Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonie McIntire.
Hi Jonie, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My family has always focused on arts and education. Many nights, especially when I was young, we would read instead of watch tv. Growing up, our household had shelves of books of all kinds, from dictionaries to plays to textbooks. For holidays and birthdays, gifts always included books. My mother and I would write stories for each other. In high school, I was always involved in music and theater as well. Sometimes my parents and I would even pick out three different plays, each pick a character and we would read lines from each play, making a new crazy storyline.
My senior year, a classmate and I were both co-editors of our high school newspaper. She was the conservative voice and I was the liberal. When I started college at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I planned to study Political Science, with the idea of becoming a public defender or possibly public administration. But after two years, I moved to San Francisco, California, studying for a semester at New College of California before working as an Accounting temp.
I loved living in San Francisco but I definitely became aware of the financial limitations. So I moved back to Ohio and enrolled at the University of Toledo to finish my undergraduate degree. There I took a couple of creative writing classes that changed my direction.
The first was a short story class lead by the late Jane Bradley. She brought the power of storytelling to life in such an accessible way, it showed me once again why I love the puzzle of composition. Then in a Poetry class lead by Joel Lipman, my friend Kerry Trautman and I met Adrian Lime. He was a local poet in a small writing group that met in a house on Almeda Street in West Toledo. When we started to go to those meetings, we formed what would become lifelong relationships. Our Almeda Street Poetry Co-op was founded by the late John Swaile, who was a connector and inspired writer. We read with poets of all ages and types at Sam and Andy’s (now Manhattan’s), sharing the stage with professors and students, homeless and suburban writers. And when we weren’t at an open mic, we were meeting at our friend Lori’s house to pour over our poems together.
Within a couple of years, Kerry was married to her high school sweetheart, and Adrian and I were married to each other. And our lives refocused. Children and work took all of our energy and time for a few years.
I was working at HCR ManorCare doing all manner of dry business stuff (I actually loved doing contracts and taxes), when a co-worker named Harley King approached me. He’d heard that I liked to write and knew of an open mic. Transitioning back to writing took time and it wasn’t easy to do while the kids were little and the bills were red. I think that’s a common story for women in the rust belt. But I did start getting out again, reading poetry again, writing a little when I got the chance.
I ended up co-hosting a reading series at the Original Sub Shop with Hod Doering. He’d been hosting that series for maybe twenty years, the same series in fact that my husband Adrian had attended as one of his first open mics. And now I was working with Hod to host special readings at the Art Museum, monthly open mics with featured readers at the Sub Shop, and even publishing anthologies of local poets’ work.
There are poets who write every day. Who send out work religiously, read tirelessly, and make publication a focus. I am not that poet. I thrive when there are open mics and public performance. I grow where poets gather and make collage art or workshop. This was when I really started to understand my focus best. That bringing people together and helping them find their writing focus was where I could fully shine. And that being around poetic energy was what helped feed my own writing.
I got more and more involved with local non-profits, even becoming a board member of a place-based neighborhood non-profit call Sylvania Avenue Neighbors. Our focus was on walkability, arts, and support of local business in the Five Points neighborhood. In fact, I found the group while I was organizing a reading on the greenspace in front of the West Toledo Library. This was 2014, I think, when we co-hosted One Hundred Thousand Poets for Change and had six hours of poetry in the beautiful greenspace in front of the library. The next five years, we hosted Five Points Fest in that space, with music and vendors and food trucks for the neighborhood to enjoy.
And in 2015, I scraped up enough courage to send out a small collection of poems to be published as a chapbook. That’s no small task. Especially because I still didn’t actually write that often. I was working full time, playing sand volleyball in a bar league 3 nights a week, and getting involved in poetry events and local non-profits. I was honestly filling my time with as many soul-affirming things as I could.
In 2016, my first chapbook came out and to celebrate it, I organized a reading with a fellow poet, Cindy Bosley. That reading at what was then Black Cloister became a monthly reading series that exists to this day – Uncloistered Poetry.
I had been focusing on how to balance all of these projects and still have focus and energy for my family. What I came to understand was that I was deeply unhappy with my work life. I did there what I was doing elsewhere, trying to make a better work environment by bringing these non-profits in. I worked with the United Way to host lunch and learn events, organized weekend volunteerism, and found I was just filling my time. What I needed to do was get out of that office. So as a family, we focused our finances on making it possible for me to leave my job at the corporate office.
And in 2017, I was able to do that. Which gave me time to be available for my kids as they navigated high school and entering college. It gave me time to work with Toledo Streets Newspaper on a more consistent basis. It gave me time to continue working within my neighborhood and artistic communities.
Another chapbook was published in 2017, Beyond the Sidewalk through Nightballet Press. And in 2020, I sent out a third. Semidomesticated won Red Flag Poetry’s 2020 Chapbook contest and was published in 2021. Selling out of its limited run within months, it was rereleased through Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2022.
In 2021, the call came out for nominations for the next Lucas County Poet Laureate. I had, of course, known Joel Lipman, who was our first Poet Laureate. And when our second was named, I tracked down Jim Ferris to get to know him and help him organize events. I was contacted to submit an application and sent in my information. After an almost year-long process, I was contacted late in December 2021 and told that I was chosen as the next Poet Laureate.
On the application, we were told we needed to host at least one or two events and that we would be called to read at County Commission events from time to time. We were asked what we planned to do. I said my plan is to continue the community and artistic work I’ve been doing. And in late 2023, when my first term would be coming to a close, they asked if I would like to continue for a second term.
So here I am, in the middle of my second and final term, working on two more chapbooks and possibly a full length collection, looking around at our thriving literary arts community, and so excited to see who will be applying next year to take my place in the future.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Being an artist in the midwest can be challenging in the best of conditions. Most of us have to work full time jobs and fit our creative work in on weekends or evenings. For a few years, our family was fortunate that my husband had a UAW job that paid well and gave us low cost healthcare. Honestly, that financial security gave me the ability to travel and do a lot of artistic outreach work that is impossible otherwise. This past year, in particular, I’ve gone back to work and the schedule and change in income will define my ability to travel in the next year.
I think another difficulty is finding reliable partnerships. Marketing is a full time job and it’s one I have never enjoyed. And being an artist means you do all of your own marketing, you do all of your own paperwork, you do all of your own planning. That’s on top of the organizing work and actual creative work you might do. So finding those institutions and individuals who can really work with you is absolutely key. I’m still working on that.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I think my voice really comes out in poems that go all over the place. That’s how my brain works so it makes sense. I have a couple of poems that have found elements in them, where I bring in bits of advertising or quotes from sports commentators, and it’s just that I hear these things and they match up with something I’d been thinking about.
Writing for me is so often a way of understanding the world or of understanding my own reactions. I’ll have these moments that I want to share – thoughts, feelings, influences. There are so many ingredients and the puzzle is to get them all in at just the right amounts.
I’m most proud of poems where I talk about difficult things but do it in a way that’s accessible. Writing about race or abortion or even just shame and loss, those take real consideration and honesty. It’s especially rewarding when someone reads it or hears it and I see they completely understood, that it said something they needed to hear.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Here’s the thing – life is hard. I know some people will say you must take risks in order to create. Some people say you must suffer. Some say you must produce and if you don’t write you aren’t a writer.
I reject that. Life is hard and it’s mean and beautiful. And if all you did today was survive, that’s a successful day. Many of us fight to stay alive. We have limited rights, we have limited access to mental health support, we are surrounded by messages that tell us who we are and what we aren’t and call us all manner of terrible names.
What is risky is being authentic. I love when people read what I write and they connect with it. But I don’t produce for them to consume. No artist should see themselves as a factory and no artist should be treated like their creativity is compulsory.
I want budding poets to focus on being fearless and being curious. Read everything. Write everything you feel pulled to write. Write things you think are silly or difficult. Don’t limit yourself.
Often I find that there are things I need to talk about but I don’t know how to do it yet. Poetry has always helped me there. I think there’s a place in poetry for everyone to share their stories and learn from each other.
I want all writers to find their voice, share their words, and know there is space for them here in Northwest Ohio. You are welcome here; all backgrounds, ages, incomes, education-levels, genders, skin-tones, sexualities, ability-levels and nationalities.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://joniemcintire.net/
- Instagram: @joniemcintire
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Uncloisteredpoetrytoledo/
- Other: toledopoet.com
