Do It Wrong: How to Be a Poet In the Twenty-First Century

by Derek Beaulieu

Overview

A radically liberating collection of essays, ideas and approaches to writing and teaching poetry

Do It Wrong is a short, snappy series of provocations and suggestions designed to help poets think outside the box and foster creativity.

It’s a permission slip to take a path others reject, to do the counter-intuitive thing, to embrace the weird.

It's a guidebook designed to bring poets together, to question our assumptions, and to move past the “business as usual” educational models into the new, the strange, and the “wrong.”

And it's a playful, purposeful contribution toward the building of stronger, more resilient writing communities.

For readers of Beth Pickens’s Make Your Art No Matter What and Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist, Derek Beaulieu distills 20 years of experience teaching creative writing into a joyfully mischievous manifesto on how to write and teach poetry with meaning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781998336296
Publisher:	Assembly Press
Publication date:	04/07/2026
Pages:	132
Product dimensions:	4.75(w) x 7.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Derek Beaulieu is the author/editor of over twenty-five collections of poetry, prose, and criticism. His most recent volume of fiction, Silence: Lectures and Writings, was published by Sweden’s Timglaset Editions, his most recent volume of poetry, Surface Tension, was published by Toronto’s Coach House Books. Beaulieu has received the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for his dedication to Albertan literature. He is the only graduate from the University of Calgary’s Department of English to receive the Faculty of Arts ‘Celebrated Alumni Award’ and the only graduate in creative writing to receive Roehampton University’s Chancellor’s Alumni Award. Beaulieu has served as Poet Laureate of both Calgary and Banff and is the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Editorial Reviews

"With Do It Wrong: How to be a Poet in the Twenty-First Century, Derek Beaulieu will shove you off the diving board of stasis into the great sea of possibility called Poetry. But don’t worry, he’ll be sure you know how to swim first, or at least convince you that you already can. With irreverently wise and generative thoughts on listening, reading, academia, publishing, and much more along the way, Do It Wrong may just be the cold water plunge you need to fully become yourself as a poet."—Jeffrey Lependorf, Executive Director, John Cage Trust

"Do It Wrong belongs at the top of the reading list for aspiring poets. For poetry professors—first book, first class. It is both a welcome and a warning, attuned equally to the pleasures and problems of the life of a poet. Unlike most craft books, it does not sidestep the material needs of poets or the capitalist pressures to compete. Instead, it situates poets as creative people in a capacious community. With an experienced and reassuring voice, Beaulieu is the perfect guide to accompany poets as they navigate. He is smart but not stuffy, realistic but not discouraging, inspiring but not glib, provocative but never gratuitously so. Beaulieu is the community-building champion that poetry needs in these dark times."—Ian Williams, author of You've Changed

"Derek Beaulieu shares his generous, frank, and occasionally contentious insights into the world of poetry, many of which will also be enlightening—and actionable—for artists, students, and teachers of all kinds."—Matt Madden, author of 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style

From the Publisher