How to Write About Your Job Without Writing a Boring Poem

Work is the most common subject in poetry and the most commonly boring. A judge on the three moves that turn a work poem into a real one, the test that tells you if the poem is about the job or about you, and the one image that always works.

Work is the most common subject in poetry after love and nature, and it is the most commonly boring. Every contest pile has a stack of work poems that describe the job: the office, the factory, the classroom, the hospital. The poem is a job description, and the job description is the thing that every other poem in the pile is also about.

The work poem that works is not about the job. It is about the person who is doing it.

The job-description trap

The job-description poem is the one that tells you what the job is. The tasks, the hours, the tools, the environment. It is accurate and it is flat, because the job is the subject and the subject is the one thing the reader can see for themselves.

A poem about work should not describe the work. It should describe what the work does to the person who is doing it.

The three moves that turn a work poem into a real one

Move one: put a person in it. The work poem that works has a person in it, a colleague, a boss, a self. The work is the stage; the person is the play. The poem is about the person in the work, not the work itself.

Move two: give the work a body. The work should be doing something to the body, the hands that are calloused, the back that is bent, the eyes that are tired. If the work is just sitting there, it is a backdrop. If it is doing something to the body, it is a subject.

Move three: let the work change you. The best work poems are the ones where the speaker is different at the end than they were at the beginning, and the work is the thing that changed them. The work is the agent; the poem is the change.

The question that decides

Here is the question I ask when I am judging a work poem: is this poem about the job, or is it about the person in the job? If the answer is the job, it is a job description. If the answer is the person, it is a poem.

The job-description poem says 'this is what I do'. The real work poem says 'this is what the job does to me'. The difference is the difference between a resume and a life.

A worked example

Bad: 'I work in an office and I answer the phone and I type on the computer and I go home at five.' The job is the subject; the speaker is absent.

Better: 'I have learned to answer the phone with a voice that is not mine, and I have been doing it for so long that I have forgotten what my own voice sounds like.' The job is the agent; the speaker is the person who is changed by it. The poem is about the person who has been changed by the work, not the work itself.

Where it goes wrong

The trap is the poem that is a complaint about the job. The complaint is not a poem; it is a grievance. The poem is the thing that the job did to the person who was doing it, and the doing is the work.

If you want to see a work poem that is about the person, the prompts library has a set on the everyday and the self, and the contest window is open when the draft is ready. The job is the stage. The person is the play.

Keep reading

For the craft side, the poet-career section covers the deeper method. The teaching module is the page to read next, and the contest is where the work goes when it is done.

By Writory Editorial, for Writory.

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