Patti Smith is starting her own email newsletter, on platform Substack. She’ll share “weekly ruminations, shards of poetry, music, and musings on whatever subject finds its way from thought to pen, news of the mind, pieces of this world” each week. Paying subscribers will receive an additional weekly email with new installments of her serial The Melting, which she describes as “A journal of my private pandemic.” Here’s her full introduction letter:

In the corner of my room is a small suitcase, packed over a year ago, ready to tour the world. That was to be my traveling work, which never came to pass.

I am still here.

Every morning for some hours, at my usual café, I sit and write. Notebook and coffee reign. Writing is what I do, and have since twelve, imagining myself Jo March. Meditations, crime novels, and poetry, hidden in stacks of notebooks, written in every stage of life. Now, in the time of the pandemic, isolated from family, friends, and fellow workers, we are reinventing our processes. Through Substack I plan to form an inter-connective body of work for a responsive community. Each week I will post my weekly ruminations, shards of poetry, music, and musings on whatever subject finds its way from thought to pen, news of the mind, pieces of this world, free to all.

On Tuesdays, subscribers will find my first serial, The Melting. No one has read these pages. A journal of my private pandemic. My first entry was exactly one year ago, on April 7th, the night before the full Worm Moon. Tonight, I am sitting at my desk, under my skylight, that same moon overhead. I will post the first few entries for everyone. Then, for my paid subscribers, I will post an installment every week, as well as posts relating to its expanding world, finally fulfilling my Jo March fantasy as she serialized her Gothic tales for the newspaper.

I offer The Melting, words known only by the pages themselves, to be given a new life here. In my Substack world, I hope that you, dear reader, will be my notebook.

You can subscribe on Substack, and watch Patti’s announcement video below.

Patti has a few in-person shows coming up, including a Bob Dylan birthday celebration and early and late shows at City Winery as part of their reopening.

Meanwhile, Substack has been facing backlash for how and why the platform pays certain writers, some of whom allegedly express bigoted and right-wing views.