It's Poetry at Work Day 2024!

I had lunch with a friend and former colleague last week. We hadn’t worked together since 2015, and I hadn’t seen her since 2018. But we were Facebook friends, and in the intervening years stayed aware of families and careers.  

While we talked, I was reminded of a year in both of our lives, and the lives of some 23 other colleagues. From 2008 to 2009, the group of us were part of something not seen before and never seen again in our company – the almost overnight creation of a 25-person department focused on new technologies, straightforward communications with employees, and dealing in a new way with issues (of which there were a multitude) besetting the company.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Realism in Modern Art – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Poetry Prompt: Journeys! Or…Veni, Vidi, Vici – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Boxing – poem by Zack Eswine at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

The Kingdom of the Hwicce – Annie Whitehead at Casting light upon the shadow. 

It’s Poetry at Work Day 2023!

In 2014, I hit a wall at work. I was marginalized. I was being paid for work far below my experience and capabilities. Wanting to get up in the morning was increasingly problematic. I made attempts to move to other positions, including one major attempt, but the job was handed off to someone who was a problem in an unrelated division whom they need to move somewhere. The individual was told to come to me for guidance and mentoring.  

It wasn’t the first wall I’d ever encountered in my career, but it was the last one. In the early fall, I told my boss I was retiring in May. Surprisingly, to me at least, the news was not received well. It wasn’t that I was irreplaceable in my job; the work was easy and unchallenging. I never learned why my boss and others were so upset.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Tuesday, Jan. 11: It’s Poetry at Work Day 2022!

It’s Poetry at Work Day, and I find myself thinking about names in the workplace.   

I’ve been long fascinated with the names of characters in the works of Charles Dickens. Many of them are descriptive of the characters they represent. Some he made up out of whole cloth. And some were borrowed, or stolen, from the names of real people. “Pickwick,” for example, came from the name of the owner of a coach firm in Bath. “Oliver Twiste” was the name of a real person. Dickens borrowed, and sometimes barely disguised, the names of friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and people mentioned in newspapers. 

 

The names of these characters often contain their own poetry. While reading a paper from 1917 on the origins of the names of Dickens’s characters, I began to think about the names, and the poetry of names, of people I’ve known over more than four decades of work life. My own last name likely started life a millennium or two ago to differentiate a father from a son, or an older and younger brother. 

To continue reading, please see me post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

New Review of "Poetry at Work"

U.K. poet James Sale has posted a review of Poetry at Work at Amazon UK. Here’s what he had to say.

“There are at least two reasons why this is an important book on poetry, as relevant now as when it was published some 6 years ago. First, Glynn Young realises that over the last 30 years poetry has been hijacked by academics; it’s no longer a poetry by the people for the people. Rather, every second poet you hear about nowadays is Professor X or Dr Y doing research on language somewhere you have never heard of. This is pernicious as it has created a cartel of influence in which the ‘experts’ congratulate each others’ books, but in reality very few people are reading them. Why would they? I cannot think of any academic poet of the last 30 years who has written one poem that stands comparison with Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.’ 

“The thing about poetry is that it is not written by ‘experts’ – its origin is very different. Which leads on to the second reason why Young’s book is so important. If poetry is highly unlikely to be found in academia, where is it to be found? The answer of course is that it will be found in real life, and more specifically, as Young shows, at work. What Young does is re-examine how poetry is everywhere around us, and that it is the poet’s at work who have so much to contribute. That said, as Young observes, ‘Poets, if they remain creative, can find themselves as road kill on the organisational highway.’ It would be good to see these ideas developed further and not allowed to remain fallow; poetry deserves to be widely disseminated and read, and this will never happen so long as the ‘academics’ have it ‘in thrall’. Read this book – it’s worth it.”

The Poetry of the Best Job You Ever Had

It started with a phone call from a friend. “Did you see the job ad in the paper?” he said.

“What job ad?” I said.

“The city school district is looking for a communications director. You’d be perfect.”

“Do you hate me or something?” I said.

The city school district was indeed looking for a communications director. The district was in organizational chaos. A reform school board had brought in a management consultant firm from New York to reorganize the district. Schools had been closed. Central office staff had been laid off – some 800 people. Management of cafeterias, school buses, and other services was being outsourced. The management firm was doing what had to be done, but the district was so strangled by its own politics and so intertwined with city politics that it was impossible to try to make the changes from within. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Mesh via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Poetry of the Crisis

There’s nothing like a good crisis to demonstrate how little control an organization has. There’s also nothing like a good crisis to uncover the poetry in our souls.

A product cancellation was looming, the cancellation to be imposed by a government agency. Thousands of jobs were at stake, not to mention income, corporate stock price, reputation, and significant disruptions for customers. The crisis had been coming for nearly a year, contained within official communications between the government and the company.

As time passed, internal anxiety grew. In the communications area, we were a relatively minor player, except for the moment at which the crisis would go public. Then we would occupy the most important position in the overall situation. Blow it there, and the product would be destroyed in the marketplace.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Ante Hamersmit via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Poetry of Speechwriting

The most solitary job in corporate America is not the position of CEO. It’s the position of the CEO’s speechwriter. It can be the loneliest job as well.

I spent about two thirds of my career in speechwriting. Forty years ago, no one aspired to be a corporate speechwriter. You would find people who wanted to be presidential or political speechwriters, but most people who ended up in corporate speechwriting did so by accident. In my own case, I was 25 years old and assigned to a huge issue threatening to disrupt the company. The executive in charge of marketing needed a speech on the topic. The regular speechwriters are unavailable, so I was asked to do it. My strength was, in this case, knowing the subject matter. I had written speeches for myself; I had taken a course in American speeches in college. But I hadn’t written for someone else. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Alem Omerovic via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Poetry of the Organization Chart

I was sitting with a woman in the Human Resources Department. There had been a reorganization of our department, part of a general reshuffling across the company, and I’d been assigned to sit with her to work out the new organization chart. 

You would think this was something of a useless exercise. Shouldn’t it be a simple matter of “here’s the boss, here are his or her direct reports, and here’s who reports to them.” But it was anything but simple, and I was to get a lesson in the Byzantine art form of corporate organization charts.

First, she pointed out, not all of the boss direct reports had the same title. Some were directors; some were managers. Next, there were directors and there were directors – a title wasn’t necessarily indicative of grade level, and grade level was everything. The chart had to indicate that by a subtle positioning of the boxes, with some slightly more elevated than the others. The same thing applied to the managers. Then there was the problem of some managers have more people reporting to them than directors did. 

To continue reading please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Alex Kotliarskyi via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Poetry of the Boss

More than 40 years ago, I was handed my college diploma and, two days later, showed up for work at my first official job. I didn’t realize it until much later, but I walked into the doors of my employer that day carrying an assumption. I believed that people in positions of authority – bosses – always knew what they were doing. Why else would they be bosses?

Slightly more than a decade later, my assumption continuing to take body blow after body blow, I was presented incontrovertible evidence that my assumption had been flat-out wrong.

A group of us were sitting in a conference room, waiting for the news to go public that one of the company’s top products had a problem. The first indication would be the stock market. We all knew the news was imminent, and we had prepared for it as if a tsunami was about to strike, which, metaphorically, turned out to be true. The call came, confirming that the news was public, and for a very brief moment we experienced a silence.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

The Poetry of the Interview

It was the strangest interview I’ve ever participated in – on either side of the table.

A friend had talked me, or conned me, into interviewing for a job with St. Louis Public Schools – the director of communications. 

The school district was in chaos – an outside management firm had been brought in to run the district, schools were being consolidated and closed, services were being outsourced, central office layoffs had emptied more than half of the headquarters building, and protests by parents, students, employees, former employees, teachers and the teachers’ union were daily. School board factions were fighting each other through the news media. The news media was already showing up early each morning at the district’s administration building – knowing there would always be a new crisis to report.

And I wanted to insert myself into that?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Photograph by Marten Bjork via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Poet at Work

I was working in communications for a Fortune 500 company. A large portion of the day-to-day work was meetings. We had a team-based culture, and to our work, our teams had to meet. 

The teams, and the meetings, proliferated. We had departmental meetings. We had cross-functional meetings. We had committee and subcommittee meetings. We had telephone meetings, video meetings, and online chat session meetings. We had one-on-one meetings. We had staff meetings. We had briefing sessions, strategy discussions, and crisis planning meetings. We often had meetings to plan meeting agendas.

I often wondered if the curse placed upon Adam and his work for eating of the Tree of Knowledge possibly included meetings.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 20: The Poetry of Retirement

I might have retired twice from the same company.

I officially retired in 2015, and I’d had given a year’s notice. I could have continued working, but the fact was that my skills, experience, and abilities were being wasted. I could have continued for a few more years, perhaps hoping for another general downsizing and a severance package, but work had become almost painful. 

When I told the head of the department of my plan to retire, the response was surprising. He became angry. It wasn’t as if I was irreplaceable. Without really knowing, I suspect it was more a case of I was doing it on my timetable, and it wasn’t something the department was planning on its timetable.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 19: The Poetry of Workplace Restoration

For a long time, I had what several of colleagues called the most interesting office at work. Because I was a speechwriter, I was expected to (a) read everything the CEO did, (b) read a lot of business books, particularly popular ones, (c) study books about speechwriting, and (d) read books on current issues. All of which meant I was doing a lot of reading. And the CEO likcd to read the novels of John Updike, just about anything by Charles Dickens, and anything published on the subject of Winston Churchill.

For a reader like me, this was a great job. 

One end of my office was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Another wall had a smaller but still sizeable bookshelf. I also had a row of books on a credenza. It’s no surprise that my office was known as the building library. 

My “frequently consulted” books included poetry. That was by design. I had several old American poetry anthologies, and my Norton’s Anthology of English Literature (college textbooks) included considerable poetry by British writers. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 18: The Poetry of Electronic Work

Think back 25 years (if you’re old enough). It sounds almost quaint today, but email was just beginning to come into its own. At the company where I was working, with more than 40,000 people, some 5,000 had been brought into the email system. Eventually, all would be, but 5,000 was enough to give us critical mass for a new communications venture – an email newsletter for employees. 

To show how new this was, only one other company in the United States had an employee email newsletter. I hoped we would be the second.

I had meetings with the people in charge of the email system – not only were there various departments, there was also an email council overseeing email operations. My proposal was a text-only newsletter to be sent to the 5,000 people on email.

The response was something akin to asking people to sit in a room full of rats infected with bubonic plague. I didn’t know what I was asking. There were too many hardware platforms. I didn’t understand the technical aspects of the work. The system could crash. The company was too diverse for people to care about what was happening in other divisions. To be fair, these objections came not only from IT people but also from my own communications colleagues.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 17: The Poet Blogs the Layoff

Layoffs were coming. The big announcement from the CEO was circulated by email. It was a masterpiece of vagueness. It didn’t say how many people would be affected. It didn’t say when the affected people would know. It did say there would be a severance program, although it included no details. 

In short, the important things people wanted to know weren’t communicated. I’m sure management congratulated itself on communicating, but the rumors had already been circulating and people were already far beyond “layoffs are coming.” What people also knew was that the people being laid off might be the fortunate ones. Those who remained would likely be reorganized, with more work and fewer people to get it done.

Having been through this before at another company, I had a better idea of what would happen and what people really cared about that colleagues who hadn’t been through it, especially younger colleagues. A small group came to me and asked if I would consider blogging about my past experience on the company’s intranet. I said I’d think about it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 16: The Poetry of Unemployment

It happens to most of us, at one time or another in our careers. You’re called into the boss’s office and discover there’s an HR person waiting as well. Yep, you’re being laid off.

Sometimes you’re expecting it; sometimes you’re not. In my case, I knew it was coming. A work colleague had found out and couldn’t keep it to herself. She tried to look appropriately sad and concerned, but it didn’t work. She was actually rather gleeful (yes, there was a history here). I looked at her and said, “You won’t understand this, but a considerable amount of good will come out of this for me.” Her almost angry response: “You’re just in denial.” 

Perhaps I was. I felt my ears grow warm, a sure indication that I fully understood what was happening. And I really upset the process when I walked from her office to my boss’s office and told him I knew I was shortly to be laid off. He blew up – because it upset the usual process for these “elimination” programs. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 15: The Poetry of the Best Job You Ever Had

It started with a phone call from a friend. “Did you see the job ad in the paper?” he said.

“What job ad?” I said.

“The city school district is looking for a communications director. You’d be perfect.”

“Do you hate me or something?” I said.

The city school district was indeed looking for a communications director. The district was in organizational chaos. A reform school board had brought in a management consultant firm from New York to reorganize the district. Schools had been closed. Central office staff had been laid off – some 800 people. Management of cafeterias, school buses, and other services was being outsourced. The management firm was doing what had to be done, but the district was so strangled by its own politics and so intertwined with city politics that it was impossible to try to make the changes from within. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 14: The Poetry of Interpersonal Conflict

A conflict in the workplace is not uncommon. A workplace conflict battled out on Facebook, however, pulling in co-workers and the company, is not something you see every day.

It happened at my company. And Human Resources asked that my team, the corporate social media team, do something about it. The fact that it was happening outside business hours was a complication. 

It was a nasty fight. Things someone would never say in an office setting were erupting on a daily basis. Friends and family members were egging the two combatants on. At the time, social media were relatively new, and this was something new on social media. Twitter trolling parties were already common, but I’d never seen two fellow employees arguing on Facebook.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 13: The Poetry of the Crisis

There’s nothing like a good crisis to demonstrate how little control an organization has. There’s also nothing like a good crisis to uncover the poetry in our souls.

A product cancellation was looming, the cancellation to be imposed by a government agency. Thousands of jobs were at stake, not to mention income, corporate stock price, reputation, and significant disruptions for customers. The crisis had been coming for nearly a year, contained within official communications between the government and the company.

As time passed, internal anxiety grew. In the communications area, we were a relatively minor player, except for the moment at which the crisis would go public. Then we would occupy the most important position in the overall situation. Blow it there, and the product would be destroyed in the marketplace.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 12: The Poetry of Transparency

It was the days before PowerPoint. Holding our overhead transparencies, three of us sat waiting to be called into the management meeting. We were three public relations people, three poets, working for a chemical company. And it was our job to explain to the people running the company why we had to tell people how much pollution the company was responsible for, and, more to the point, what we thought the company should do about it.

If you know anything about working for corporations, you know that this would not be a moment to inspire self-confidence. In fact, we expected to be shredded.

A new federal law had been implemented. Companies large and small had to publish, annually, how much toxic emissions were emitted each year from operations. Our chemical company would be reporting big numbers. So would automobile and tire manufacturers, and steel makers. So would newspapers (toxic emissions are associated with printing presses). All manufacturers were affected, but especially chemical companies.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.