on poetry & being human

Share this post
gift guide: for the poet in ur life
despyboutris.substack.com

gift guide: for the poet in ur life

plus round-up!

Despy Boutris
Jun 20
Share this post
gift guide: for the poet in ur life
despyboutris.substack.com

Happy Monday, all!

I have a smattering of things for you today:

  • Housekeeping

  • Opportunities

  • What I’m reading

  • Quotations

  • Tweets


Housekeeping:

I’m still in Europe & it’s still beautiful.

dbouts
A post shared by dbouts (@dbouts)
dbouts
A post shared by dbouts (@dbouts)

Gift guide for poets:

My birthday’s coming up, & serendipitously I just found this great resource (x) from Caelan Ernest on what to gift poets:

  1. Give them a membership to a local museum or theater

  2. Buy more of their favorite pen, or a special pen on their wishlist

  3. Give them money to go toward application fees or rent

  4. Gift certificate to a local bookstore or coffeeshop 

  5. Stock them up on their go-to beverage, or surprise them with a special beverage (psst... only give alcohol if you know for sure they'd welcome that)

  6. Help them arrange or afford time to themselves to write

  7. Really nice headphones

  8. Bath bubbles

  9. Supplies for their pet(s)

  10. Clothing (think a comfort item or a conversation piece)

  11. Their favorite food delivered to them at home/restaurant gift cards

  12. A massage or a manicure 

  13. Art supplies

ETA: Personally, I would also enjoy European gummies, a subscription to Peacock or AMC+, cool vegan snacks, offers of marriage (assuming you can offer me good healthcare), candles, someone paying for my tattoos, some Xanax, plane tickets to anywhere, & whimsical coffee mugs.

ETA: Please stop gifting us random notebooks.

Anyways,

here’s my Amazon wishlist. xo.


Opportunities:

  • Claire Wade @clairerwade: Submissions are open for the 2nd Disability Issue of @thebookseller The theme is increasing accessibility & inclusivity of disabled people within the publishing industry. I’m looking for article pitches by disabled authors, agents, editors, publishing employees & booksellers. I’m particularly interested in pieces about: *the obstacles disabled people face - whether that’s to do with getting published, navigating the process, attending events, lack of opportunities etc. As well as raising the issue I’m keen to include ideas on how to overcome them. *what’s being done well and how it can be extended. £120/500 words. Please send a one paragraph pitch and a short bio to disabledauthors@gmail.com Closing date Friday 8th July 2022. Further Details By disabled I mean anyone who self-identifies as disabled. The Bookseller is a trade magazine for the UK publishing industry. Last year I had over a hundred pitches and the successful ones were aimed at those working in the industry They addressed one specific issue - the word count is too limited to tackle everything at once. The writers used their personal experience to back up the article but the focus was on more than just their own story. To see a list of the articles (and subjects) we published last year visit clairewade.com/adci (June 16)


What I’m reading:

  • The Men: First Impressions and Spoilers

The Lauren Hough/Lambda drama is wild but also, like, The Men sounds like a really outdated concept—and not even a very original one at that.


Quotations:

lips freshly smudged / afro smushed from the fist / of fingers

you wanted in / your mouth

-deziree a. brown


I ask her how it feels / to be a hundred tons

of doom / and she chuckles / black women

have always been titans

-deziree a. brown


Yes, I was utterly wrong,

I thought that humans were vertical wounds

against the horizon, feeding their own fissures

with wood and coal.

-Javier F. Gonzalez


So, I am not much of a quotes person. I am firmly against epigrams in a very superstitious way. I'm not willing yet to give someone more famous and smarter than me the first chance to speak in my novels!

-Megan Giddings


Did I say me? Things

have been getting

less and less hypothetical

since I unhitched myself

from your bedpost.

-Kaveh Akbar


Everyone

I love is too modern

to be caught

grieving.

-Kaveh Akbar


In order

to be consumed

first you need to be consumable,

but there is not a single

part of you I could fit

in my mouth.

-Kaveh Akbar


I still want

to suck the bones out

from your hands,

plant them like the seeds

we found in an antique

textbook, though those

never sprouted ad may not

have even been seeds.

-Kaveh Akbar


I go to the barber and say, Barber,

make me a better man. Make me genius.

Make me patient. I want my

skin to always be soft

on the inside. I want a fade

in the back. To always smell

like rhubarb pie. I want to love

my life forever.

Can you do that?

-Oliver Baez Bendorf


Father, Holy Father, Prime Mover, God Almighty—

I have forgotten what to call you.

I have forgotten my pretense,

my sounding board, my ruin.

-Virginia Konchan


I am smitten with the sun.

-Virginia Konchan


Cure me of ancestral longing.

Cure me of the need for speed.

-Virginia Konchan


I tried to undo / what’s been done / to my body.

-Caelan Ernest


Tonight / I will scorch / whatever’s left / of that boy within me.

-Caelan Ernest


Tweets:

Twitter avatar for @itsdboutsDespy Boutris @itsdbouts
sad to learn that tv & movies lied to me. not once has my depression gotten me laid. shocked & confused

June 20th 2022

1 Retweet15 Likes
Twitter avatar for @glurpoglurpo @glurpo
do u ever wish u were a weird girl's bug that she found outside, loved for a brief moment

June 18th 2022

1,036 Retweets6,782 Likes
Twitter avatar for @disturbingshirtShirts With Threatening Auras @disturbingshirt
Image

June 20th 2022

300 Retweets3,456 Likes
Twitter avatar for @afrodesiaqexcessively black ✡️ @afrodesiaq
white people get so disproportionately angry when you point out that breed specific legislation and pitbull hate is directly tied to antiblack racism.

June 18th 2022

539 Retweets2,901 Likes
Twitter avatar for @itsdboutsDespy Boutris @itsdbouts
anyways lately i've been writing for, like, the first time in a year or more. & like it's very clear that not all these new poms are masterpieces. but i'm trying to be ok with not everything being great but still, maybe, being worth existing. feels like important or whtev

June 20th 2022

9 Likes
Twitter avatar for @marquiseleMikey 🔪 @marquisele
Went to get a neuropsych eval and the evaluator asked if I like to eat junk food because what is a healthcare appointment without some fatphobia for seasoning?

June 18th 2022

36 Retweets803 Likes
Twitter avatar for @marquiseleMikey 🔪 @marquisele
It’s also very funny how some health care practitioners deflate or get embarrassed once you let them know, however subtly, that their fatphobia is not okay. All I said in response was “I don’t use terms like that. I don’t moralize food” and she was sputtering. Lol

June 18th 2022

14 Retweets408 Likes
Twitter avatar for @BaileyJayTweetsBailey Jay @BaileyJayTweets
Image

January 7th 2022

76 Retweets765 Likes
Twitter avatar for @mattxivmatt @mattxiv
“drag will confuse kids” what the hell was THIS?
Image

June 19th 2022

72,324 Retweets728,113 Likes
Twitter avatar for @bimbotheorycosima bee concordia @bimbotheory
Anyway @emme_lund just sent me this, feeling represented 🥴
Image

June 19th 2022

2 Retweets26 Likes
Twitter avatar for @bimbotheorycosima bee concordia @bimbotheory
Like I’m all for fucking/dating cishet dudes if you’re into that, but if you’re going to be polyam and pursue queer relationships while at the same time centering and prioritizing your relationship with a cishet dude over them I absolutely do not trust you!

June 19th 2022

1 Retweet45 Likes
Twitter avatar for @bimbotheorycosima bee concordia @bimbotheory
The hierarchal polyam cishet dude in a primary relationship with a queer cis girl (and/or non-binary person the cishet dude lowkey sees as a cis girl) is by far the most cursed formation in the queer dating scene.

June 19th 2022

4 Retweets116 Likes
Twitter avatar for @itsdboutsDespy Boutris @itsdbouts
hi. which lit journal consistently hurts ur feelings?

June 19th 2022

22 Likes

I hope you all have a good week—

-Despy Boutris
Instagram
Twitter
Website
Shop

Share this post
gift guide: for the poet in ur life
despyboutris.substack.com
Comments

Create your profile

0 subscriptions will be displayed on your profile (edit)

Skip for now

Only paid subscribers can comment on this post

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.

TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2022 Despy Boutris
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Publish on Substack Get the app
Substack is the home for great writing