Local Poet Makes the Ordinary Extraordinary

Although she thinks so, nothing about her is ordinary.

Carol Allis, who is a Hennepin County public affairs officer by day, is a poet all the rest of the time. Notebooks strewn all throughout her life, she has been known to jot down her thoughts quickly at a stoplight.

Allis, who lives in Minnetonka with her two cats, is soft-spoken and gentle, yet you can find ferocity for life and learning in her eyes.

Her first book of poetry “Poems For Ordinary People” is due on the shelves June 1, although she will not know exactly which book stores will carry it until after that date.

“It just falls out of my head,” she said of her poetry habit. “It’s kind of like writing news for me– I like the compactness of it. You can get a whole concept– or a whole story– in a very small amount of words.”

As a person who writes news releases about government every day, turning complicated language into ordinary words people can understand is also something she does for a living.  

Allis has already booked four poetry readings, and that’s not an easy task.

The most local of them is at at on Saturday, June 9 at 1 p.m.

Allis, who is now around retirement age, began writing at age 5. When she was 7, her dad gave her a clunky manual Underwood typewriter to begin her true calling.

“Everyone in my family read poetry over the dinner table,” she explained. “My grandpa and my dad would recite poetry by heart, and my grandmother would clip poetry out of the newspaper.

Instead of today’s glitzy headlines, the poems actually received space on the front page. Her grandmother told Allis she clipped them out because they “sang to her.”

“I grew up with that level of poetry,” she said.

But as she got older, she began hearing something from people that she couldn’t quite wrap her head around. Thoughtful, well-read people told Allis that they didn’t like poetry and they wouldn’t read it. The reasons? “It’s too complicated, it’s lofty, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Allis began submitting her poetry to esteemed poetry journals and kept getting rejected. After discovering that her poems were written for “ordinary people,” she started a poetry website instead.

“One poem kind of gelled it for me,” she said (see below for the poem). “I write for and about ordinary people and ordinary things– the universal things that unite us all.”

Then something extraordinary happened. Now that she knew who she was writing for, Allis no longer filtered her own thoughts through that of the journals.

“I just found my audience and found my voice,” she said. Shortly after, North Star Press called and said they wanted to publish a book of her poetry.

It was not a sterile, New York publishing company either.

The first time she drove up to the family-owned business that only publishes Minnesota writers, located in Clearwater, there were goats in the front yard.

“I thought ‘this is good, this will fit,” said Allis. Because, how “ordinary” is that?

ordinary poets

Is there poetry for ordinary people
You know
Waitresses and nurses
People who clean floors and fix roads
And string cable and make sandwiches
And sing good-night songs
And go off to work every day
To pay for groceries and bicycles
Just ordinary people
Who hear the rhythm and music
Of ordinary life every day
Who don't have time
To ponder navels
Dissect complex phrases
Or analyze a line to death
People who think in poetry every day
But don’t have time to write it down
And not much time to read
Catching lines on the fly
That kind of poetry

Upcoming book readings

• Wednesday, June 6 at 7:30 p.m. at Magers and Quinn, 3028 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis
• Friday, June 8 at 6:30 p.m. at Valley Bookseller, 217 Main St., Stillwater
• Saturday, June 9 at 1 p.m., Excelsior Bay Books, 36 Water St., Excelsior
• Monday, June 11 at 7 p.m., Common Good Books, 38 S. Snelling, St. Paul