classes aim to be fun and non-competitive while also providing you with a ton of tools and support to grow as a writer.
30 Poems in 30 Days: Starts April 1st, asynchronous through Wet Ink
This class is what it sounds like! In honor of National Poetry Month, you’ll get an intentionally tailored prompt every single day for the month of April. You’ll also get weekly feedback and access to a community of folks who are also committed to writing lots of poems.
Prompt
Speaking of prompts, if you follow me on socials, you might know that I post a prompt every Wednesday. Here’s my favorite one from the past month:
Poem
And here’s a poem I had the honor of getting published kind-of-recently at Poets.org, that digs into some of the ways I’ve been trying to harness resiliency lately by shifting the way I look at things:
https://poets.org/poem/first-rule-buoyancy
Spicy Opinion
I don’t think fruit and chocolate belong in the same bite. They are different kinds of sweetness that simply don’t go together. You could not pay me to eat a chocolate orange. If your mouth is different than my mouth and you really enjoy fruit and chocolate together, I am so happy for you, and if I’m ever forced to encounter a chocolate covered strawberry on my plate, I’ll give mine to you.
Pete
As teased, here’s my cat, Pete! His full name is Petry (pronounced as “Pee-tree;” I don’t know why we spelled it with a “y”-- it confuses people all the time. He’s also named after Petrie from The Land Before Time, so why didn’t we spell it like that? One of life’s great mysteries).
(basically twins)
A little bit about why I’ve created this newsletter, put at the end because it’s kind of long:
As social media has shifted to become more focused on videos and the algorithm has gotten truly wild (right now my Insta reels is almost 100% someone having a prolapsed something or other, and I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this!), I’ve found that I’m feeling increasingly disconnected with people who follow me on those platforms. I’ve tried to be a person who can join the rat race of content creation, but the truth of the matter is that I don’t want to create content videos for strangers, to deal with a constant stream of internet hate, or to become obsessed with reach and engagement numbers. I became a poet because I want to write poems, and to share those poems with people who want to read them. I’m hoping that this avenue will allow me to be a more genuine version of myself and to begin to have a more positive relationship to sharing what’s going on in my life and career, with people who actually want to hear it.
That being said, I’m also pissed. Mark Zuckerberg (the sack of shit that runs Meta-- Facebook and Instagram) has decided to stop fact-checking all together (to be honest, I didn’t know that they were doing it in the first place) and now explicitly allows calling trans people mentally ill (read more about it here if you’re interested: https://glaad.org/releases/meta-removes-anti-lgbtq-hate-speech-policies-ends-fact-checking/)
On top of all that, it doesn’t sit well with me to feed AI programs that profit off of stealing the work of artists and writers like myself, especially when we have no way of opting out of that theft. (Also, did you know that AI is actually pretty bad for the planet and is accelerating climate change? It turns out that the internet and AI tools are not just magic things that float invisibly in the sky; they are all stored in huge processing centers that take large quantities of electricity and water to maintain). Here’s more if you want to dive in a little deeper on that: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/ai-has-environmental-problem-heres-what-world-can-do-about
I don’t know if I’m leaving those platforms yet or not, but I have gotten a Bluesky (@ollieschminkey.bsky.social), so if you’d like to stay in touch that way, give me a follow and watch me awkwardly learn how to use a new platform (somehow, I skipped Twitter/X entirely).
All of this to say, I’m really glad to meet you here, in this space, and I appreciate that you care and want to listen to what I have to say.
Love,
Ollie