More ugly poems please!

More ugly poems please? Alex, what are you even talking about? Aren’t poems supposed to be beautiful? Isn’t that the whole idea?

When I started writing poetry, I definitely felt this way. I felt that the best poetry was aesthetically “pleasing” in the same way that a room or an outfit can be. In the same way that a person can be. I would comb through my poems looking for opportunities to beautify them. Opportunities to add an extra bell or whistle. What changed?

I started reading more poems. I realized that some of my favourite poems aren’t “pretty”. They’re ugly as hell. In what way? They go to the hard places, the gritty places. They rip off the bows and frills and dive into the bloodstream, the gristle and the marrow. They’re striking poems about ugly things.

Two of my very favourite poets who write from the ugly places are Dion O’Reilly and Kim Addonizio. Let’s dive into a few of their poems and talk about what makes them so great.

The subject matter and poetry for this post is going to be extremely heavy. This is The Messy Writers Club, so I never shy away from challenging content, because I believe challenging work has the capacity to most stretch us as readers and writers. That being said, if you find this content to be too much, take all the breaks you need.

The next part of this post is for paid members of “The Messy Writers Club” as part of their included offerings. You can continue reading by becoming a paid subscriber. Being a paid subscriber includes a monthly writing circle with video playback (alternating Tuesday evenings and Saturday afternoons) as well as feedback to every poem written in-circle.