In honor of Poetry Month I'd like to share with readers a few resources regarding the business side of poetry. If you'd like to embark on a career in poetry but are unsure of which road to travel by, the Kirstein Business Library & Innovation Center is here to help. With social media companies such as Instagram revitalizing poetry and Under Armour hiring poets to write copy for their ads, the language of the Bard is making a comeback. We can guide you to new employment opportunities, assist you with your business plan, and can help you find financing for your spoken word performance.
Getting Hired
According to our Career Transitions resource, the field of poets, lyricists and creative writers offers an average salary of $65,960 with growth at 15%. Career Transitions offers easy-to-use tools to help you build a resume, assess your career interests, and to find jobs in your desired field.
For an entertaining take on a resume in poetic form, check out Brian Bilston's Poetry Laboetry. I don’t know if "poemifying" your resume will land you the job, but it certainly shows creativity. For one-on-one help with your resume, make sure you take advantage of our Resume Drop-in Hours.
It can also be helpful to check out the Bureau of Labor's webpage on Careers for Creative People and their job outlook information for writers and authors.
Entrepreneurs
Are you thinking of starting a poetry-themed business? Make sure you attend our upcoming Create a Winning Business Plan workshop or make an appointment with one of our SCORE Small Business Mentors. Without proper planning your business startup could suffer the fate of the British light cavalry in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
The BPL has resources to identify your competition and find potential customers! Try our Mergent Intellect product to locate poetry themed entities in Massachusetts. Here you'll find information about entities such as the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge, Jamaica Pond Poets in Roslindale, or the Bobby Byrne’s gastro pub in Sandwich.
Check out What Poetry Brings to Business, from our catalog and our business serials such as the Harvard Business Review, which lauds the benefits of poetry for professionals.
Even Richard Branson at Virgin is writing poems to inspire entrepreneurs.
Spoken Word Grants
Finally, from 2006-present, our Foundation Center resource shows that over 20.2 million in grants for the "Spoken Word" were given to projects across the United States. This resource helps identify funders, gives application information, and offers tips on how to write a proposal. Talk to a Kirstein staff member in person at the Central Library, call 617.536.5400, or email businessref@bpl.org to get started with this valuable research tool.
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