Alumni Author Spotlight: Kaleb Worst

Welcome back to another installment of our Alumni Author Spotlight! This week, we have Kaleb Worst, author of Bad Poetry, to talk about his experience with Undergraduate Students for Publishing.

My name is Kaleb Worst, and I graduated in 2014 with a BFA in Writing, Literature and Publishing for poetry. After graduating, I moved back to my home state of Minnesota. I have been living in Minneapolis since.

No amount of education can ever provide the fundamental lessons needed for living in the “real” world. At least, that’s what I’ve found to be my truth. Living out my own, much more stable rendition of Bukowski’s Factotum, I have had several jobs at various places since graduating, all of them resting points along a grander journey. These jobs have taught me discipline, patience, and most importantly, how to acquire as much free food as possible. The only thing that matters is that I make rent as I continue to grow, in spirit and in writing. I am hoping to attend graduate school at Naropa University in the fall.

I have had a poetry blog for nearly my entire writing career. Lately, it serves as more of a storage unit than a breeding ground. I continue to post whatever I write there. The URL is avicioussquare.com. There’s a lot to sift through—some good, much bad—but for me, it is a point of pride that nothing is private. Nearly everything I have written down is there for anyone to see.

For almost a whole year, I have been working on my second book, Woe to the Non Renewable. I am more proud of it each day I continue to toil away. Where Bad Poetry was expansive and encompassing, a sort of “best of” up to that point, this second book is tightly wound—only twenty poems, bound by themes out of necessity, very personal stuff. I have a lot of confidence in getting it published, despite its more confessional nature. It is solid proof that, as I have grown up, so too has my writing, and I absolutely cannot wait for everyone to read it. I’ve put a lot of care into it.

I am indebted to Pub Club for giving me the opportunity to share my voice. Giving students a chance to immerse themselves in the publishing process, in any capacity, is such a gift to the students of Emerson. One of my favorite memories of this process was being blown away by the incredible artwork the design team had drafted for Bad Poetry. If you haven’t seen it, you should—Talia Rochmann’s illustrations, and the rest of the work by the design team, elevated my first book to a level of cool I never thought possible. I cannot thank them enough.

Publishing Bad Poetry was, as Whitman would say, a “profound lesson of reception.” It is one thing to publicly post your writing in your own virtual space…it is another thing entirely to have your book sitting in your grandmother’s bathroom. Suddenly the concept of audience becomes un-abstracted, and you have to take a good, hard look at what you’re putting out there—is it true? Is it me? That was a lesson I am glad to have learned early…I am only 22, and I think my next book is so much more aware of that reality. Perhaps aware, but no less inappropriate. It is okay to be inappropriate if you think that it’s true. No matter what anyone tells you. You have to trust yourself.

Besides that, I have no fresh advice. No matter what you are writing, be it poetry, fiction or non-fiction, the only thing you have to go on is your instincts. Without trying to sound too rebellious, I was asked (politely) to reconsider the title of Bad Poetry, seeing as it was the club’s first book of poetry published. There was a discussion to be had there, and my editors were sharp and gracious enough to have it. The title was important to me, but there was that issue of reception to think about. We decided it was best if I wrote an introduction, which ended up being a hugely successful addition. I will never forget that process, because it proved to me two things: that the Undergraduate Students for Publishing Club was committed to seeing my vision become reality, and that I was right to trust myself in a period of doubt. I would urge any aspiring writer to work as hard as they can to make their vision a reality. As a writer, to work hard, you have to care hard. So care. It is worth it.