On Being A Published Poet

I would love to be famous, on the radio and television regularly as a guest speaker, and doing the same thing in the ‘real world’ for organisations in need of an interesting speaker.

One of my poetry books, a memoir in verse (writer’s photo)

Famous people get to do such things, and are paid handsomely for their work/words. As a poet though, even one published by an actual publisher, rather than one who self publishes their poetry, or doesn’t have any published in books yet at all, I feel I’m probably not ever going to make ‘big bucks’.

I make small amounts of money here on Medium, but my writing here has been mostly articles, more than poetry, and the amount I’ve made here is, well shall we say, yeah, small (tiny, actually). I never expected to make lots of money here on Medium, I just like writing, so any money doing something I like to do, I guess that’s a bonus.

But as a published poet, I would love to be doing poetry readings around the place, and being contacted by radio programs to talk about my writing. Talking to those organisations I mentioned, that would be cool too. I could read uplifting poetry to community groups as well, bringing hope to sometimes sad and sorry times …

Of course, I could/should also promote my published work better, because self-promotion is the way to go in such matters, isn’t it? As a humble poet though, I don’t like to brag … I am proud of my…