Meter&Mayhem
The Meter&Mayhem Substack is an outreach of the Meter&Mayhem YouTube channel. The purpose is to highlight the joys of both formal metrical writing alongside free verse and prose. Oh, who am I kidding? In 2018, I left academia after 21 years of serving and educating college students. I missed that, but I didn’t miss a system that almost killed me (literally, ovarian cancer and a “no time to rest” mentality…none of which was academia’s fault, but it sure as heck didn’t help none). After studying with Annie Finch and rediscovering the joys of metrical writing, I began Meter&Mayhem, followed quickly by the Meter Cute Interviews where writers chat with me and help me fall in love with the meters and books they’re smitten with.
Is Meter&Mayhem a podcast?
Strictly speaking, no. It’s a video interview series, though I may look into making the audio more widely available through other platforms. But since everyone keeps calling it a podcast, I guess it’s an f-ing podcast.
What’s on the Substack?
This Substack will provide a link to the weekly interview as well as a writing prompt to inspire your creativity and joy. The prompt will be somehow related to the interview. That “somehow” is a big key though. They’ll be related in my mind, but maybe not in yours. The point is to have fun though, so who cares, roll with it.
What is en-rhythming?
According to Annie Finch in her book How to Scan a Poem, it’s "The process of accustoming one’s ear and body to the sound of a particular rhythm in preparation for writing, reading, or scanning that meter.” Each prompt will contain time and suggestions for en-rhythming. I think it’s a process that can be useful for writing both metrical and free verse, poetry and prose. It’s just pretty dang fun too. Can you skip that part of the prompt? Sure, but why? It only saves you like 10 minutes, what are you going to do with that extra 10 minutes? Play Candy Crush? Give it a try, you just might like it.
Who runs Meter&Mayhem?
Jennifer Schomburg Kanke is a writer and editor with over two decades experience teaching at the college level. She has a BSEd (secondary education), MEd (college student personnel), and MA (English literature with a creative thesis) from Ohio University and a PhD (English literature with a creative dissertation) from Florida State University. Her work has recently appeared in New Ohio Review, Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah and Salamander, among other places. She is the winner of a Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Editor’s Choice Award for Fiction. Her zine about her experiences undergoing chemotherapy for ovarian cancer, Fine, Considering, is available from Rinky Dink Press (2019). Her full-length poetry collection, The Swellest Wife Anyone Ever Had, about Appalachian Ohio will be available from White Violet Press in Fall 2024.
In addition to all that teaching experience, she’s also served on the masthead of numerous journals such as Quarter After Eight, Southeast Review, and Pleaides. She’s served as a reader for New Ohio Review, Brevity, Emrys, and The Dodge. For a brief period of time she was on the board for Anhinga Press and was active as a Meter Mentor in Annie Finch’s Poetry Witch Community before leaving to have more time for mayhem. You can contact her at meterandmayhem(at)gmail(dot)com.
To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.
