Jenni Frank

A born wordsmith, I come from a long line of poets, marketing wizards, and sentence-makers

Creative writing came naturally to me from a young age but it long struck me as a hobby, not a career path. Thankfully, the guidance of insightful parents, a few impassioned professors, and motivating mentors led me to understand the power of storytelling in unexpected ways.

With my master’s degree in Creative Writing, I have crafted a successful career in wordsmithery - from poems to grant proposals, I run the gamut of how stories are told. I consider myself lucky to be on a lifelong journey with words, constantly exploring what will happen next…

Ours Poetica

Horace and his Ars Poetica sought to set us on a predictable poetic path – inflicting structure on what feels to me like language’s most liberating outlet. I don’t blame him – the old adage “those who can’t do, teach” suited him perfectly. As he said himself, “Writing nothing myself, I’ll teach the office and function/where to find resources, what feeds and forms the poet/what’s right, what’s not, where virtue and error lead.” No offense to Horace, but teachers like him have sought to put poetry in boxes (on paper, bound in motionless tomes) for centuries and that is a lesson I invite everyone to unlearn.

A simple Poetry Foundation search for Ars Poetica will reveal how many writers of note have penned their own guides to poetry – defining for themselves and their readers what this form can hold. And what better format for explaining poetry than a poem? As a collective, we are often deliriously self-referential. But that closed circle of “self reflecting back to self” felt for me like it was starting to collapse inward, creating yet another box for my words. And it turns out, my words aren’t always well-suited to boxes.

Sometimes my words like movement; they crave touch; they are very fond of partnership, and it only recently came to my attention that they enjoy being photographed. In that case, what better to do than let them out of their boxes? Introduce them to enthusiastic collaborators and see what they inspire?

Together with a posse of muses and some abundantly talented photographers, my words have become our words – a poetica that redefines, leaving the page behind for something more engaging.