Vol. 92: The Poem Novel

I spent my youth writing Poem Novels. When I was in middle school, I wrote two in whole and half of a third that I was co-authoring with my best friend at the time, passing a neon purple notebook back and forth in the hallways between classes. I’ve been chasing that high in my productivity as a writer ever since, the genuine flow state I entered when I wrote them.

I fell in love with reading them from Sonya Sones: One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies; What My Mother Doesn’t Know; Stop Pretending. I also read Stephanie Hemphill’s book Things Left Unsaid; Billy Merrell’s poem memoir Talking in the Dark. More recently, I’ve loved following writers like Elizabeth Acevedo and Jason Reynolds who write in the genre. But it was my early, angsty books that will always hold a place in my heart. I loved the storytelling, the fun use of language, the way they said so much often with so little, and I started to write them myself.

At the start of eighth grade, our language arts teacher asked us to create posters to hang above our lockers that would represent us and our interests. I took the dust jacket of one of my favorite books - need I remind you this was titled One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies!!! - and taped it carefully to the poster that hung above my locker all year. 

I followed the themes of the Poem Novels I read and wrote about depressing shit with which I had no life experience - as well as romance with boys, of which I similarly had no experience. From what I recall, the poem novel I wrote start to finish was about a girl whose sister was being beaten by her boyfriend. She also had a romance with a boy. The scene where he plays her Edwin McCain’s “I Will” on guitar at a park and kisses her is so vivid in my mind it’s almost as if I experienced it myself, despite just writing it - but also could be because it took heavy inspiration from the Hillary Duff movie A Cinderella Story or any number of other romantic comedies of my middle school years that utilized that song.

The second novel, titled The Duffel Bag, was about a homeless teen girl who manages to find housing in a gas station with a friendly gas station owner who she begins to work for. Horrifically (I AM REALLY EXPOSING MYSELF HERE AND I PROMISE I HAVE EVOLVED), I remember his name was Sashimi, something that I intended as vaguely Asian but was autocorrected by my Microsoft Word processor into a real word, not a human name. Please forgive me.

The poem novel I co-wrote with a friend was about a girl who herself was being beaten by her boyfriend. Why was there so much abuse? I blame 7th Heaven and Degrassi. I can picture the notebook we wrote in: its bright purple and thick spirals, but I don’t remember much beyond that, even though we did take it pretty far. I don’t recall why we dropped off.

I met Sonya Sones at The Neutral Zone, Ann Arbor’s teen center, in 2005 or 2006 when I was in eighth grade. I wasn’t a regular attendee of the Neutral Zone at that point, but I’d emailed her and she’d shared with me that she’d be coming. When I met her, my heart was pounding. I didn’t tell her I was a budding writer, or that I was the one who emailed her. Instead, I handed her the Hideous book to be signed and said, “The reason why this doesn’t have the cover on it, is because I put it on a poster above my locker.” To me, this was offered as a demonstration of how much her work meant to me. She responded by signing my book, “To Allison, poster maker extraordinaire!” 

This - both what I said and how she memorialized it in her signature! - was deeply humiliating for me. For years! It also led me to write a letter to Joy Harjo when I met her at 19, so scarred by this experience of not knowing what to say when I met a beloved author and sounding stupid. I included a return address on her a letter and she swiftly mailed me a postcard that said, “To Allison, may you always carry poetry in your heart.”

The most recent time I met an author of novels in verse (the more grown up sounding term to Poem Novels, I guess) I was in my mid- to late-twenties. I met a beloved writer at the National Book Festival and after waiting in the line for signing, told them, “I want to write a novel in verse.” All they said in response, as they signed my book, was: “It’s very hard!”

I’ll be honest: I felt dismissed. They said that to a fully grown adult, not knowing the person who heard it was twelve year-old Allison. Twelve year-old Allison had been encouraged as a writer; adult Allison missed the feeling of fire in my writing and the endless possibilities of writing when my only other responsibilities were homework, keeping my Neopets alive, and practicing the Clarinet (which, let’s be honest, I never did).

When I was a young writer, starting from staying in during recess to staple colorful construction paper together and write stories about animals, to my preteens and even early teens, I always felt my creativity encouraged by the adults around me. Slowly, as I neared college, the voices started to shift. I let those who questioned the usefulness of an English degree become louder than those who still encouraged me as a writer.

To be clear, I’m not begrudging the response of the author. Often, people see the end product and assume that it simply came out of them fully formed, rather than years of deep study and so. Much. Labor. It’s a common refrain: “I plan to write a book someday.” Maybe they thought I was viewing their trade as something that I can do no problem, which just isn’t the case. I know it takes effort. But I wish I had the same encouragement I did as a kid. And I know that’s not why the flow state was lost. But I wish I could get it back.