Derek Beaulieu, Do It Wrong

To write poetry is to make an active choice to assert yourself. To write is to assert presence, to refuse to be voiceless; to articulate your passions, and to know that those passions deserve to be discussed and explored. Poetry is how we assert that the world can be different.
            There is a never-ending flow of books that tell you how to be creative, how to be a writer, how to find success in the literary marketplace. These books propose how to be a success but rarely examine what it means to be a success. They don’t discuss what the benchmarks are for poets, or how striving for success can corrupt writing and lead to disillusionment and loneliness. The pursuit of success often discourages poets from fulfilling their literary potential. These books clog our shelves and present a false narrative that sets poets on an impossible path.
[…]
            This book, on the other hand, proposes—in a series of short chapters, missives, provocations, reflections, and manifestos—another way of thinking about poetry. To write poetry is to contribute to a balanced ecology, not to race to the top of a food chain. Do It Wrong can be read front to back, or back to front, or in snippets as you go. Read this book at random, flip to any page, jump around. Don’t be afraid to mark it up, write in the margins, or cross out the pages that don’t interest you. Dog-ear the pages, tear them out, and pin them to your walls. I hope you’re inspired to write back, to continue the conversation, to scaffold new ways of supporting poetry. Do It Wrong doesn’t have all the answers, but, ideally, it will help you ask more questions. (“CHOOSE WISELY”)

The latest from award-winning Alberta poet Derek Beaulieu is the deliberately provocative Do It Wrong (Picton ON: Assembly Press, 2026), a title subtitled “How To Be A Poet in the Twenty-First Century,” an absolutely readable assemblage of critical essays, offerings and manifestos collected into what might actually be essential reading for those interested in writing and publishing, especially if the very idea confuses, intimidates or frightens. For those unaware, Beaulieu is not only the current Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, but the author of an absolute ton of published books and chapbooks across North America and Europe, including titles such as Surface Tension (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2022) [see my review of such here], Please, No More Poetry: The Poetry of derek beaulieu (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013) [see my review of such here], seen of the crime: essays on conceptual writing (Montreal QC: Snare Books, 2011) and with wax (Coach House Books, 2003) [see my review of such here], as well as a long-established micropress publisher of chapbooks, pamphlets, small journals and other ephemera.

jwcurry once suggested to me that the late Toronto poet bpNichol (1944-1988) was a great writer, to his mind, in large part because he was willing to fail (and therefore manage to achieve what hadn’t even been attempted), but Beaulieu takes that idea a step further, suggesting that anyone who wishes to engage with art generally, or with poetry and/or small press publishing specifically, should be willing to completely go against how it has always and ever be done. “Given the meagre audience for poetry and the microscopic financial rewards,” he writes, early on in the collection, “I suggest that you not only dance as if no one is watching but write as if no one is reading you. Because metaphorically—and mathematically—no one is.” Through a collection of short first-person essays, Beaulieu works through ideas on composition, community, publishing, education, awards, experimental writing, influence, mentors, support and other threads around literary production and engagement that so rarely get discussed, let alone in such detail. Referencing an ethos of sharing and community around The Grateful Dead, for example, in his piece “EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT WRITING I LEARNED FROM THE GRATEFUL DEAD,” he ends with:

            The Grateful Dead and their fans see the music as only one part of a wider artistic life, and they eschew power and ownership at every opportunity except when it can be wielded to increase awareness, make space, or fund colleagues. The Deadheads I know trade tapes, jam together, offer ideas, play their favourite moments for unwitting converts; they are dedicated to being kind. We need more poets to act like Deadheads.

Do It Wrong is incredibly positive and generative, and strikingly honest about how literary publishing works and doesn’t work, offering his years of experience through the literary and small press trenches on how best to approach the work, and what one might expect (and not expect), and how best to propel the art forward. He speaks of experience over commercial reward, and pushing to purposefully make it weirder. Honestly, this is a book I wish anyone engaged with this kind of work, or wishing to, should pick up and read, from the established writer to the emerging ambitious kids seeking glory and career through poetry (and they are very much part of the landscape), to the moody teenager secretly scribbling out lines in their notebook. Beaulieu’s voice is clear-headed and optimistic, articulating a joy through the process of exploration, learning and risk-taking, and a suggestion that those merely in it for themselves will end up in frustration, missing out on all the possibilities that an engaged community offers. Do you know anyone like that? You need to pick up a copy of this book for them, as soon as you are able. As Beaulieu writes to close the short piece “EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS ARE PEOPLE TOO”:

I’ve written this book as much to advocate to poets out there as to remind myself of poetry’s potential, its beauty, and its wish of community. To give me a balm for the dark rings under my eyes, the frayed nerves, the sleepless nights, the anxiety that I see in the mirror and in the faces of my friends and colleagues.
            I write to help me become a better mentor, a better person, moving from words to actions… and to stay actively aware of the implicit and explicit lessons that I pass to my emerging colleagues.