Peggy Perdue

Hi, I’m Peggy.

I’ve been a writer all my life. I got a degree in English and Journalism, and I have a certificate of mastery in poetry. I’ve worked for Willamette Week, Bitch magazine, the Times-Free Press, and Portland Monthly. I started freelancing during the Recession, and I don’t think I can ever go back to having a boss. (Although my young son keeps me on a tight schedule.) And that’s part of the reason I’m here.

I’ve started compiling my first book of poetry, but I know that the kind of writing I create requires deep work and time to think. Like, a lot. I think about how the world works. And I think about the kind of world my son will grow up in. I think about the meaning of life, and how everything’s connected. But instead of spiraling down into the depths of despair, I tend to come out of my long thinking with ways to change it.

The bad thing about having lots of ideas, though, is that, well, I have lots of ideas. Sometimes I’m all over the place—solving the economy’s problems one day, delving into color theory another, and then, oh hey! I want to learn French! (To translate poems, of course.) All right, so that’s a slight exaggeration, and to be honest, it’s not all that bad; my thirst for knowledge is how I draw unexpected connections most people overlook, and it's where my creativity comes from.

But it brings up why I’m here: I want to write poetry you will actually read. Which means, sometimes I need your help reining in the topics I’m exploring. And to be completely honest, I love having the conversations. You know, the really deep ones. Why do things happen? What do we do about this? Why are we here? What new perspective can we bring to this problem? Etc.

For me, Patreon and patronage is the best of all worlds: I get the time and solitude to do the work I need to do, but I still have a place where I can communicate with people that believe in my work and have a similar mission in life—to make a difference in the world, to lead with a different perspective, to have time with the important people in our lives.

And I want to bring my work directly to you. With a toddler in the house, I don’t have time to spend months sifting through submission guidelines to find a publication, just to wait another several months to get rejected—or even if I do get accepted, there’s not always payment at the end. I also know that I do my best work when I'm doing the work, not spending all of my time trying to sell it. So if you're here and see something you really think others would like, there's one place you can send them, instead of all over the internet.

Why does all this matter? When the Covid pandemic hit the United States, I decided to take my poetry to my Facebook family. I challenged myself to post every day (I missed two). And then I created a poetry challenge, in which I took three words submitted by each person who contributed and made a poem out of them. And then I got a text from my sister-in-law about how this was affecting my niece’s senior year. It drove me to want to write a poem, so I did. A few weeks later I received a letter in the mail telling me how much “power and hope” that poem gave them.

This is why I’m here. So my words can make a difference in people's lives.

But what do you get out of it?

Warm feelings of helping a poet and writer out. But you also get poems, exclusive writings, thoughtful opinions on the state of things and what we can do about them, comfort, understanding, deeper meaning, a return to yourself, a connection to something bigger, a better world and a fuller way of living. You know, all those things that are hard to monetize but make us human. My work won't be for everybody, but for those who it is for, I hope it will help them cope with the unpredictability of life.

I may not have time to talk with everyone on the phone, and I can’t always do group calls. But I can listen. And I can observe. I see what’s happening in the world, and I listen to what you’re saying.

And I make poems out of it. I create words that capture what we’re going through. I create calm in the chaos. I create comfort when life is uncertain.

And that’s why we need poetry and art—life is uncertain. But that’s why we have to be ready to adjust our perspective every day. We are where we are because we wait until the point of crisis to realize things aren’t working. We could prevent a whole lot of pain if we accepted that we don’t have to make big, heroic acts of transformation to make a difference in our lives.

Change happens. Our fates are decided by the small decisions we make every single day. It’s not the things we do that makes the difference, it’s the thought we put into them.

If you’re here because you’re seeking something…words, certainty, yourself, I’d love it if you’d join me.

If you don't feel like giving a monthly membership, I understand; you can also become a one-time or occasional supporter in any amount: https://www.paypal.com/biz/fund?id=FWUTTK3ANG7EY