Jodie Kennedy, an Oak Park and River Forest High School graduate, just published her first book — and is celebrating “Clumsy Beauty” Oct. 24 at Robert’s Westside with old and new friends, pizza, sweets, beer and wine.
“Clumsy Beauty” is a book of poems about the trials and beauty in everyday life.
“I think that the material is universal,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy moved to Wisconsin earlier this year to pursue writing full-time after leaving behind a career as a beer salesman in Colorado, where she’s lived since graduating college.
She began writing “Clumsy Beauty” about two years ago as a way to get her through a difficult season of life. Kennedy said she created an Instagram account, where she began posting her short poems daily.
“When a normal person would’ve gotten a therapist, I decided to open an Instagram account,” Kennedy said, “getting ‘ick’ emotions out of me and onto paper, putting them somewhere else than in my heart and in my brain.”
And people followed along. Kennedy’s Instagram account now has more than 37,000 followers. The platform is how Mandala Publishing found Kennedy’s work and asked her to write a book.
The book’s poems are largely about life’s beauty, embracing imperfections, and how humans often experience the same emotions through it all.
“We’re led to believe that we’re so separate, and we’re so different, and everything is other. But actually, we’re all so similar. We all have the same feelings and emotions,” Kennedy said.
“There’s a beauty in all of us blowing around in this crazy human existence we’re in. When we’re stumbling into ourselves, we’re stumbling into other people, too,” Kennedy said.
“Clumsy Beauty” excerpts
Inhibitions
How many ideas
have we abandoned
because we imagined
someone laughing?
Exactly how much brilliance
is sitting along the side
of Inhibition Road?
Come, let’s go collect the
bounty our egos
dared leave behind.
Geometry
It’s all geometry,
finding out
what fits.
It’s not necessarily
good or bad,
it’s just learning
what shapes and
whose shapes
belong
inside
yours.
Fear
I tried to keep my fear
at a safe distance
but, of course, it
followed me everywhere.
It wasn’t until I let it
be near me
that I realized
it was just
trying to lead me out
from where
I came into it.
Kennedy added that moving back to the Midwest during the release of her first book has been quite poignant for her.
“I think it really marks an emotional and physical coming home, and the yearning for that,” Kennedy said.
While “Clumsy Beauty” isn’t necessarily inspired by Kennedy growing up in the area, she said “a rediscovery of childhood and adolescence and creativity… that’s all stuff that bubbled up from childhood.”
Kennedy said she thinks the event at Robert’s Westside for her new book will be exciting, and a good kind of weird.
“You don’t realize how much home feels like home until you’ve not been home for a long time,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy went to high school with Donnie Biggins, the owner of Robert’s Westside. She said she hopes the event there fosters local connections.
“I’m excited to renew old ones and make new ones,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy’s book tour may include other stops in Wisconsin and Colorado. She is hopeful for a second book deal, though her publisher hasn’t yet provided her with an official offer.
As for what Kennedy hopes her old neighbors and other local residents take away from her journey if they’re aspiring to be an author, she said to remember that your experience is original and meaningful.
“Reminding yourself that being human is really hard, and we’re all doing it together,” Kennedy said. “Your story is completely, entirely unique from anyone else’s, and it’s always worth writing down, telling it, or sharing it because you never know what will happen.”