SOUP: Anything for Love

By Jen Harris

SOUP offers a content warning prior to every column, as the subjects discussed herein may be triggering for some readers. Please proceed with caution. If you would like to try a grounding technique for triggered moments, here is a personal recommendation.

The song goes, “I would do anything for love… but I won’t do that,” and the great debate is, “What IS ‘that’?”

That is all of the things that wreck a relationship: addiction, codependency, attachment style, jealousy, infidelity, financial strain, untreated mental illness, misogyny, sexism, racism, sexual repression… the list is long. So, the song is inherently claiming, “I would do anything for love, except be human.”

Historically I’ve claimed to be the sort of person who “won’t do that,” even though I totally DO THAT and that and that. I’d still like to believe I would do anything well-intentioned and healthy for love.

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Poet Jen Harris’s new book Unconfirmed Certainties is about heartbreak, growth, and telling your truth⁠—even if that means saying “fuck you” to cheating fiancées.

Bad Ass Babes: Jen Harris

By Kelcie McKenney

Jen Harris outside her Kansas City home
Photo by Justina Kellner

Poet Jen Harris is unapologetic about telling her truth, and she wants readers of her new book Unconfirmed Certainties to feel the same. 

The Kansas City poet and spoken word artist has earned her place at the center of KC’s poetry scene: She has both a Drugstore and Charlotte Street residency under her belt, gave a TED talk called “Spoken Word Poetry Saved My Life,” had a guest spot on season three of Queer Eye, founded the Kansas City Poetry Slam (aptly named because she “believes in SEO ratings”), and published two books, with her third to be released on Sunday. Harris isn’t stopping any time soon.

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