It’s a strange thing, isn’t it, the way rules appear around poetry—as if the point of all this was neatness, obedience, a kind of polite applause. There are always invisible hands, somewhere behind the curtain, insisting you colour inside the lines, that you tidy your language, that you clip your wings before you’re even certain you can fly. I’ve seen it play out more times than I can count—a poet with dirt under their nails and blood in their ink, told by an editor that the poem is too unruly, too wild, not quite what “publishing” has in mind. Sometimes, the poet listens. Sometimes, they burn the whole system down.
Maybe that’s what I want to say most: the poets I care about are rarely the ones who bow. They’re the ones who arrive at the page already carrying a kind of defiance, a willingness to break the dish just to see what kind of music the shards will make. We call them mavericks, outliers, troublemakers. I just call them necessary. The ones who refuse to be domesticated, who don’t edit out their anger or their accent or their own particular weather, no matter how many times they’re told their work would be more “palatable” if only they’d swallow their own fire.
It’s the role of the editor, supposedly, to polish and refine. I understand the impulse. But there’s a difference between helping a poem come into focus and smothering its wildness for the sake of respectability. Collaboration can be a kind of magic, if both parties trust each other’s hunger. But too often, the poet is expected to surrender, to trim away the rough edges that make their voice theirs. And what a loss, every time a singular voice is made smaller to fit the frame.
Poetry should be a place of risk—a place where the usual rules evaporate, where the old gods of grammar and good taste are thrown into question. I want poems that make something rattle in my chest, that argue with the world instead of politely agreeing with it. The maverick poet isn’t an aberration, but the living, necessary pulse of the art. We need them precisely because they don’t make things easy, because they aren’t interested in blending in.
There’s something deeply broken about a system that punishes poets for refusing to conform, as if the only poetry that matters is poetry that doesn’t make a mess. Real poems leave a mark. They bruise. They don’t apologize for being too much, or not enough, or unfinished, or raw. I have no interest in perfection. I want the poem that limps, that spits, that stumbles into the room with its heart still beating in its hands.
Maybe the work, then, is to build a publishing world where those voices aren’t just tolerated, but cherished. Where editors become allies in rebellion, not wardens of taste. Where difference isn’t something to be corrected, but something to be amplified. I want a press that’s messy, honest, awake—a home for the ones who never learned how to follow the script.
In the end, what matters is that the work remains wild, that it keeps asking questions no one else thought to ask. Poetry is not a parade of tidy truths; it’s a revolt against silence. I want to stand with the poets who refuse to shut up, who keep inventing new ways to shout, to mourn, to love, to remember. The ones who understand that the only real rule is to remain, above all, yourself.
—Rebecca