The Internet-famous poet Lily Myers ’15 spoke to the Argus about her inspirations and aspirations, as well as her soon-to-be-published book.

The celebrity of Lily Myers ’15 extends far beyond Wesleyan. A video of her reciting her original poem “Shrinking Women” at the 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational currently has over 4.8 million views on YouTube. Myers carved some time out of her busy and writing-intensive life on campus to talk to The Argus about her poetic inspirations, her soon-to-be-published book, and creepy men on Facebook.

 

The Argus: So what are you involved with on campus?
Lily Myers: I do a lot of writing on campus, a lot of spoken word, slam poetry, creative writing. I lead a weekly writing workshop called Writers’ Bloc. It’s kind of a free open space for anyone to come, and there’s, like, journal writing or poetry and then sharing and giving each other comments.

 

A: How did you first get started writing poetry and just writing in general?
LM: I started in high school. I didn’t think I liked poetry at all, but then in my junior of high school I accidentally took a creative writing class and loved it. And my high school was really awesome and had open mics, so I started going to open mics and performing, and then I started organizing the open mics, and then I really loved it.

 

A: “Shrinking Women” [Myers’s 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational performance] has 4.8 million views right now. Did you ever expect it to get that popular?
LM: No, I really didn’t! Trust me, it was a shock. Yeah, it’s wild! It feels like it happened a really long time ago, but I’ve had opportunities open because of it. Which was really nice and it helped me think about what kind of work I want to do in the future.

 

A: What kind of opportunities?
LM: Um, well I’ve had the opportunity to read poetry at certain places. I read at Boston College last semester, and gave some poems and a talk for their Love Your Body week, which was really cool for me because I really like to combine poetry with body empowerment, especially young women’s empowerment. So that was really awesome. I got to go to a high school early this semester and do a few workshops there on poetry and empowerment, and then I’m also writing a book of poetry—sorry, it’s a fiction book, but it’s written in poems, and it’s from a perspective of a teenage girl dealing with issues of self-confidence, body image, mother-daughter relationships, that kind of thing.

 

A: Is the book close to being done? When can we expect to see it?
LM: Well, it’s going to be out in 2017, so in a while. [Laughs]

 

A: Were there any bad experiences that you got from that exposure?
LM: Not really. There were a few creepy Facebook messages. There was this guy that was all, “You’re so beautiful; come to Connecticut whenever you want.” And I was just like, “You need to not do this,” I blocked him, and it was fine….No, there was one message that was like, “I disagree, I know women who eat a lot.” And I was like, “Okay, cool. Just talking about my experience here, not speaking for everyone.” And at first when the video started getting a lot of views I would look at the comments, and it was a bad idea because it was just disheartening with all these people who didn’t understand what I was saying and commenting on how I looked or things like that. But, I mean no, overwhelmingly it was very positive.

 

A: Speaking about influences, who would you say influences your writing?
LM: Oh, there are a lot of poets here at Wesleyan that I really admire. I really admire Cherkira Lashley [’15]’s poetry, another senior. My friend Chelsea Carine, who’s another slam poet who graduated from SUNY Oneonta. I really admire the work of Franny Choi; she’s a pretty established slam poet not in college anymore. Lets see, there’s a poet, Buddy Wakefield, who came here and I saw him perform, and he really inspired just the way I think about things. I would say he’s more of a spiritual inspiration perhaps and less of a writing inspiration. But he was amazing.

 

A: What advice would you give to new poets and people who want to start writing?
LM: Just sit down and do it, I guess? Everything I’m thinking of sounds really corny, like, write what feels true to you, you know?  But even though that sounds corny. I think that there is something to that. I guess I would say, write without judgment. When you first sit down to write, just don’t censor yourself. Because if what you’re writing feels true, then chances are it’s going to ring true to other people as well. Yeah, and just that I think we do so much censoring of ourselves in daily life, in how we present ourselves, and what we say or don’t say, and so for your own personal writing, whether or not you’re going to put it out into the world later, you have to start by not censoring.

 

A: What are you plans after Wesleyan?
LM: I’m very excited; I just decided to move to New York. I’m going to pursue the writing life, and I realize it’s a very romanticized thing, but I’m a romantic. But yeah, I’m really excited and I’m going to finish this book and hopefully do spoken word performances, hopefully continue the workshops that I’ve been doing with another poet I know, the one I went to the high school with. We have a project called The Uninterrupted Project. It’s a workshop series for young women about writing and empowerment. So hopefully I’m going to work on that with her, and continue writing poetry, probably going to have to get a waitress or bar tending job to pay the bills [laughs], but I’m very excited about that.

 

A: Wow! That sounds very exciting. Is there anything else you want to tell us about yourself?
LM: The thing that popped into my mind was feminism! That’s one thing that I’m very proud of this campus for, and my own activities on this campus, and the increasing feminist activity I see here and the increasing feminist consciousness, which was a huge wonderful effect for me of this video going viral and seeing that so many people believed in its message. And I was like, “Oh, this is what I care about!” And then I started getting really interested in gender, and yeah, I’ve been really impressed with the feminist activism on this campus. As I’m leaving, I just want to encourage younger students to keep doing it.

 

A: Does most of your writing focus on gender topics?
LM: Yes, loosely, yes. I talk about bodies, being in the female body and the experience of that. I write a lot about mothers and daughters and the things that are passed down and the things that are learned, and I try to capture the complexity of all those things, like, so I’m hesitant to say I just write about gender, because it’s just not like I just write about it in a societal way…[and about] the ways that women are oppressed, things like that. But I really feel inspired to write about the nuances of feminist and female bodies and the experience of carrying them.

 

A: Is there anything else you would like to add?
LM: Not really. I’m honored to be a WesCeleb; it’s my last unrealized ambition [laughs] and now it’s realized.