Who Counts as Part of The Scene?
Dr. Rachel Turney has lived in Erie, Colorado for four years but has never attended a local open mic or literary event.
She has never met her closest poet friends in person.
She does not even read her own poetry aloud.
Yet, she’s just as Boulder Poetry Scene as you and me.
I know, I’m surprised to hear myself say this too. I’ll admit there was a time when I didn’t believe that these online poets, whose literary work and relationships exist purely on the web, had anything to do with us. My view was maybe we were both writing poetry, but we were not Poets in the same sense, and they were certainly not Boulder Poets.
But this was me being kinduva dick. You see, I wanted to define the poetry scene as what I perceived myself to be best suited for – winning over an in-person (possibly even hostile) local open mic audience with funny weird relatable poems delivered boom-voicedly with an array of risky performance gimmicks, and then celebrating by getting loaded with everyone afterward.
This way it’s me and my people who are the special ones, see. And maybe then I could be the most special one out of all of us. And maybe I’ll be irreplaceable enough for someone to luvvv me.
But what can I say? I’ve been humbled now. Especially in the last couple years. Whereas I usta worry a lot about positioning myself in the center of local poetry, now too much scene shit, work shit, mental health shit, world shit have left me with strange new thoughts like – what about all the Poets who aren’t like me? could they be just as valid and special too?
And ya know what? I myself haven’t stood atop chair hollering out bawdy taxi-driver tales to a packed bar in a long long time.
So when Rachel Turney, who I didn’t previously know, responded to the Boulder Poetry Scene call for journalistic writing about the local community with a pair of articles on writers and publishers I also didn’t know, I had to reconsider my old views on who counts as ‘The Scene.’
Who is Rachel Turney?
As I mentioned, she’s relatively new to the area, but even newer to a serious life of poetry. While she wrote some as a child, and attended some open mics in college, most of her adult life was spent working toward her degrees (an Ed.D in curriculum development), and establishing a career and family. But once that settled down she was called upon by the Gods of Literature to become a Poet.
I know I just wrote this whole long thing about my appreciation for the ColdOldPoet, but, man oh man, do I envy the NewPoet. The energy, the flexibility, the total absence of baggage. When Turney entered the mix a couple years ago, she was certainly not clinging to some obsolete notion that a Poet had to be physically in the same space at the same time as other Poets to be considered True Poet.
She was already living a significantly digital life – working remotely as an educator for the Immigration and Refugee Center in Greeley, and, because of her nomadic adulthood, connecting mostly thru technology with various family and friends scattered across the globe. When she surveyed the 2024-25 poetry landscape, of course she first tapped the virtual side of things and discovered a thriving network of online authors, presses, events, workshops, and journals that felt exciting and accessible to her.
She began reading online journals and directly seeking out poets and editors whose work and publications she particularly connected to. Especially thru Instagram, she quickly started building a network of likeminded allies, gaining encouragement and support, finding publications that fit her own work, and promoting each other’s projects.
What is ‘Poetry (in Brief)’?
Last year, as a result of a ‘wine-fueled idea’ Turney decided to start hosting her own monthly reading series over Zoom, Poetry (in Brief), which would focus on a particular theme, such as ‘heartbroken,’ ‘coffee,’ or ‘erotic food,’ and feature multiple poets whose work she had discovered and appreciated online.
Turney has never met any of these poets in real life, yet they’ve quickly become some of her closest friends and most loyal supporters. What began as cold call DMs and out-on-a-limb feature invitations, has now become something much deeper. She estimates she nows ‘talks to 10-15 poets a day’ thru social media, video conferencing, and phone, having conversations about editing, hosting, and publishing, but even just how’s-life-been-going chitchat. She’s also made a long term ‘writing buddy’ with whom she meets regularly to exchange work virtually, and even recently wrote a letter of recommendation for her, just like she would do for one of her in person ‘flesh friends.’
One of the main reasons for creating Poetry (in Brief) was that Rachel does not read her own poetry aloud. Tho she possesses a wealth of experience as a public speaker, and is clearly an engaging and welcoming event host, as a reader she often gets too thwarted by the intensity of the emotions behind her poetry. But she received advice from one of her many poet acquaintances that its okay not to read and suggested instead holding space for others by hosting an event.
There are now readings lined up on second Saturdays through the fall (they’ll be on the Boulder Poetry Scene Calendar), and starting in the summer will be collaborations with editors of various presses. The next one is Saturday 2/14, 11am MST – here’s the Zoom link.
What is Women Making Soup Together about?
Turney will be releasing her debut chapbook Women Making Soup Together, on February 14 from Pueblo Colorado’s Vinegar Press. She worked closely with editor Cathrina Jakeman to form a cohesive and tight collection, in which each piece has some connection to soup.
Turney, whose work often explores themes of ‘womanhood, food, and family,’ has a strong sense of social consciousness particularly about women. In her words, Women Making Soup Together “is a collection of resistance poetry about the need for women to reclaim identity and to stand together and to not drop the ball… I have two stepdaughters in their 20s and a sister in her 20s. I’m seeing them say like, ‘oh, everything’s great for women. Everything’s wonderful.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m not sure why you think that… things will never be good enough until there’s equity.’”
For the release event, billed as “3 Women 3 Books,” which will directly follow this month’s Poetry (in Brief), Turney will join forces with two other authors with new releases – Sierra G Rowe (The Devil Bakes a Cake for his Wife) and Nina Garner (The Composition of Returns (Crying Heart Press)). Rowe and Garner will read from their own work as well as Women Making Soup Together on Turney’s behalf.
What are the Challenges of the Online Poet?
While Turney seems to be thriving in the online poetry world, it would be dishonest to say she isn’t facing many of the same issues as any contemporary poet.
When it comes to book promotion, she responds “I don’t know how to do any of that.” From my perspective, she’s doing considerably more than I did with my recent released books, which basically put every egg in the basket of one big puppet show at an indoor volleyball court. Meanwhile she’s doing interviews, making promo posts and flyers, getting books in libraries, and receiving lots of shout outs and support from her network of poets. But she’s also aware of the limitations of modern readership, comparing getting published to ‘winning a small claims court case,’ and sharing that even her grandma’s response to her publication announcement was, ‘everybody has a book, Rachel.’
She mentions a recent publication which only got 15 views, ‘and one of them was definitely me and one of them was my husband,’ acknowledging that, while we can intellectually understand that we shouldn’t attach too much to expectations and that the process of creation should be fulfilling in itself, it can be hard to not to think about the attention we receive in relation to the investment we put into our art.
She also thinks about the transactional nature of the relationships between many of the online poets and publications and whether you’re getting as much in return as you’re giving out. It’s uncertain if one day burnout will creep in or how longterm her commitment will sustain, but for the moment overall, despite these issues, Turney is still really thrilled with and nourished by the connections she’s made thru online poetry.
What Did She Submit to Boulder Poetry Scene?
I suppose the thing that initially caught my attention about Turney, was simply the fact that she wrote about other poets’ work, which is a core facet of the Boulder Poetry Scene project but hasn’t always been easy to scrounge up from people lately. Turney has a background in journalism, and regularly writes reviews, interviews, and reporting on various poets and publications which interest her. On her Instagram account (@turneytalks), she posts mini-write ups she calls ‘Thumps.’ A self-described ‘short writer,’ Turney’s work has always tended to be concise, which just happens to align well with today’s social media formats and audience attention spans, (unlike how many words is this?).
Where Else Can You Find Her Work?
As a fearless submitter of her work, you can find Turney’s poetry, photography, and articles in journals all over the web. Here’s a thorough list of them all.
She has also a regular sex column with Bareback Magazine called “Friday Night in the Suburbs.”
Her website has up to date info and links for Poetry (in Brief) as well as other recent news.
Who Counts as Part of The Scene? (Reprise)
So there ya go, I actually covered an Online Poet… and after speaking with her, and witnessing how energized she is by the work she’s done and connections she’s made, I feel more inspired to get myself out there more in-person and online.
While Turney is clearly content with her digital community, she says she may consider dipping her toes in the local scene, asking me during our interview about what events I might recommend. But whether she does or not, I insist that she is still also a Boulder Poetry Scene Poet.
I can get really caught up in resenting changes in our community in the 23 years since I first arrived here. As I was telling Rachel, a Poet usta hafta go to specific geographic locations to find other Poets. The Big Cities were an obvious destination, but there were also these cool smalltown anomalies like Boulder, which was fueled by its colleges, including Naropa University, founded by Beat Legends who helped create this little island of countercultural rebel poetry in the middle of the country. And it made us special.
Yeah, I’m coming back to that word again. Special. And I’ll probably bring it up at my therapy appointment this week too. Considering young people’s tendency now toward online over in-person spaces, the ongoing affordability crisis in our town, and the legacy of the Beats fading further and further into the past, what is our Scene’s unique identity, and mine by extension, if we are no longer exclusively necessary to bring poets together in community?
I think step one is probably just grieving. It’s okay for things to change. It’s okay to lose what was once meaningful to you. This is the way it’s designed.
And step two might be to expand the idea of who the community is. You could say that Rachel Turney is part of The Scene, by way of home address currently within an acceptable radius of Boulder, Colorado 80301. But maybe we can even take that further. Not just those who live nearby, sharing their work in person or online, or even just privately writing to themselves without no one ever knowing, but in this world in which big forces are constantly trying to divide us into little helpless pieces, maybe we need to broaden our sense of tribe to all the Poets everywhere, maybe even all the human race.
Jonathan Bluebird Montgomery is the founder and editor of Boulder Poetry Scene. The author of Pizzas and Mermaid, The Reality Traveler, Nine Books (at Once!), and Jonathan and The Awesomenauts, he’s been on the Boulder poetry scene since he first came to get his MFA at Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School in 2003. You can find more of his work at jonathanbluebirdmontgomery.com or subscribe to his Substack here
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