Pip: Thomas Cannon author writes about poetry the way a good coach talks about training — with honesty about the long road and genuine enthusiasm for the work itself.

Mara: Today we’re covering two territories: the craft of building a writing practice over time, and the more personal question of what it means to claim a poetic identity in the first place.

Pip: Let’s start with the craft side — what it actually takes to get good.

Writing Practice And Craft

Pip: The central claim here is uncomfortable in the best way: getting good at writing requires volume, repetition, and a willingness to be bad for a long time before you’re any good.

Mara: The post opens with a well-known writer’s maxim and applies it directly: “Your first million words don’t count. In other words you have to write a million words to get good.”

Pip: That reframe matters. It converts failure into tuition — every weak draft is progress paid forward, not evidence you should stop.

Mara: The post gets specific about poetry, and the advice is practical: start with rhyming poetry, build confidence, then expand. The guidance is “try to get 1% better each day, and keep working on your poems.”

Pip: One percent daily is the kind of target that sounds modest until you do the math — it compounds fast.

Mara: There’s also a candid note on rhyming poetry’s reputation. The post acknowledges it’s looked down upon in literary journals and can slide into cliché, but points out it thrives at poetry slams and connects with a wide audience. The honest tension there is useful.

Pip: So the practical takeaway is: revise relentlessly, meet readers where they are, and don’t let the gatekeepers of literary prestige talk you out of starting.

Mara: That question of starting — and what you call yourself while you’re doing it — is exactly where the next post picks up.

Poetry Identity And Journey

Pip: If craft is about accumulation, identity is about permission — specifically, the permission to call yourself a poet at all.

Mara: The post “Embracing the Poet Within: My Journey” makes that tension explicit: “I did not consider myself a poet. I only began submitting poetry to journals as a way to build my writing resume. My goal was to write novels.”

Pip: Twenty published poems and a poet laureate application, and still not claiming the title — that’s a specific kind of stubbornness most writers will recognize.

Mara: The post lands on a clean principle: if you write poems, you are a poet. Embrace the title. And it connects that back to why poetry started in the first place — heartbreak, the need to turn pain into something worthwhile.

Pip: Art as transformation, not just expression. That’s the real throughline.

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Mara: Volume, revision, identity, healing — the posts cover a lot of ground that serious writers actually need to hear.

Pip: More of that honest territory next time.