Today I had the absolute honor of sitting down with the most-watched poet ever, and my personal mentor, Neil Hilborn.
For many readers, Neil is best known for “OCD”, the poem that launched him into the public eye and helped introduce spoken word poetry to millions of people around the world. But long before the viral videos, book tours, and sold-out performances, Neil was a writer attending slams, running a literary magazine, building community, and figuring things out one poem at a time.
In this edition of Passing the Salt, we discuss the years before “OCD” went viral, the early days of Button Poetry, the realities of sustaining a career in the arts, his decision to pursue an MFA after more than a decade of professional success, and the advice he has for emerging writers navigating today’s literary landscape.
More than anything, our conversation became a reminder that most “overnight successes” are built on years of showing up, doing the work, and investing in community.
KP: When people tell the story of your career, they often start with viral videos. How do you tell that story?
NH: The viral videos are definitely the start of act II, or maybe even act I and everything before was the prologue. In many ways the arch of me doing poems for money does start with “OCD” going viral in 2013. Because it blew up, I was suddenly in contact with agents and performers, and suddenly it made more sense to publish a book, and so on and so forth.
It was this magical moment, but I think to say that it was entirely due to that one moment, would mean to ignore the years I spent performing and editing and writing and just doing poems for free. Yes, “OCD” blew up and my career really launched because of it, but that video would not have gone viral without the literal—I think by the time we made that video I had performed “OCD” maybe a 1000+ times. I think partially I got really lucky but a lot of work went into that luck.
KP: Can you tell me more about this Prequal/Act I of your poetry career leading to “OCD” blowing up?
NH: I have always liked poetry since I was a little kid. I think I wrote a poem when I was 8 about the moon. You know those old Calvin and Hobbs collection books? There were these full color arts with some kind of longer story. I forget which one exactly, but the full color thing had this huge drawing of the moon. I was like “Oh the moon, ” because of being a poet. So I wrote this poem about night time and what the moon demands of the night. You know, it was a poem written by an eight year old. It had a certain sense of rhythm and it actually adhered to a couplet rhyme scheme and it had stuff for being written by an eight year old.
I always liked poetry, but I never really thought I was gonna do it as a profession. Going into highschool I thought about psychology, or Jane Goodall was a hero of mine, so what if I become an ethologist. Then I took biology classes in high school and realized I don’t do math. So the chemistry side of science was it for me. But, I also took some creative writing classes and got really excited, not just about writing poetry, but also talking critically about it, and teaching, and thinking about it like a career, rather than just a thing that I do to express my emotions.
By the time I went to college, at Macalester College in St. Paul Minnesota, I went in knowing I was gonna be an English major and do a creative writing degree. I took every creative writing class I could. I helped run a literary magazine on campus and it’s because of that literary magazine, I got into spoken word poetry.
I wasn’t a performer at all before spoken word showed up. Yeah, I literally never performed once until my first poetry slam. I didn’t even know what slam poetry was really. Then at a meeting for my literary magazine, my buddy Dylan Garity, (who I barely knew at the time. We actually kind of disliked each other then, but now we are good friends) showed up with a slam poem he wanted to workshop. He stood up in this conference room in our campus center and he started yelling about his feelings and I was like: “Hold up, You can do poetry and shout at the same time? That’s awesome! Wait, can I do this? Can I also be involved in the feelings shouting?”
And as it turns out the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) had one of the greatest spoken word scenes in the country! I didn’t know when I moved there, but Dylan started taking me to poetry slams in the twin cities. We started a slam at our college and it all felt like a natural progression. I just go to all these slams, and I run a slam, and, oh, turns out there are national competitions, I am going to go to that, and oh there are regional competitions too. It all just made sense as the next steps. and the main thing I did to improve as a spoken word performer is I just showed up and did it a bunch. I was bad for a really long time, because you’ve got to be bad when you start any art form.
So I started doing spoken word in 2008 and then the video of “OCD” blew up in 2013, and in between I was just competing and performing and touring as much as I could. So, thankful, by the time “OCD” blew up and I had to figure out how to put together an hour set and actually tour for a living, I was already sort of good at it!
KP: I love that for you. It feels like some of it was being at the right place at the right time to set it all off.
NH: Yeah, I wasn’t even going to do “OCD” that day! I had made the individual finals at rustbelt that year, and I didn’t know what poems to do. I am sitting in the back of the room with Sam Van Cook, who is on the camera, “I don’t have a good video of “OCD”, just go do it.” And I’m like sure Sam whatever. And I went up there thinking it would be my last time performing it.
Because I had already retired that poem. I had been competing with it for years and this thing happens where if you do a poem enough where you start to see the scores drop off, even if you are good at it. I had been relying on it for scores so long, it had started dropping off. So I was just like okay I’m gonna take it out of the rotation. I am going to put new stuff in there.
I was like okay great, last time performing it ever. Here we go! And little did I know, I would be performing it every single time I ever touched a stage for the rest of my life.
KP: As you were talking, I realized I don’t actually know. How DID you get connected with button poetry?
NH: I mean Button just started off as my friend’s, you know? Like Dylan Garity, who I mentioned took me to my first poetry slam. He and Sam Van Cook cofounded the company. They basically just wrote a grant to get an HD video camera, because there were all these incredible poems happening at tournaments around the country and all the video was just garbage. When they wrote the grant it was like 2011-2012, so cellphone videos back then were all grainy. You couldn’t see them.
There is all this incredible art that no one is documenting. The name of the foundation they wrote the grant for is slipping my mind, but that’s what started it. My apologies. I have been hit in the head a lot since then.
The video of “OCD” was when Button had just started taking videos of poems. You can even notice the different audio quality of videos. For example, in the “OCD” recording the audio is kind of echoey, because the audio was just a shot gun mic mounted on top of the camera. It’s kind of directional, but it’s still getting room noise.
If you look at different Button videos, they plug directly into the sound board so they are pulling audio directly off the mic. They’ll also have the audience mic’d up so you can get some of that audience reaction.
But yeah, they were my friends. They had put out a couple of books by then, so we just kind of looked at each other and it kind of made sense for us keep working and growing together. So it was really just an organic relationship, where we all just knew and liked and trusted each other. It’s another right place at the right time!
Not to be annoying about it, but It felt very punk rock and DIY. We were just like, well there is a thing we want to see that doesn’t exist and we have the energy and resources and time to make that thing. It just always kept making sense to work together, even after “OCD” blew up again in 2017 there were a bunch of the like big 5 publishers that reached out to me and talked about putting out my next book. Quite frankly, the deals that they offered me were either the same as or only marginally better than what I was getting at Button. Even the distributions they could offer were only barely better. I was like why would I do this, when I can just keep working with people I believe in?
KP: What do you think has made Button poetry so sustainable? Button helped launch a generation of poets into public visibility. Looking back, what do you think Button got right that other publishing spaces maybe didn’t?
NH: It’s that original ethos of ‘hey there is really incredible art going on, let’s document it.’
I think what button got right was being excited about spoken word and just trying to put as much spoken word content as possible. That’s the thing especially, I think over the past 13-14 years of Button existing, the depth of poems you can watch is incredible!
The sort of business tactic for Button was to always put the videos out for free; the videos are a method of selling the books. That’s the sort of ethos I have always tried to have. I want you to see the art first, then if you get excited about the art, you can choose to go deeper into that, and if choosing that makes me some money, that’s awesome. But the idea is that art is accessible for everybody. I am glad the internet exists as a way to distribute data for free.
So I think there is a certain lack of a paywall to get people into the art in the first place that has always worked for Button. I say this as not being a Button employee and not having an official sanction AT ALL for this.
KP: When I was doing my preliminary research on dates and things for the interview I found on google you have a chapbook called Clatter, how does this fit into your timelines? I had never heard of this one, outside of your poem “Clatter” of course.
NH: I have three full poetry collections, but in terms of chapbooks I have five. High Lonesome was the first chapbook I ever put together and I literally only ever made 50 copies of it. I was doing some shows in Texas (while still in college) and I just wanted a thing I could sell. Honestly it sucks, well it doesn’t suck. The formatting is all wrong and it’s mostly poems out of my honors project for college, so some of it’s good, some of it’s not. I mean honestly I think “OCD” is in there!
So that and Clatter were things I produced because I was touring and needed things I could sell, which the other chapbooks I have made have been books put together for specific tours. They’ve never been available online and only been able to buy on a certain tour at a certain time. The two that I am most proud of is Where You Are is Magnificent and Small Wings in a Small World, and they are both things my buddy Mark and I collaborated to put together, we took a bunch of photos while we were on tour and put poem in typographic styles and overlaid on photos of us being on the road, and they were super cool man. At some point in my life, I am going to put them together in a compilation and publish them, but for the time being, it’s fun knowing they exist in the hands of a few folks.
I have always treated chapbooks like I need a thing to sell at these shows and this is a giant business card for me. If I met somebody, I had chapbooks in my back pack. If I had a convo about my work with somebody or they sounded like an invite for collabs, here is my book and I wrote my email address in it.
Honestly, man, if you have 24 pages of poems, make a book out of it. Just have it in your bag. Having a physical object feels so nice. It doesn’t have to be a big deal—there doesn’t need to be a launch party. Just put some poems onto some paper and get them out there.
KP: Many poets spend years building publication credits through literary journals before finding a wider audience. Your path looked very different. Did you ever feel like an outsider to the traditional literary world, or did it never feel particularly important to you?
NH: Oh yeah, all the time.
I have definitely felt like an outsider in that space. It all felt very mystical to me in a really weird way. I am kind of just now entering that space. I am starting my MFA program really soon, oh god, like in 12 days. I am kinda just now learning about that world. I mean I have always been aware of it, because my friends have been doing it, but I am sort of on the outside of it. Now I am looking around like this is a path that a bunch of people have taken. What do I need to engage with? What can I really learn from? What is generally a grind that people do because they have to and what can I skip?
I am going to get my MFA at Warren Willson College its a low residency program. They have this partnership with this company called Chill Subs. They basically created a search engine for literary magazines. I have just been playing around with that search engine.
KP: Ah yes, we love Chill Subs at Mouthful of Salt. They have mentioned us on their social posts a few times.
Now that I have been in and around the literary world a little bit more, I am realizing that I can decide how I want to interact with journals and literary magazines. I don’t just have to do things a certain way or my career isn’t really gonna take off. So I have realized, like yeah, I will submit to the really prestigious journals, but what if I also use the search engine to find the really weird magazines that I like?
KP: What made you want to start looking into an MFA now?
NH: A goal of mine in doing poetry was always to teach. Even going into my undergrad, I always thought I wanted to be a poetry professor. I have always been inspired and helped by writing teachers in my life.
When “OCD” first went viral, I already had a bunch of grad school applications in and I was ready to go. I was thinking about touring and doing grad school at the same time, until I talked to some of my advisors from college.
They were like “Hey, dummy, isn’t the point to get paid to do poems? Isn’t that what you’re doing?” and I’m like yeah okay! “Grad school will always be there, this opportunity won’t be. So you should say yes to whatever shows up for you.” And I am glad I listened, thank you Daylanne. Shout out to Daylanne English, still teaching in the English department at Macalester College. Daylanne Rules. I know it’s funny her last name is English and she teaches English. She will make that joke before I will.
So for the past 13 years, I have been doing poetry as a full time gig. Annie (my wife) and I were looking at our lives and the path that we have been taking for a little while. She was like “Do you think you wanna go to grad school?” and I was like “I think I wanna go to grad school.”
You know when I first applied to grad programs, I was like I’ll move anywhere. I don’t have any responsibilities! Now I have like four acres, and dogs and animals, and people that depend on me and stuff. So I was looking a lot more into low residency programs this time and, I mean thankfully, I got into Warren Wilson, which also happens to be 3.5 hours from my house.
Its like an incredible program. It was the first low residency program in the country and, not to toot my own horn, but it feels like the most prestigious. I just feel very fortunate that I got in there and it’s already been a really incredible community.
We even moved here, to the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area, because there are so many colleges and universities around here. It was always in the back of my mind that, when I want to teach, this will be a good area to be in. And it’s just time, man. I was just ready to move into the next stage of my career.
I am just tired of being on airplanes. My back hurts and I like my bed.
KP: And I mean it makes sense for you to move toward teaching, because you have already been doing that to some degree with all your workshops and your weekly writers circle.
NH: Honestly the writing circle has been incredible prep for this. Because I am looking at the curriculum for my MFA program and it’s basically like reading a poetry book a week and writing a fairly detailed critical paper about it a week.
I am doing half of that anyway. I am reading a bunch of poems to put together workshops and I am thinking critically about how these poems work. The only real difference is the actual annotations I will be writing are a lot more craft focused. for example, this will be a lot more explicit about how semicolons working in a poem.
I am already doing that as a part of my everyday job, like thinking critically about how art works and how to get other people to do art. So yeah, it feels like incredible preparation honestly!
KP: I just want to take a moment to say congratulations on getting into your MFA program. You really deserve it. I was under the impression the residency had already started, but I am still curious to ask, has being in this MFA program changed the way you view poetry, if it has yet?
NH: I think what’s really shifted for me is I feel like I’ve really developed a way I talk and think about poetry, which feels a lot more casual than people tend to engage with it in an academic setting. So I am trying to maintain the fun and excitement that comes with that more casual sort of diction about poems, but also elevate that diction so I am not describing everything I like in a poem as ‘fucking rad.’
I am trying to take the parts of myself in the poetry world and how I relate to art and trying to maintain that, while also code switching a little bit into academia. I have been trying to take a back seat and listen to how other people are talking about poems. Any time you get into a new job or social setting you have to figure out the lingo first. So I’ve got to pick up some buzz words first and then I can incorporate them into the way I talk about poems.
All that is to say I just want to fit in, but I don’t want to lose myself at the same time.
I think that if I’ve discovered anything in literary spaces, academic or not, actually what gets you in the door and what makes you important is enthusiasm and putting the work in. Yeah, credentials can open a door or two, but what really matters is showing up and being enthusiastic and putting energy into a scene.
You can learn all the words later, but you can’t learn how to be stoked about something.
Neil Hilbrn
KP: What is one piece of advice about publishing or building a writing career that you think writers hear far too often?
NH: Nobody has ever asked me this question before. I think what I hear too often is that I should think more about my body of work or I should be more considerate about the things I put out there. That’s not even a thing I have heard all that often, but I have heard sometimes that maybe I’m putting out too much work out into the world that is pretty raw or that is fresh and needs some editing to it.
My favorite musician in the world and a person that I really look up to a lot is John Darnielle from The Mountain Goats and his philosophy, or at least the philosophy I have gleaned from listening to all of his albums forever and ever, is that there is something really powerful in putting out a lot of work, even if not all if it is perfect, and trusting that some of it’s going to be really incredible and trusting that your art isn’t a limited resource.
Maybe every poem is not going to be for everyone, but some of those poems may be for somebody. And if you put out enough work, like you put out a preponderant amount of work into the world, somebody that doesn’t like one thing will forget about it and focus on what they do.
John Darnielle
I have heard that I should be more precious about my work and I refuse to do that, because I am imperfect and the work I put out is really imperfect and I think that if I just keep putting stuff out there maybe it means something to somebody.
KP: I really think that raw authenticity really comes out in your poetry and just speakers to your voice you have developed over the years. It is raw and it’s simply you and it is real. It is what it is and I think that what makes your branding so unique.
NH: Thank you. And I don’t mean this in a judgey way at all, but a thing that I have always tried to do in the poetry world is that I am not as cool as the other poets. I think a lot of artists will try to project this air of coolness and detachment. And I’m just never going to pull that off.
It’s nice to hear it’s working, because you’re right. It is raw and it’s exactly what I am dealing with at the moment and hopefully readers connect with that, like you have.
KP: What is one piece of advice you wish more emerging poets would take seriously?
NH: Edit your poems.
One of my least favorite things, that isn’t an attitude sometimes, is that your first thought is your best thought. I’m like: No, your first thought is often a good thought. There will be something in your first draft, often in your first three or four lines, that will make it into the last draft of the poem and that will be something that you will have positive feedback on and that people will get excited about. But sometimes the best things that I will write will come in a fourth or fifth draft.
Like, there is absolutely something cool in rawness and unedited vulnerability. But, a poem really starts to shine and take off after you have at least looked at it a little bit, man. For me there is always a writing brain and editing brain and that’s two halves of creating a whole piece of art, and the writing brain is completely unrestricted. At least ideally and you just want to write whatever, and just take some swings, and be creative and weird and just make strange choices. And then the editing brain needs to come in and say, “okay I see where this choice was going, it’s not working right now, but let’s see how we can actually make this choice shine, this—I don’t know what the hell this is let’s cut this.” You know?
So I feel like if you are not engaging the creative and critical sides of your artistic brain, you are not using all your faculties so
edit your damn poems!
Neil Hilborn
KP: If you were starting over today with no audience, no books, and no platform, what would you do differently? What would you do exactly the same?
NH: The world’s so different now. Some of it would be the same as I talked about. I would go to as many slams as I could, and open mics, and take as many performance opportunities as I could. Live audiences have been amazing teachers. There is literally no replacement for experience. I think if I was doing it now, I would take a much more traditional path of literary magazines and building up publication credits. That kind of thing feels a lot more accessible to me now.
Honestly, I am so much better at networking now, too. If there is anything, like I said, all you need is enthusiasm. I think I would, not that I would rely on going viral, but that’s not the same anymore. I’d make a TikTok and do poems on that TikTok but that would be more of a place people can find my work rather than a main outlet for putting work into the world. I just keep showing up in literary spaces and make myself useful.
I think all the stuff I would do the same is all the in person face to face being part of the community stuff. The thing I would do less, is the internet stuff. I mean not really on social media these days, because I got sad. It got too much to maintain on a day to day basis, so I just don’t. I think I would try to build a career that doesn’t involve relying on twitter and meta platforms.
KP: I feel that. I still consider myself an emerging poet. I am still building, so every time I think about the beast that is social media, I get overwhelmed.
NH: I think there has been more of a movement toward more localized things and toward more analog stuff. It’s so crazy, I am going to say analog stuff then mention an email list, but one of the reasons the Raleigh Slam has been so successful is the tickets go on sale through the Blackbird Books and Coffee dedicated email list. And the people that are there are already bought in and excited about it.
But one of the main ways I got folks in the door for the slam, is I went around and I put up physical posters in downtown Pittsburgh, and Chapel Hill, and Durham and Raleigh. A bunch of folks came in because of those posters. I think we are all just exhausted and sick of social media. So, I think the next paths forward are going to be about localized events and interpersonal interactions. I am sick of Instagram. I don’t want to do it anymore.
This community that developed has been built almost entirely by people coming to the shows and becoming friends and learning about art that way. There might be elements online, but one thing I like about the show is that it exists in person; we don’t film it. I’m not on my IG reels “Welcome to the Raleigh poetry slam!” No, you come to the show and the show happens and we experience a thing together for a couple of hours and then its done. It is a moment in time that we have all experienced that can’t be replicated.
I mean look at me! Obviously I love vinyl records and love print magazines, so it would be nice if analog is coming back. I also think I’m right.
KP: What would you suggest to that newbie trying to get into the poetry scene do to find these events? Any major things they should know about?
NH: Stuff has shifted so much since covid where a lot of regular open mic and poetry slams don’t exist anymore, but a few are cropping up right now. The spoken word scene is really coming back, in a way. It took a while, but I think its really coming back now. This doesn’t even just have to do with spoken word. I think if you are interested in any kind of literary thing, there are gonna be poetry readings, there is bound to be arts organizations wherever you are at.
If you are interested in seeing art live, literally the way people find out about stuff, google your area and open mic, if nothing is popping up, look on eventbright! You are going to go to some shows that aren’t really great, and that’s just part of the journey. Eventually you are going to find some that are really exciting and cool. I think that what I have been saying this whole time is show up, go to a show, go to a poetry reading,
The easiest way to make a poet your friend is to go up to them after a show and say I really liked your poem, and then shout out two lines you liked and ask them about it.
I take notes. I like to sit in the back of poetry readings and take notes on poems that I liked. I write down lines that are cool, because my memory is garbage and I can’t rely on it to compliment someone. So I take specific notes and I say, “I wrote down a line I really liked,” and I open my note book and ask them about that line. Literally just compliment a poet and they will be your friend forever!
Find your inner extravert[Kaycee frowns]—I KNOW—I know I come off as an extrovert and I am pretending to be one right now, but that’s just Neil Hilborn, the guy who shows up to work that does poems and acts all extroverted, and then Just Neil is the quiet guy who would rather no one acknowledge him or speak to him ever.
Access your inner Neil Hilborn and compliment some folks, tell them what you liked about their works and suddenly you are involved in a scene. That’s the biggest thing, have a face and get involved with stuff, also read a bunch. If you are interested in starting an art form, consume as much of that art form as possible read some reviews, but also go in completely blind, read literary journals you have never heard of, go to a half priced bookstore.
If in a book store and I don’t know what to buy, my technique is often scrolling through the bookshelves. If I see a book where the title looks cool to me I pull it off the shelf. I read the first poem, because that’s always very carefully considered. I want to know what the poet wanted me to read first and that will tell me a lot about them as an artist. Then I open up to a random page and, if I am intrigued by both of those things, I get the book, because clearly there is something in there I want to learn.
Yeah, take advice and read what other people recommend you but also take some swings, make some weird choices and maybe you will find some work that really speaks to you.
KP: Finally, what are you working on now, and what can readers look forward to next?
NH: I am working on my fourth book. It is gonna be a huge bummer, like my mom passed away in January of 2025 and a lot of the poems are gonna be about that, but I hope that you can trust I am not just gonna be sad.
You know, like a lot of grief in the book, but I tried to—I don’t know—the way that I try to heal through stuff is I try to have a sense of humor about it. So yeah, I think it’s about my mom and my relationship with her and grieving her passing, but I think it’s also about a lot of the funny-weird-side of it as well. Title TBA, I know what’s gonna be in my head, but it hasn’t been confirmed yet.
I am really excited about the direction my poetry is going, I am finally figuring out how to be weird and still make it accessible. That’s what I am trying to do with my MFA too, to still have my voice and sense of humor, just my sensibilities, I want to be strange. I want to learn some new techniques, so I can make some weird choices. I want to be a little more experimental but still accessible enough for people to get it.
So yeah, what I am working on is getting weirder.
For someone whose career is so often reduced to a single viral poem, Neil Hilborn’s story is, in reality, one of years spent building community, taking risks, and simply continuing to show up. Throughout our conversation, he returned again and again to the same ideas: make the chapbook, edit the poem, go to the reading, compliment another writer, and don’t wait for permission to participate in the literary world. Success, in his telling, isn’t a lightning strike. It’s a practice.
As Neil begins a new chapter through his MFA at Warren Wilson College and works toward his fourth collection, it’s clear that he isn’t interested in recreating the past. He’s still experimenting, still learning, and, in his own words, still trying to “get weirder.” Perhaps that’s the greatest lesson of all: a writing life isn’t something you arrive at. It’s something you keep building.
Neil Hilborn is a best-selling author and, with over 150 million views to his credit, he is the most-watched poet ever. He has performed in 41 states and 8 countries, and in 2019 alone he drove coast to coast five times while on tour. You can find more of his work at: https://neilhilborn.com/
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