JK: Why do you think you got such a positive response? I felt like I was reaching people in a way that I wasn't before, even with poems. Really early on, I got a public response from those tweets. Then I did it again the next day, because it felt good to do it. I did it again the next day, because it felt good to do it. I posted it, not because I thought it was relevant to other people, but because I wanted to hold myself accountable for paying attention to that idea throughout the day. I think that first one was about using grief and anger as fuel, and using it to keep yourself moving. I remember just getting up that morning and feeling genuinely terrible, and writing a little note to myself.

Do you remember the first day you started tweeting these missives? JK: Keep Moving grew out of a series of encouraging tweets you wrote. I had an uptick when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and there's always an uptick around elections. MS: Yes, whenever some sort of tragedy happens, it’s this little bat signal or early warning system where, if my Twitter mentions start ramping up, my first thought is not, “Oh, people are reading something I wrote and sharing,” it's, 'What happened?' It's been four years, but whenever there's some disaster, people share the poem widely. JK: I’ve heard you refer to “Good Bones” as your disaster barometer. I remember people saying, 'A viral poem, is that an oxymoron?' It's been a really strange thing, and it continues. JK: I’m guessing there's probably no course called, “What To Do If Your Poem Goes Viral,” in most MFA programs? I think part of what allows us to be vulnerable in poems is the idea that the audience is relatively small. If I had thoughts about the number of people that would read “Good Bones” when I was writing that poem, I probably wouldn't have sent it out, because that would have been really intimidating. So to have a poem go viral is especially strange, because that means it reaches people who don't necessarily always read poetry. MAGGIE SMITH: When you're a poet, you expect your readership to be other poets.

JUDI KETTELER: So what’s it like to have a poem go viral? In our unstable, frightening, and frustrating world, the ideas she shares are more relevant than ever.Īhead of the release of her book, Shondaland spoke with Smith about how to keep moving after life knocks you down. With its striking and colorful design, Keep Moving feels a bit like a Pinterest board full of helpful quotes and stories. The Tweets eventually became a book, which Smith stitched together with a series of short, lyrical essays that provide extra context. So she started tweeting messages to herself about things like resilience and finding the way through discomfort.

When Smith’s marriage was ending in 2018, she found herself seeking some kind of verbal balm to soothe her grief-filled days. Sometimes we need to go through what looks catastrophic or traumatic in order to be transformed.

Keep Moving by Maggie Smith