How do poets make money? The answer, a lot of the time, is: not through poetry. When I first attempted to live full-time from my words, I expected to make money in one of three ways: poetry on the page (through pamphlets and collections), poetry for the people (through commissions), and poetry in person (via poetry readings and spoken word gigs). Three years into my freelance career, my perception of how to make money as a poet has changed somewhat. These days, I understand that while I tend to call myself a poet first and foremost, of all the work I do to make a living, I probably spend the least amount of time actually sitting down to write poems. I'm a poet who doesn't write a lot of poetry, a writer who doesn't spend most of her time writing.
As a rule, most poets deemed ‘spoken word artists' tend to self-publish...
