Patti Smith on How She Came to Love Substack: ‘I Like the Idea That the Reader Hangs Out With the Writer’

variety.com:

A.D. Amorosi When Patti Smith joined Substack — the now-five-year-old online platform that publishes and pays writers on a subscription model — the poet, author and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had been stuck at home in New York City after having canceled a world tour due to COVID.Starting with her tagline (“The reader is my notebook”), and moving into her serialized, on-line novel (“The Melting,” currently 44 chapters long), Smith’s “journal of my private pandemic” promised “an inter-connective body of work for a responsive community,” filled with “ruminations, shards of poetry, music, and musings on whatever subject finds its way from thought to pen, news of the mind, pieces of this world.” Rather than maintain a diary’s staid setting, the communally driven Smith engages her subscriber base with freshly penned songs and poetry readings of her her heroes’ work and her own.

To go with her readings and writings, Smith’s Substacks are immediate thought-bubbles and personal day-of videos with her cat and her coffee cup close at hand, mixing free posts and subscription-bound items.Smith talked with Variety from her home in New York City, in the same bedroom space where she records her Substack.At the Ukraine-Russia conflict’s start, your Substack featured you reading colloquial poet William Carlos Williams’ “Peach on Earth,” a poem highlighted by his “gold and blue” hues, surely in dedication to the Ukraine.

Is this your prayer for the Ukrainian people? Were you looking to Williams’ perfect words on the subject of peace?It’s interesting, as I was trying to do a few things related to the conflict.