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Hi, I'm Jayne. I'll be your editor today.
Do you ever write a poem and think, “I’ve read something like this before?”
The poem isn’t bad. You wrote it in earnest. It’s polished and technically sound. It is clearly a competent piece of work.
It’s also deeply familiar.
It reaches its resolution, lands with the reader, and does all the things a “good” poem is supposed to do. Then it quietly dissolves into the larger body of poetry that feels just like it.
Your poem isn’t wrong, or boring, or embarrassing. But it is interchangeable. Replaceable. Forgettable.
This is what I mean by the Clone Factory.
Let’s Clear Something Up
The Clone Factory does not churn out bad poems. It produces perfectly acceptable ones. These poems follow the rules, use the right imagery, and hit the right ending beat. They have the right emotional arc, the right amount of vulnerability, and contain absolutely nothing that would get you called out by a reader.
And then you repeat the formula, poem after poem.
I am not accusing you of laziness. Sameness often comes when you are absorbing feedback from well-intentioned readers who offer you their preferences. In this case, safety is rewarded and risk is gently discouraged. Sameness can also stem from emulating others who have popular success. You learn to sound like a poet at the expense of your true voice.
This is also not a beginner problem. Plenty of skilled writers end up here. In fact, the better you get, the easier it is to reproduce what already works. The Clone Factory thrives on competence. I cannot think of any writer who doesn’t want to at least be known as competent.
No, I Don’t Want You to Be Weird
Somewhere out there, a rumour started that I want to try to make everyone write weird stuff.
That’s not true.
I do try to encourage writers to look at things differently, to embrace feeling a bit uncomfortable with unfamiliar territory, and to find their own voices.
But that doesn’t mean I want anyone to be weird for weird’s sake.
Escaping the Clone Factory is about being creative, intentional, and specific. There’s nothing weird about that.
It’s the Rules That Are Weird
Most of the rules we follow in poetry aren’t actually rules. They’re habits and inherited constraints. They’re assumptions we stopped questioning because they started to feel like common sense. Poems resolve. Imagery behaves in a rational way. Meaning clarifies itself so as to be polite to the reader. Heaven forbid our work is misinterpreted.
But as I’ve said before: you can put the glass anywhere. It doesn’t have to go on the table.
Once you realize that, things can shift. Mountains will not move. There will be no ripples in the time-space continuum. You will not become Icarus. But you may start noticing where your choices are automatic instead of intentional. You might see that some of your lines were written by muscle memory. Some are clichés, but some are personal tropes.
And everybody has them.
Try Noticing Your Habits
That’s it. That’s the ask.
I’m not telling you what to write, or what style you should have, or telling you to become some edgy art-nouveau performative poet.
I hate unironic performative originality, to be honest. There’s nothing original about it.
Instead, I want you to think about each line you put down and how it got there. I want to discuss how your voice might have been flattened, how aesthetic choices have a default mode, and how sameness creeps in.
What I don’t have is any rules for you. Sure, we can discuss how to bend constraints, distort structures, create paradoxes, and gasp resist easy lines. But I’m walking the path with you, not handing you a map. We’re learning together.
Next issue:A nerd’s CSI-style interrogation of a poem.
As always, happy writing.
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Poetry: January 07, 2026 Issue [#13539]
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