Comedy writer Lynsday Rush (the poet behind @maryoliversdrunkcousin!) joins Zibby to discuss A BIT MUCH, her tender, smart, and utterly hilarious debut poetry collection—a joyful exploration of the female experience through big feelings and hard-won wisdom. Lyndsay shares how her Instagram poetry took off during COVID, leading to viral posts, a growing following, and eventually a book deal—all while pregnant! She and Zibby discuss some of their favorite poems, unpacking deeper themes of body image, self-acceptance, and societal pressures. Finally, Lyndsay talks about the humor in her poetry, her advocacy for body neutrality, and her ideas for future projects!

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Lindsay. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss A Bit Much Poems. Congrats. 

Lyndsay: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh, I am like obsessed. I dog eared so many. I was like, yes this, yes that. Oh my gosh, uh huh, yup. That's how I was doing.

Lyndsay: That's the best review. 

Zibby: Yeah, that's basically, that's basically it. Okay, tell listeners a little bit about this collection and also how you became Mary Oliver's drunk cousin and writing poetry to begin with and all of that. 

Lyndsay: Yeah, so, A Bit Much is It's a collection of modern poetry that, I guess in a nutshell, uses humor to grapple with the human experience and probably more specifically the female experience.

So the title comes from a poem that is called She's a Bit Much and it was probably the first sort of viral poem I had like within the first year of starting that account and it really, really resonated with a lot of women and it basically took the phrase, she's a bit much that is usually intended to diminish or shrink or silence women and I turned it on its head to be like to compare it to a lot of really positive things and essentially give help encourage people to celebrate their big feelings, their big personalities, their that kind of stuff.

So. Yeah, that sort of took off. I was, I came up with the Instagram handle towards the tail end of COVID. I wanted to start a whole separate account that wasn't like my friends and family to experiment with this new form of writing because I'm a, I am a writer, but I had never written poetry until 2021.

So I just thought what would be a funny, irreverent, handle that would let people know instantly what they were getting themselves into, and it stuck.

Zibby: That's awesome. That is so great. If you could distill down, you know, the, the moments that inspired you to write the poems. Like, what are some examples of like, okay, I was walking, you know, that's a bad example. I was walking down the street and then I had the idea for this one or like, what, or did you just sit down in the mornings and have poetry just spill out? fall out of you?

Lyndsay: I'd say probably a little bit of both, but in the beginning, I would use my old jokes or satire headlines, things I'd posted on Twitter as jumping off points. And I say this in the introduction of my book, but that I essentially realized that for me, a poem epilogue because I've always found that humor is just the playful truth, the truth having fun.

So it was, it's been always been my favorite way to help myself learn, you know, hard things or deal with hard things. And it turns out it's helped a lot of people through poetry, through humor. And so I, that's how I started it. I'd play with the form and I would sometimes do list poems or I would, you know, I would take a weird news headline and use that as the title and encourage myself to write off of that.

But then half the time, it's exactly what you said, I'd be walking and I'd think of a phrase or I'd think of something I was going through and it would just, I would immediately have to write it down. And so it was a writing form that came really easily to me and I really, really enjoyed, which was surprising.

Zibby: And it become a book? 

Lyndsay: So yeah, so after She's a Bit Much, that poem had some virility, some celebrities reposted it. But it, it got a lot of traction. And in that first year of writing. my Instagram. I think it grew to almost 100, 000 followers. And so then that got the attention of literary agents. And then I signed with one and then we sold the book last year.

When I was pregnant with my first and only child. So that was all, it was a really crazy year last year. We sold the book, had to write the manuscript. I turned in my final edits a week before he was born.

Zibby: Oh my gosh. 

Lyndsay: So anyway, it all happened really fast and it was crazy and exciting and I hadn't, I didn't initially have those aspirations for the account.

I just wanted to express myself and see if people resonated and have some fun. And then I turned it into a book, which I'm so excited about. 

Zibby: Well, that's the best way. I mean, if you had said, I'm going to sit down and write a book of poetry, you know, 

it probably wouldn't have worked. 

Lyndsay: As someone who is not a poet.

Zibby: Speaking of marketing and all that, I was on your site for what's it called? Hold on. I have it open. Uh, you're.. 

Lyndsay: My agency. 

Zibby: Yeah, you're, you're.. 

Lyndsay: Obedient. 

Zibby: Obedient, right. Comedy marketing, comedy centric marketing. So basically all your campaigns use humor to sell. That's it. 

Lyndsay: Yeah. Our little like tagline is "fun cells".

And we just, you know, there's some, a stat that we throw around. That's like 90 percent of consumers want to be entertained. They want to laugh. And especially I feel like now more than ever. You just want some levity. You want, you know, a relief. And so yeah, so that's like comedy and humor have been the through line from all of my writing endeavors, creating the branding agency, any sort of like freelance satire stuff I've done, and then poetry.

And so I sort of get to laugh for a living, which is crazy and wonderful. 

Zibby: That's amazing. 

Yeah. We need a laugh for a living career colleges and all that. 

Lyndsay: I'll tell you this. My, I majored in film and Spanish and I don't use either of them. Yeah. So funny. 

Zibby: Uh, good old Spanish major. You just laughed. Um, can I read a few of the poems and you tell me more about that?

Lyndsay: I would love it. 

Zibby: Okay. It's amateur hour somewhere. Starting something new is like a one man show for a one man audience. The only applause worth seeking is your own. Don't rob yourself of that while you wait for approval from somewhere else. Sometimes winning yourself over is the greatest show on earth.

Lyndsay: I wrote, that is so interesting, in my little notes preparing for your show, I wrote that down as a, you know, if you were going to ask me what I would say to other writers, that is my favorite poem of that topic, so that was serendipitous. 

Zibby: Oh, well there you go, just read your mind. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I feel like I need this kind of thing pumping up sometimes, and we all, we all need that, right? There's so many, so much room for external approval all the time and the craving. It's like, whatever. If you're not happy with it, it doesn't matter. 

Lyndsay: Yeah, and I think within that, something that gave me a lot of excitement and, um, in my, in building this poetry career was really being my own biggest fan and deciding, giving myself permission to do it.

You know, I don't have an MFA. I don't, you know, I wasn't even that big of a poetry reader before I was, you know, and I'm sure there are some people, you know, Insta poets have a bit of a bad rap, but I just think if you let your freak flag fly and follow what you're very curious about, the chances are really good that, that you will find.

a group of people who resonate with it because you're being authentic and excited versus trying to create, manufacture something for people specifically. Like I, that's what I mean by You know, winning yourself over is the greatest show on earth because unless you believe it, unless you're writing it for yourself, I think, I think that's the first step.

Zibby: I mean, I would wager, I guess, that most MFAs in poetry are not out there getting viral poetry hits and getting book deals. Do you know what I mean? Like, Yeah. You have to just like go with the form that you're, loving.

Lyndsay: Yeah. Yeah. 

Zibby: And not worry about any of the certifications associated. 

Lyndsay: Right. And I think that's what a lot of people also are doing when they're self publishing, is they're not waiting for the, for any gatekeepers.

They're saying, I have something to say, and I think this is, valid and would serve people. And yeah, I'm just a big fan of playing with form and sort of breaking the rules. It's definitely something we do in our branding agency too, is just because this is tradition, it actually would be much more interesting to people, to consumers, if you did something different.

Zibby: I love that. Oh my gosh. Keep it simple, Susan. When I hold the word success under a blacklight, what glows back at me is ease and freedom. Not Scrooge McDuck esque vaults of swimmable gold. Not clout or fame or for the Joneses to eat my dust. Just nine to ten hours of sleep. Work that feels like play and terms and conditions that I write myself.

Joy does not have to be an end of year bonus or something we squeeze in during PTO. The other day I learned that one of our senses is called chronoception. It means the ability to feel the passing of time. And I do. I really do. And one of my proudest accomplishments is that I don't need a vacation from my vacation.

Lyndsay: It's so sweet hearing some, I don't know that I've heard a lot of other people read my work. There are a couple of really cool, like there's voice artists on TikTok that, that will find poets and read their work. And so I've had a few of that, but you just, you did that so lovely. 

Zibby: Just like a regular non performing reader.

Lyndsay: Whatever, your voice is your business. It's, that was, that was wonderful. I mean, for this. 

Zibby: Ordering from the kids menu. This is a longer one, but you wrote this one like in block, like a whole block. I mean, the way you're formatting them all is really interesting too. I hope I never take myself so seriously that I stopped thinking it's funny to pretend that one of those giant pretzel rods is a cigar.

I hope I never forget to put bugles and olives on the tips of each of my fingers or to eat a nutty buddy one layer at a time or to carefully pull each strand of string cheese until it's gone. By the way, I do all of these things. I hope I keep suggesting, To Lady and the Tramp along Spaghetti Noodle until someone says yes, I hope I never stop squirting Reddiweb directly into my mouth, spearing a single macaroni noodle onto each tine of my fork, and attempting to eat popcorn by throwing it straight into the air.

I hope I always fill each tiny square of my waffle to the brim with syrup and blow bubbles in my chocolate milk and assemble my two eggs and bacon into a breakfast plate smiley face and pretend the banana is ringing with an important phone call I must take right this minute. I hope when I'm 83 years old, I find myself using a cookie cutter to turn my sandwiches into fun shapes, even though I'm no longer young.

Even though they tried all my life to convince me that play was something I ought to outgrow. I love that one. 

Lyndsay: I love, I, you know, it's, you have experience with this. I feel like you write the book so long ago, you almost not forget, but I'm not as familiar with what's in it because the work becomes the promotion and the marketing and all of that stuff.

So I, you know, haven't thought of that one in a while, but I think I get this from my mother. She is. she is just someone who is very curious and very astonished. But she's just, you know, she would be in this room and she would be like, Oh, the like, she just notices things and, and chooses to be delighted by them.

And I feel like she turned everything into a game when we were little. And so I've just had that, like the delight DNA, I guess. And that's what inspired that poem. It was trying to hold on to that and, and keep play at the forefront. Because I just don't think anybody looks back and is like, so glad I was like, kept my head down and kept my nose to the grindstone and was very, very serious and accomplished these things.

Yeah. I mean, anyway, that's sort of the impetus there. 

Zibby: Well, the other day, my daughter did have a piece of rigatoni on each of her five fingers. And I'm like, you know, you can't do that at the table. We had like, we had like a table full of guests, and she was just like one by one, you know, sucking them off her fingers at age 11.

You know, and I'm like, we have to stop. And she's like, why? You know, why do we have to stop? And then I was like, I don't know. Do we have to stop? 

Lyndsay: Right. 

Zibby: It'd be easier if I just let her do it. Right. 

Lyndsay: Yeah. Everybody would win. 

Zibby: Yeah, exactly. Okay. One or two more. Do you mind? 

Lyndsay: This is so good. I love it. 

Zibby: You have a lot on your plate.

OMG, thank you for noticing. I do have a lot on my plate right now. Between work and hobbies and relationships and the stack of books I look at, look at lovingly every night while I open my phone to scroll TikTok instead. Not to mention the steaming garbage state of the world. My proverbial plate is absolutely overflowing with important work and worries and dreams.

Isn't it a miracle I'm this lovely? Anyway, what's new with you? And before you answer, could you please pass the rolls? 

Lyndsay: Yeah, you know, I wrote that one around Thanksgiving and it's interesting. It's so interesting what, like in my mind, that was a playful retort for if somebody commented on how much you were or were not eating, because I know that that is something that a lot of people deal with, with family members or people, you know, you're eating a lot or you're not eating a lot, just those comments.

And then when we were choosing. poems for the book, my editor was like, I think this could be a good book. This could stand on its own without the Thanksgiving context. 

Zibby: Oh. 

Lyndsay: And, you know, like, without necessarily knowing, because there are some people that read that that truly just take it at, you're very busy, you know, you have a lot on your plate.

And of course, I mean, you know, double meaning and wordplay is my favorite. But yeah, that's what that one was sort of all about. 

Zibby: Amazing. And now I'm wondering, because a lot of the, A lot of the poems did have to do with, like, you and your relationship to your body, and pregnancy even, and the world's perception of you, and all that, and I realize now, this is my own therapy here, I didn't actually turn over any of those to talk to you about, except this one, which is things that taste as good as skinny feels, which is sort of an offshoot of that, this is the last one I'll read, but usually I don't just read read to the person writing.

But anyway, these are so good. Boxed brownies with homemade icing, an ice cold West Coast IPA, letting I love you roll off my tongue, roll off of my tongue, and meaning it. Queso, butter, cream cheese, knowing that the way my body looks is the least interesting thing about me. At Grossy Pelosi's Vodka Sauce, Crazy Jane's Mixed Up Salt.

Is that, is that a, I know somebody who goes by crazy Jane, so. 

Lyndsay: No, that's like, it's a brand of salt and it's called crazy Jane's. 

Zibby: Crazy Jane's Mixed Up Salt, buying jeans that fit, complements that are unrelated to weight loss. Kind words I speak to myself, whatchamacallit, candy bars, smash burgers, nearly every flavor of potato chip, the comfort that I am pulling it off simply by putting it on my body, BLTs, spicy nacho Doritos, not regurgitating the dogma that I was force fed as a kid.

Tomato straight from the garden, a New York style bagel, body neutrality, wearing shorts again, fountain cherry coke, unfollowing accounts online that perpetuate diet culture, or make me feel weird about the body I live in. What a gorgeous spread. I think I'll go back for seconds. So I laugh, but there is, there is serious messages in that.

Like a lot of serious messages packed into a tiny little poem. Unpack please. 

Lyndsay: Yes. So, um, It's interesting because I, I don't know that I, I don't think I grew up with any sort of, you know, trauma related to body image more than just the average woman experiences just from being perceived in the world. And then I think as I've gotten older, I turned 40 last year.

And then with pregnancy, I just, I had my body on my mind a lot. And just this idea of, am I allowed to curse? Can you beat me out? If I go ahead first, I, a comedian friend of mine says that, uh, age gracefully just means DK fuckably, meaning, you know, this idea that we are supposed to stay a certain level of attractive to the male gaze or to societal gaze.

And so that, so as I explore anything that is to do with that, I think was just in general about being perceived. In the body that we're in and the pressure of being a woman and a middle aged woman and all those expectations that come along with it. Yeah. And again, like, I like, I love and I wrote that early on, I think around the era of she's a bit much.

I love taking a phrase that people intend to mean one way and, and flipping it. So I do, I think I have one as well in the book that is called aging gracefully or no letting myself go. It's all about aging gracefully. And so like that's another thing we've turned and like my community, we all like letting, we're letting ourselves go.

And that is a positive thing because we're letting ourselves go free from expectations, go off the handle, you know, go bananas. That's what that one's about.

Zibby: I don't know why you say it. Let yourself go. Okay. Sure. 

Lyndsay: That sounds like a blast. 

Zibby: Right? I would love to let myself go. Where are we going? Yeah. Who's driving and are we bringing snacks?

Exactly. Exactly. I'm in. Shotgun. 

Lyndsay: Yeah. 

Zibby: We just wrote a new book. Right there. 

Lyndsay: Right. There we go. 

Zibby: We'll put that in the next collection. 

Lyndsay: The sequel. 

Zibby: Speaking of, are you writing a sequel or another collection of poems or anything else? 

Lyndsay: You know, that is the hope. And the idea at the moment would be that they would maybe be all about motherhood, but I don't know.

There's also like, and you have experienced it, there's children's books that have been thrown around about to help younger girls embrace their a bit muchness from a younger age. So I would love it if I have the opportunity to continue to write poems. You never know what, how the thing, how society is going to change or if people, you know, right now is a really, really good time to be a poet people are very excited by it. I don't know why I got it at the right time So if i'm able to I would love to keep writing this it's very very fun for me. 

Zibby: I love that there's a resurgence like a new coolness about Because it's kind of a new Form and like maggie smith sort of blowing the doors off the genre and just being like totally who's with me. 

Lyndsay: Right.

We have I feel like we have maggie smith and kate bear to thank and kate You know Yeah, that it was just like, Hey, what if we, and then we're all like, Oh, cool. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Lyndsay: And, you know, and it does, it is, there's just so many, especially I've of course found through my account, but there are so many up and coming poets who I just, I'm like, I mean, myself, I am up and coming, I guess.

Zibby: I'm going somewhere. I think you're here. I'm like, literally, like, holding your book. How up and coming do we have to get? 

Lyndsay: Yeah. So it's an exciting time and I think people are realizing, I, one of the ways that we talk about this book is that it's poetry for people who don't like poetry, poems or who didn't know that they liked poetry.

And so I'm hoping to, you know, help people get familiar with the idea of poetry in a different way than they have expected it. 

Zibby: I mean, it kind of dovetails with the lack of attention span that everybody has these days. Right? So this is just a book with really short chapters. 

Lyndsay: Right. Right. I mean, at one point someone was, they, some people who were pitching to buy the book wanted to turn it into a coffee table book because it was like digestible.

But then we really wanted it in paperback so that people could, you know, lend it to their friends, bring it with them on the subway. Like, it felt to me like something that you could throw in your bag and have. And then the book itself is sectioned into chapters by emotion. 

Zibby: I love that. Yes. 

Lyndsay: By how you either are feeling or would like to feel.

So I'm like, it's a little You know, snippet little guide that if you're like, oh, I'm feeling this way, you can pull it out. 

Zibby: We curate my bookstore in Santa Monica this way, like based on feelings or fun topics like motherhood malaise or reeling from divorce or, you know, books that make you tremble or whatever.

But like yours took it to a whole new level and I was like, oh, I should have like gone even deeper with these categories, but I didn't. But anyway, there's always time. 

Lyndsay: Yeah. Always time. 

Zibby: How are you going to take your branding and marketing knowledge and market this book? What are the plans? Like, how have you, how are you doing that?

Do you have a tagline for the book? Like, how are you, how are you doing it? 

Lyndsay: Oh man, I really should because that's our, that's like one of our favorite projects is taglines. I, yeah, I've been able to use my marketing mind, but it is, It is just a whole nother beast because it's you and so you're basically saying, do you like this?

Do you like me? Would you like to like me? Um, but I've just been trying to have fun with it. Of course that's like my mantra. I've been making a little series on reels and TikTok where I take the book and show her other things that are a bit much. So like a really crazy burger or like a sparkly latte, or there's this like iconic hot pink house on my side of town in East Nashville.

So that has been fun and just trying to really be silly with it. And I think the thing I've learned so far is that people really want to help you. It is very, very humbling to ask and then it is, it has been very beautiful. The people that have been like, Oh, I'll connect you with this person or I'll make that for your PR box.

Or I'll, you know, I'll post about this. So that has been my favorite part about it. It's been very hard for me to ask. But then seeing people want to help and then, It reminds me that I want to do that for other people. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Lyndsay: So it's been really special so far. That's 

Zibby: awesome. You know, I was literally just telling someone who I was trying to have her, like, accept my help on something, and I was like, and other people too, and I was like, other people, like people like to help.

They, people like to feel helpful. So if you don't let them help, you're actually depriving the other person of like that satisfying feeling that they could have. So. 

Lyndsay: Yeah. It is. It's very special. I just. Posted a funny little stories on my Instagram because with a gif of someone asking for something because I just feel like I've been asking people like, would you come to this event?

Would you host this? Could I, you know, all these different things. And someone wrote me back and they said, you know, for two and a half years, you've posted almost every day and given us a lot of words for feelings, like words we didn't have for things we're going through. Like let us. help you and give back in that way.

And that is, I know that it gets a lot of hate or a bad rap, but I love social media for that reason when it connects people in that way. 

Zibby: I totally agree. I totally agree. Oh my gosh. Okay. What cool things are you putting in your influencer box? Now I have to ask. 

Lyndsay: So have you ever heard of, it's called longhand pencils.

She she's making She's been going through the book. And so she's making a bunch of pencils with different sayings on them. We are having, I'm not going to, I'm going to tell you three. I'm not going to tell you them all. Cause it can be a secret and you'll get one. We're having little confetti poppers that they have customized with the colors from the book.

So the book has a sardine tin full of confetti. We're still looking for a sardine partner though, because I feel like I sort of have to, so fish wife, if you're listening to those little confetti poppers and then little friendship bracelets, a la Taylor Swift, that say a bit much. Amazing. And then some other fun things.

Zibby: Amazing. I love that. So great. 

Lyndsay: As much chaos as we can fit in a little box. I love it. 

Zibby: I don't know if you've read this book Joyful by Ingrid Fattel Lee, but it's all, you have. So it's all about like color and shape and circles and joy and whatever. And I feel like your book is like, especially this cover is just like the epitome of a joyful cover, which of course, joy is beautiful in a bunch of your things, right? All of that celebration of things. 

Lyndsay: Yeah. It was a hard book cover process. I was not prepared for how difficult it would be for somebody who is, I'm not very visual, obviously I'm words and verbal. And so trying to articulate with the, you know, this talented team of designers, what.

What I wanted and you read a poem that had it. We played around with olives on fingers bugles on like a lot of imagery from that poem we played around with and then ultimately landed here, which I think is they were just like we need glitter or confetti. We need something that the masses would instantly recognize as a good thing because I forget in my world a bit much is already good.

But for most people, yeah, seeing it, they need to be told that that this is like a celebration of being a bit much. So the confetti does that. 

Zibby: Love it. But when you think of the tagline, 

Lyndsay: Yes, now that was the perfect task. 

Zibby: I want to see like ads that you make for it, you know, the way your site. 

Lyndsay: My gosh, I really have to now.

I can't believe I haven't thought of it. 

Zibby: Yeah, you better. 

Lyndsay: I'm gonna. 

Zibby: What advice do you have for aspiring authors, aside from the poem that we read in the beginning? Now you'll have to think of something on the fly. 

Lyndsay: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, someone smarter than me said this. It might have been Mary Oliver herself.

I think it is. Where she says, pay attention, be astonished, write about it. That is someone. I might be misattributing, but I think it is my cousin. She's not really my cousin. My cousin Mary Oliver. And That I think it's just pay attention to to like small things and nothing is too small like if you're noticing it there are other people that are noticing it and it in it in it matters and I think I think the other piece of advice I would give is.

There's so much more. I purposely didn't read a lot of other modern poets when I was writing the manuscript and even when I was starting my account, because I was just so fearful of taking on anyone's voice or style. And I know a lot of people say you should read a lot of, you know, people you admire.

I'm sort of like, find your own style and voice first, especially in the, you know, internet age when there's so much you can consume, because you need to sound like you and not like somebody else. 

Zibby: I love them. Very good advice. Amazing. Well, good luck, Lindsay. I'll be rooting for you. So exciting and I can't wait to see your campaign and everything else that comes out of the book and all the people it's going to help.

I think you're going to like Be over the moon meeting all these people on tour. I can't wait to hear about it.

Lyndsay: I'm so excited. Thank you so much for having me. 

Zibby: My pleasure. 

Lyndsay: I'll talk to you soon. 

Zibby: Okay. And, uh, we'll just have to sneak into this friend of yours house to steal her beautiful wall. 

Lyndsay: I know.

Zibby: You're going to turn around and like, I'll be there behind you. 

Lyndsay: Yeah. You're like, huh? And you're like taking stuff off the wall. 

Zibby: Exactly. Don't mind me. Don't mind me. All right. 

Lyndsay: Okay. Talk to you later. 

Zibby: Bye. 

Lyndsay: Bye.