Organizing Chaos

Or, Deanna Repose Oaks’ Process

For my series on assembling poetry collections, this week I talked to Deanna Repose Oaks. Deanna has authored an amazing *six* collections of poetry. If that weren’t enough, she’s also my marketing mentor through the Atlanta Writers Club.

After our marketing meeting, Deanna shared her process for organizing her books that she self-publishes. She sells them at open-mic nights that she also organizes. More on that below.

Deanna might write more than most poets I know—she writes every day. After she has written a body of work, she reads the lot to find a theme or poem that sparks a domino effect. From there, she orders the poems toward emotional resonance.

To this point, Deanna’s process is not unusual. But the next step is.

Deanna often workshops her poems in front of a live audience. That’s gutsy! During her open-mic readings, she tells the audience, “I’m workshopping this poem tonight. Please let me know your feelings.” Also gutsy!

At the end of the poem, folks speak up to tell Deanna how the poem made them feel. To me, that’s not only gutsy but also amazing.

I have gauged an audience’s reaction while I read. But I don’t ask them to tell me for feedback afterward. I’m probably not that brave.

Only by reading out loud can I tell whether or not a poem’s working. Yet, no matter how many times I may read one poem aloud to myself, it’s different in front of other living, breathing human beings.

One poem I breezed through in my studio brought me to tears before my Tuesday writing group. I went on to include it in our quarterly reading, better aware of the effect that “Wednesdays at the Bonham Exchange, Late 80s” had on me. I could tell other people also found it moving.

Wouldn’t you know, that poem went on to get published in Untelling. Here’s where you can buy a copy if you’d like to read that poem yourself: Untelling, Summer 2025

Deanna goes a step further than reading. She takes the feedback she gets at her open-mics and uses it to cut a poem from the planned collection or to edit the piece until it has the emotional impact she wants it to have on her readers.

Again unlike most writers I know, Deanna is concerned with the emotional response to her work. In “Don’t Go; Stay,” she organized the “emotional rollercoaster” to alternate between melancholy and hope, slanting the collection more toward hope. Deanna donates proceeds from “Don’t Go; Stay” to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Deanna says that in ordering her poems, she wants to make sure that “readers aren’t bored if they read the book cover to cover.” That seems highly unlikely to me.

You can see Deanna in action every 2nd Saturday at The Crazy Book Lady in Acworth, Georgia. Here’s the link to that fun-sounding spot: The Crazy Book Lady

And here’s the link to Deanna’s books as well: Deanna Repose Oaks

Back on the marketing part of our meeting, Deanna came up with a fun and low-tech way for me to keep you all posted on the pre-sales for my chapbook, The Higher Call, which starts real soon. More about that next week. Stay tuned!

And thanks again for following along on my journey into print.

Deanna’s book, completely appropriate for todays’ post.