• Home
  • Poetry Prompts
  • For Writers
  • Daily Poem-Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Free Stuff + BOOKS
  • Patron Love

In the Company of Poets: Basecamp

By Megan Willome 4 Comments

Ferris wheel
Poetry at Work has been a core value at Tweetspeak since its inception. We even have a book on the subject and a holiday dedicated to the celebration of it!

So it was a joyful occasion in January when Tweetspeak founder L.L. Barkat was interviewed on Basecamp’s Rework podcast for an episode titled Poetry at Work.

Barkat shared the spotlight with Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine since 2013, and several poets who call Basecamp their work home. We wanted to learn more about the sort of workspace that is friendly to poetic people, so we reached out to two employees who also contributed to the podcast.

Basecamp is an all-in-one site where business teams that work remotely can communicate in a virtual office space. It’s been around for twenty years, growing and changing with technology and the needs of its clients. It continues to do so in this new world of increased remote work due to COVID-19.

Lexi Kent-Monning is part of the customer support team. In the podcast she read Nikki Giovanni’s My First Memory (of Librarians). Other Giovanni poems she loves are I Wrote a Good Omelet and Nikki-Rosa.

Since Basecamp is, itself, a company that functions remotely, she says it attracts people who communicate well through writing.

“I think our support team might be the most poet-heavy, and we’re a big puddle of empaths in that group,” Kent-Monning said.

But it’s not only a place for empaths. Timely communication from a real human is a service Basecamp works hard to provide its clients.

“What we’re doing on support most of the time is trying to solve a problem or uncover a pattern or understand a bigger picture,” Kent-Monning said. Her attraction to writing and reading poetry enables her to do that better.

It’s also just good business. She says that in her training, her boss, Kristin Aardsma (also a poet), used poetic tools to help craft an email. Kent-Monning said Aardsma suggested that “I break one paragraph into two paragraphs in the email I was sending to a user. She thought giving some space to breathe in between pieces of information would be helpful to the user on the receiving end. The mechanics of writing a support email and a poem are super similar for me because of that!”

Want more clarity in your emails, folks? Write more poetry.

Troy Toman leads technical operations at Basecamp, and at the end of the podcast he read the poem we in Tweetspeak-land are now learning By Heart: John O’Donohue’s For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing. At the time, Toman was thinking about the busyness of the holiday season, and how this poem invites us to slow down. Who knew the word exhaustion would take on a whole new resonance as 2020 unfolded.

Unlike Kent-Monning, Toman isn’t someone who considers himself into poetry in a traditional way.

“I don’t often block out time specifically for reading poetry. I don’t have a ton of poetry books in my library. Yet, I found [O’Donohue’s] words — and many others as I traced my path back — so deeply meaningful.”

Toman agrees that the remote nature of Basecamp’s team means the majority of their interaction is through the written word.

“Being able to convey thoughts and ideas in writing is critical,” Toman said. “I find poetry really makes me examine words and meanings in a deeper, more intentional way.”

As a technology person, Toman likes poetry that helps him deal with what he calls “unknowns.”

“Much of my operations work involves diving into problems or issues where the approach is unknown,” he said. “I just feel like that ability to recognize a pattern or an experience that comes from somewhere else that is similar can be valuable.”

Toman likes poems that are less explicit but contain deep emotion, like Joyce Rupp’s Old Maps No Longer Work. Poems like this one assist him because, “it often helps just to know that people have struggled with the emotions inherent in solving complicated new problems.”

Both Kent-Monning and Toman agree poetry should be welcome in the workplace.

“I think poetry should be embraced everywhere people are important,” Toman said. “It is an essential tool for most people trying to understand the world around us. It is a vehicle for learning from others, for working through emotions and for finding inspiration and energy.”

Kent-Monning added, “The sharing of interests gives us more chances to get to know our colleagues and connect in our unique and human ways.” She’s also up for businesses being friendly to all interests — “parents, runners, bakers, knitters, hikers, dog owners. It takes all kinds!”

 

Photo by Jeff Turner, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.

Browse more Poetry at Work

MW-Joy of Poetry Front cover 367 x 265

“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”

—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro

Buy The Joy of Poetry Now

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Megan Willome
Megan Willome
Author, Editor at Tweetspeak Poetry
Megan Willome is the author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems. She also writes for the WACOAN magazine, the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post, and Magnolia Journal. When she goes to the library, she always comes home with at least one book for young people. Her day is incomplete without poetry and tea.
Megan Willome
Latest posts by Megan Willome (see all)
  • How Blogging Works for Writers: Think Seasons - January 22, 2021
  • Children’s Book Club: ‘Katy and the Big Snow’ - January 15, 2021
  • Reading Generously: ‘How We Fight for Our Lives’ by Saeed Jones - January 8, 2021

Related

❤️✨ Sharing is caring

Filed Under: A Poem in Every Heart, Poetry at Work, Poetry at Work Day

About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is the author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems. She also writes for the WACOAN magazine, the Fredericksburg Standard Radio Post, and Magnolia Journal. When she goes to the library, she always comes home with at least one book for young people. Her day is incomplete without poetry and tea.

Comments

  1. Maureen says

    May 22, 2020 at 11:52 am

    Basecamp is a great concept. It must be both a curious and fascinating place to work.

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      May 22, 2020 at 11:57 am

      I’m thinking the same thing, Maureen. Two of my employers use Basecamp, but I’d never given any thought to the people who make the technology possible.

      Reply
  2. Bethany R. says

    May 25, 2020 at 12:21 am

    Love that point about breathing space between portions of an email. Yes, the impact of the layout/structure is significant when processing words on a page.

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      May 25, 2020 at 8:12 am

      I agree, Bethany. It’s often how it looks, not just what it says.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our January Menu.

Keep the World Poetic

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world thoughtful and poetic.

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Join the Poetry Club

Join the poetry club, when you become a subscriber to Every Day Poems ✨

The classic—Now a Graphic Novel!

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

Recent Comments

  • Rick Maxson on Poetry Prompt: Poems of Experience
  • Megan Willome on How Blogging Works for Writers: Think Seasons
  • Megan Willome on How Blogging Works for Writers: Think Seasons
  • Joy Avery Melville on How Blogging Works for Writers: Think Seasons

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Join Tweetspeak Poetry

Categories

Explore Work From Black Poets

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

Free Printable Poet Bios

Browse all poet bios now

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

About Us

  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • How to Write Form Poems-Infographics
  • • Poetry Club Tea Date
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • A Ritual to Read to Each Other
  • • Best Love Poetry
  • • Book Club
  • • Children’s Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Literary Analysis
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • VerseWrights Journal
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Give the Gift of Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2021 Tweetspeak Poetry · Site by The Willingham Enterprise · FAQ & Disclosure