Finding Your Voice Outside the System
The poetry world loves its gatekeepers. Journals, competitions, MFA programs—they all whisper (or scream) the same thing: This is what poetry should look like, sound like, feel like. Step outside those lines, and suddenly your work becomes invisible. Or so they’d like you to believe.
But here’s the thing: your voice doesn’t need permission to exist. It doesn’t need gatekeepers. It doesn’t need approval from a handful of editors trying to shape what “real” poetry is. The system doesn’t own you or your words. You do.
So, how do you find your voice when you stop asking the system for validation? You write like it doesn’t exist. Here’s how.
1. Your Voice Is Already Enough
Let’s start here: your voice already matters. It’s already worth listening to. Not because of the words you use or the rules you break, but because it’s yours. The system loves to make you feel small, to convince you that you need their stamp of approval to be worthy. But the truth? You’re already worthy.
Stop asking, Is this good enough to be published? Start asking, Does this feel like me? The moment your work feels like it’s telling your truth, you’ve already won.
2. Burn the Rulebook
There’s no formula for writing the “right” way, and that’s the beauty of it. When you’re not chasing publication in the same five magazines, you’re free to experiment. Write a poem without punctuation. Write one that takes up three words and leaves the rest in silence. Write about things you’re not “supposed” to write about.
The only rule is this: don’t bore yourself. The moment you get bored, start again.
3. Build Your Own Stage
The system wants you to believe you need them to be seen. You don’t. Publish your own chapbook. Create a newsletter. Start a blog. Hell, print your poems on flyers and leave them at coffee shops. The possibilities are endless, and none of them require a “yes” from someone sitting behind a submissions desk.
The audience you create by doing it yourself will care about your work because it’s yours—not because it’s been filtered through the tastes of the system.
4. Find Your People (and Ignore the Rest)
Here’s a truth: not everyone is going to get it. Your voice isn’t for everyone, and it doesn’t have to be. The people who matter—the ones who resonate with your work—will find you. Focus on them. Write for them. Or better yet, write for yourself, and let them come along for the ride.
Find other poets who get it, who aren’t playing by the same old rules. Support each other. Build a community that celebrates creativity over conformity.
5. Redefine What Success Looks Like
Forget the metrics they sell you: the awards, the bylines, the Instagram followers. Success isn’t about fitting into someone else’s idea of what poetry should be. It’s about writing something that feels raw, real, and undeniably you.
It’s about finishing a poem and thinking, This is exactly what I wanted to say. It’s about connecting with one reader who says, This made me feel seen.
Success is what you say it is. Nothing else matters.
6. Write Like Nobody’s Watching
Because most of the time, nobody is. And that’s freeing. Write the poems you think no one will ever read. Write the ugly ones, the angry ones, the ones that don’t fit neatly into any genre. Write the ones that scare you.
When you write like no one’s watching, your voice becomes louder, clearer. It stops apologizing for itself.
Final Thoughts
The system doesn’t deserve your voice. It never did. And the truth is, you don’t need it. Your words are yours to shape, to scream, to sing. The audience that matters—the one that will feel your work in their bones—isn’t looking for perfect or polished. They’re looking for real.
So let the system do its thing. You’ve got better things to write.