Todd takes private commissions from individuals who want a poem of their very own.
He may be the only poet in the world who has fine-tuned a 15-year practice of working one-on-one with clients to write custom poems meant to stand alone as meritorious literary works of art.
This is not a typewritten-poems-by-mail or while-you-wait fairground booth operation, but a deliberate methodological practice that, in the words of one client, “straddles documentary, art therapy, shamanism, and psychology.”
Commissions begin with a fee and contract, evolve over as many as three increasingly intimate phone conversations, and end with a poem that could only have been written in a spirit of mutual trust. Some are published in Todd's books. Others are printed in limited editions or framed.
People commission Todd because they have something poetic to express, and they need a poet to help them express it. Todd has written to mark milestone events, birthdays, and anniversaries. Commissioners often come to him as strangers. Many stay friends.
As an example, Todd's 10th such project in 2019 was commissioned by psychologist Connie Holmes of Boston (her second commission) to celebrate her lifelong friendship with author and activist Jean Kilbourne. Inspired in part by Ursula K. LeGuin's poem, "How It Seems to Me," Todd's poem set out to recognize a deep and abiding companionship between two very different people whose stars nevertheless aligned.
If, as They Say, the Soul,
in the vast abyss before time,
does indeed commingle first
with light and earth and mist
and then with self, and then
at last with something more
than self, an energy, before
becoming stone and sinking
back into the bliss of light
or antilight or the light of life
we call the afterlife, releasing
self to burn like spun debris,
then this—this now—or God,
if we allow there is a God, or
something metaphysical in me
or you—must alchemize the
transubstantiation in the coal,
and since this now is not so
new, when taken, eons, all at
once, and since my solitary
soul is none supreme, and since
God’s will must be forever
strange, just as our dreams
make strange what’s true, it
seems to me it’s you, my dear
and rare and lustrous friend,
star about which my stars bend,
who does the blessed alchemy,
or, if not you, perhaps it’s us—
the chance transversity of us—
our difference and its valency—
power amplified in twinning—
that keeps the cosmic deeps
inside me spinning.
Todd's practice of writing poems on commission has led him to launch a podcast called There's a Poem in That, in which he helps total strangers discover the poetry in their most intimate stories. He waives his fee for podcast guests.
If you think there's a poem in your story, and you'd like a poem from Todd, use the contact form on the About page of this site, or leave a voicemail on the podcast's private guest line in Haiku, Hawaii: 808-300-0449.
Writing on commission is one of the most rewarding things I'm privileged to do. For it to work, a commissioner must bring a story in all its complicated glory. I get to enter into the emotional landscape of their subject and their story becomes mine, the "problem" of their poem becomes personal. I'm grateful to Connie and to the many people who have trusted me to bless their stories with some carefully chosen words.
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