Butterfly Keeper: Darcy Gallagher's Poetry Book
How The Buzz’s former editor-in-chief found purpose through poetry
By Chloe Jad
Darcy Gallagher, former editor-in-chief of The Buzz and BU alum, self-published her first poetry collection, and simultaneously launched her own business in December 2023.
“Butterfly Keeper” comprises 100 original poems with hand-drawn illustrations to adorn them and is the first installment of Tiny Poems, Gallagher’s “poetry book collection and small batch apparel and accessories brand.” In an effort to make the words tangible, all products are designed with poems from the book they pair with.
Gallagher said she wanted the book “to be what I felt when I read poetry.”
“[Poetry] really helped me so much through my own mental health journey that I was like, if I can do this for someone else with the poems that I write, then that’d be so great,” said Gallagher. “I could give someone the same experience that poetry has given me.”
Tiny Poems came to be in the passenger seat of a U-Haul on its way to pack up the roots Gallagher had set down in Boston. Freshly graduated from BU a month earlier, Gallagher wondered what the next step in her life would be. She recalled her impatience at 6 a.m., buying Tiny Poems LLC on a date she remembered exactly: July 22, 2023.
The day before, she took her father to Brookline Booksmith. Gallagher found herself in the poetry section, her usual literary magnet. After book browsing, the pair headed over to J.P. Licks for ice cream, where Gallagher proposed her idea for Tiny Poems to her father. He fully supported it. Knowing that Rupi Kaur had self-published her first poetry book at 21, Gallagher thought to herself, “I can too.” The next morning, Tiny Poems LLC was hers.
Gallagher was not always the poet she is now. Poets like Rupi Kaur, Billy Chapata, and Mary Oliver filled lots of her alone time during her senior year at BU. Reading their poetry in the mornings as she journaled became a healing duo for Gallagher, helping her process emotions and experiences that had been internalized, but not digested.
Gallagher continued to consume poetry daily. She began jotting down some of her own poems in her journal, fostering a reflective ability that easily brought this style of poetry to her brain.
Throughout the day, when words or phrases popped into her head, Gallagher would capture those fragments in her notes app. By graduation, she had a sampling of poetry to work with.
“I was like, well, I have all these poems,” she said. “I like being my own boss and setting deadlines for myself and having complete creative control over the social media and the branding and the website and stuff like that. I was thinking about how I can put all that together.”
Working through the summer up until release in December, Gallagher actualized her vision, coordinating closely with publishers and eco-friendly packaging companies as she hand-designed sustainable products — all while writing enough poems to fill a book.
Skills from Gallagher’s time leading The Buzz showed in the publishing process. She traced her ability to set deadlines, structure an editorial calendar, copy edit, manage her time, research, talk to people, and manifest her creativity into a physical output, all back to her experience as an EIC.
Looking forward, Gallagher said she wants to bolster Tiny Poems’ online presence and expand “organically” while making “meaningful connections” with others to foster a “genuine community.”
More Tiny Poems products are on the way, including the option for custom poems with an order. Gallagher also plans to produce more books, including a Tiny Poems community edition, a collection of poems featuring emerging poets as coauthors.
Until then, she hopes readers will find comfort in “Butterfly Keeper.”
“If you see yourself on a couple pages and resonate with the poems, this book is for you. The book is for everyone. It’s written for everyone.”
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