In the spirit of July’s Interdependence theme, this week’s Featured Creative is the inspiringly prolific poet, Meggie Royer. Looking through Tumblr’s “writing” tag sometime in 2013, I came across her blog, Writings for Winter, and have since fallen for her heart-on-your-sleeves-style writing that still manages to connect with cynical millennials. Meggie is a poet who’s fearlessly honest when tackling life’s most difficult emotional challenges. We thought her work perfectly captures a variety of intermingling alliances. Her third book, The No You Never Listened To, is now available via Words Dance Publishing, and her brand new online literary magazine, Persephone’s Daughters is accepting poetry, prose, and artwork focused on empowering female victims of abuse and degradation until July 8th (writers of all gender identities are welcome to submit). Throughout the week, we will feature some of our favorite poems from her blog, as well as her responses to questions about her work/creative process.
~Kim Kaletsky, Ideablog Managing Editor
“All Human Beings Spend 1/3 of Their Lives Asleep”
In physics class last year our professor talked about how dark energy
is still a transient concept, something that scientists everywhere
have yet to solidify with proof and consensus. And then one girl
in the class raised her hand and said that we spend one-third
of our lives asleep, so why should it matter whether dark energy exists
or how the universe was formed anyway?
And I thought about my grandfather eating his cereal alone every morning,
because he’s so used to having it while my grandmother ate her eggs
that he can no longer get rid of the routine;
it’s ingrained inside his bones like DNA.
I hope that if the universe ever does end, and if dark energy
has something to do with it, then what I had on this earth
was a good life, and maybe the two-thirds of it I spent with you
weren’t so bad after all.
Buy Meggie’s latest book, The No You Never Listened To, here. 
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Much of your fan base seems to find you via social media, particularly Tumblr. Do you think it’s important for a poet to build a social media following before seeking publication these days? Why did you choose Tumblr over other social media channels?
This is a good, complicated question. I think if you’re seeking publication in literary journals/magazines, a social media following isn’t necessary because your acceptance into those journals doesn’t depend on your following but on the style and quality of your writing, as well as what kind of content the journals are seeking. No lit journal cares if you’re Tumblr famous or if you’ve ever even heard of Tumblr or Figment or Wattpad. They just care about the quality of your work.
But on the other hand, I do think a social media following can be immensely helpful when you’re seeking publication of a book, especially when you get it published, because if no one has heard of your writing before, how are you going to sell your book as well as you want to? Who will read it? Where will all your eager readers and buyers be when the time comes for your book to launch?
Honesty I chose Tumblr over other social media channels because it was really the only platform I’d heard of that I could use for writing. I’d never heard of Figment or Wattpad or anything else, and I’m glad I chose Tumblr because it’s been so interactive.
See more of Meggie’s Featured Creative posts on our Ideablog
~~~Meggie Royer is a writer and photographer from the Midwest who is currently majoring in Psychology at Macalester College. Her poems have previously appeared in Words Dance Magazine, The Harpoon Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, and more. She has won national medals for her poetry and a writing portfolio in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and was the Macalester Honorable Mention recipient of the 2015 Academy of American Poets Student Poetry Prize.
