Director’s Notes: Episode 266 - The Return of Poetry Week

I went out with a friend of mine, and she was sharing some poems she wrote that are being published later this year. I told her it had been a MINUTE since I had written any poetry at all, and she asked if I’d share some of my stuff with her.

Later we had a really nice email back and forth that was basically like “Oh my gosh, I really love your use of XYZ here and how you brought back the theme of ABC here,” and so on. It was really a really nice exchange we had. Friendly, yes, but also really inspirational.

I write full time for Night Vale and Unlicensed and Within the Wires, as well as many other pitches that haven’t gone anywhere (yet!). It’s a dream job, but like any job, it is work, and when you are in the daily grind of work (whether it’s accounting or construction or baking macarons) you can sometimes lose sight of what you love to do. And I had lost sight of how much I love poetry.

In spite of what your parents tell you, poetry doesn’t pay the bills, and so I kind of let my hobby slip away. Sure, I’ll read poems from time to time, but I don’t think I’d sat down and really written any for about 7 or 8 years. And so I thought, we gotta bring back Poetry Week.

And here it is! Unlike the last Poetry week some 247 episodes ago, I wrote all of these myself, rather than soliciting poems from people I knew on Twitter. The first poem in this episode is a sonnet I wrote 11 years ago, and probably my best attempt at that strict format. But the rest are all written FOR Night Vale.

Anyway, this episode was super fun to write, because I got to revisit a style I had gotten away from. I was able to play around in metaphors and rhythms and occasionally some rhymes. And listen, I know Cecil’s a fictional character narrating to a fictional world, but I hope his urgings this episode get you to write some poems of your own.

Jeffrey Cranor
April 15, 2025

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