Kelley Beeson, author of “Undress,” won the inaugural Lefty Blondie Press First Chapbook Award in 2023 and credits that moment for igniting her poetry career. In her signature voice, Beeson shares why she writes, how approaching poetry as “play” allows her to “sneak up on herself,” and how at 50, she’s finally learning to trust herself.
LBP: What does your current writing routine look like?
KB: Right now, I'm in a surprisingly productive state. This isn't my norm, but for the last few months, I've been working to show up for myself and my writing. I'm managing to write several times a week. Before this, it was always very sporadic and I could go weeks or months without writing. It definitely makes a difference to just get my butt in the chair, as they say.
LBP: Do you have a dedicated writing space?
KB: I'm lucky enough to have a room that's completely mine. Though I do share it with the linen cabinet. The study gets the best light in the house, hence lots of plants which make me very happy. An exposed brick wall with a defunct fireplace filled with books. A very comfortable chair. Too many throw blankets. A phenomenal candle: Windows Down by Henry Rose. All my poetry books. A huge, heavy faux-marble writing desk–I alternate between the chair and the desk. My yoga props and almost always, two seriously supportive cats, Coco and Crunch.
LBP: Do you think of editing as part of your writing?
KB: Assolutamente! (I'm learning Italian!) Editing and reading others' work are huge parts of my writing life. Folks grumble a lot about editing, but recently, I've become a fan. An instructor invited us on to take one of our poems and write the angriest version or write the quietest version and when I did it, I found it gave me lots of useful information about the poem and what it was/wasn't doing. I do this often now, and in addition to being illuminating, it’s fun.
LBP: How has your relationship to writing changed throughout your life?
KB: For a long time, say high school through undergrad, writing held a lot of joy and I did it to express myself and have fun with words. In college, it was still joyful and I got more serious and honed my skills. The first big shift happened in my MFA program where my LIC (Loud Inner Critic) was born and my writing took a hard left onto a dark alley. That LIC became so overwhelming that I stopped writing for 10 years. Geeze, did I miss it deeply, but I didn't recognize it anymore.
In 2013 (thank merciful heavens!) I took a workshop with Carlow University's Madwomen in the Attic and our instructor Joy Katz changed everything. Unknowingly, she cleared a lot of the muck that had accumulated and held the lantern high, helping me find my way back to my writing and my poet-self. The following year, my husband decided he was done with our marriage and I spent the next few years scrawling out my grief in poem-form. In 2021 another shift happened when I decided to see if any of those poems were larger than just my own therapeutic expression. And it turns out, they were! I worked with Diane Kerr and Jan Beatty to develop a manuscript in another huge shift. When I won the Lefty Blondie Chapbook Contest in 2023, everything changed again. That moment truly ignited my poetry career; I started doing more readings, more publications, and I cultivated more energy around my writing.
LBP: How do you approach a new project?
KB: So much of my experience in the last four years has centered around trust. Trusting myself. Trusting my poet-self. Trusting the process, which I know is a tired saying, but it’s real! At 50, this is the first time in my life where I've felt such a solid trust and am just clocking-in and seeing what comes.
Keeping myself going seems to be about reframing the work as play. I like to sneak up on myself saying, “Hey girl, it's no big deal (whistling) nothing big happening here...(humming) we're just going to mess around with words like fingerpaints or Lego.” This playful approach seems to be working.
LBP: Longhand or laptop?
KB: Definitely laptop! It's so much faster and I can move words, sections, and phrases around with ease. I can see the poem on the page and line breaks and line lengths. I can copy and paste any research straight into the document. Add in some freewriting. So the whole idea of the poem is in one place.
LBP: What can poetry do?
KB: Heal. Transform. Enlighten. Break you. Build you back up. Make you feel less alone. Give you space to breathe. Delight. Rock. Support growth. Explain. Provide clarity. Name things.
Beeson’s Recommendations
In my non-writing time I love music (this guy is my current music guru), cleaning (yes, really!), art museums and galleries with my husband (our favorite is The Westmoreland Museum of American Art), reading novels, memoir and juicy nonfiction, and making art.
Books: “What We Did To Her Made the Water Rise” by Meghann Plunkett, “Fish Wife” by Alysse McCanna, and “Refusenik” by Lynn Melnick.
Film: “Flow”: Find it and watch it ASAP.
TV: FX's “The Bear”: I've never seen a TV show dive head-first into the creative process with so much heart, vigor, restlessness, and searching. It's like nothing else I've ever seen. Sublime.
Video: I highly recommend watching dance videos of Nick Palmquist like this one where he's dancing to Peter Gabriel's “Your Eyes.” And this one, to “Obvious Child” by Paul Simon. He dips down into the music and finds small quiet places and then brings them up to talk with his body.
Lefty Blondie Press First Chapbook Award
Submit your chapbook manuscripts from JANUARY 1 - MARCH 31, 2025
We welcome poetry chapbook manuscripts written by those who:
self-identify as woman or non-binary individual
40+ years old
writing in English
have yet to publish a poetry chapbook or full-length poetry book before September 30, 2025
We're trying something NEW for the 2025 First Chapbook Contest submissions!
Introducing the pay-what-you-can reading fee via Duosuma tip jar!
All tip jar donations support LBP's mission:
To promote the poetry of self-identifying women and non-binary people.
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