Camonghne Felix is a nationally recognized poet who moonlights as the head of Blue State’s strategic communications practice based in the firm’s DC office. She got her start in politics working for then-New York state Rep. Michael Blake (D), which opened the door to non-profit roles before she landed a job in then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s comms office as a speechwriter.
In 2020, she was the national director of surrogate communications, black media, and strategic communications for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign. Her debut collection of poems, Build Yourself a Boat, was published by Haymarket Books in 2019 and was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Awards, Pen America Open Book Award, and Lambda Literary Award.
C&E: Do you think of yourself as a writer first and a comms practitioner second?
Felix: I would definitely call myself a writer first. I’ve been writing and publishing since I was about 16. A lot of my early writing was more political, more advocacy writing, just me looking at the world and everything that was going on and wanting to interrogate it. I got into politics because I wanted to actually get my hands dirty in the machinations of it. And I wanted to know how laws actually got passed, and how legislation gets drafted and how writing ties back into creating the language that legislates the way people live.
C&E: How do you translate the skills of a poet to being a comms practitioner?
Felix: Part of what I bring to speechwriting, and to comms work in general, is a focus on precision. Because we’re pushing out so much content all the time, it can be really easy to speak in macro terms, to use well-baked concepts that we’ve been using for a long time. It can sometimes be looked down on to innovate our language because we’re trying to do persuasion and a lot of us assume that persuasion is about familiarity and recreating old cycles of familiarity. But the more precise we get with language, the more specific we get about what we want, about what we’re asking of voters, the better we’re able to legislate and govern in general.
C&E: How do you balance the need for speed in comms with a desire to craft unique language?
Felix: That was my challenge when I first started. But I created systems that worked for me in terms of what allows me to move fast and think really creatively. Part of becoming a good comms person, or good in any career, is knowing what you’re good at and being able to outsource work and delegate and also be honest with yourself about your own limitations. So I can write a really punchy, really compelling statement for pretty much anyone in about 10-15 minutes. I can’t necessarily do that with a press release. It’s about not being rigid and not being attached to old assumptions of workflow.
C&E: What do you feel is missing from comms writing these days?
Felix: People are really afraid to take risks in technical political prose writing. If you are someone who likes political writing, you should see yourself as a creative writer. And you should do the same kind of massaging and learning that creative writers have to do. You should go to workshops, you should read books, because it’s reading other kinds of content and watching the way that other people respond to other kinds of content that you actually learn what the entire full toolbox of creative writing is and how to fully incorporate that into your technical writing.
C&E: What kind of relationship do comms practitioners need to have with clients or principals in order to allow for that risk taking?
Felix: It’s important that comms practitioners work with candidates who they understand. Part of how you build up that rapport is from the outset showing them a creative approach. When you’re having that initial talk, it’s asking them about the last book that they read, the last speech that really moved them — what music are you listening to right now that really resonates with you? Bypass some of that distance by asking human questions. The same questions you ask a new friend when you’re try to get to know them. Ask really human questions and leave room for really human responses, and from there being able to combine recommendations or thoughts.
C&E: What about the rest of the comms team?
Felix: It’s important that, especially at the agency level, you allow associates and more junior staff the ability to also connect with the client in that way. Even though I’m the head of the practice, if I’m on a prospecting call with a client or a potential client, I’m going to bring on a junior person from my team and they’re empowered and encouraged to ask questions, to make jokes to bring their full selves to every call. That also allows your team to have a more holistic relationship with the client so it’s not just the head of your team being close with the principal.
We help cultivate the best writers by giving everyone on our team the most space that they can to play and to make mistakes and I try to make sure that every person continues to have a healthy relationship with writing so I never give feedback that’s prescriptive: you should be doing this. As a manager and a leader, I try to ask questions. I try to help my team push a little bit at the edges of what they can do. And sometimes, I just let them send out the thing that they wrote so that they can see the way that it goes into the world, and they can see how it fails, if it does fail.
C&E: Is writing and language enough of a priority in the campaign industry?
Felix: Campaigns are simply not being run nearly as well as they can be and part of that is short sightedness when it comes to hiring. Comms should never be the last hire, and you should never be hiring people simply because they have technical ability. You want to hire people who genuinely match the candidate, who match the work. I also think that having a theory and philosophy of execution is really important.
So even though we know that in comms in general the most important thing is to be fast and to not make any mistakes, beyond that I also want people who are invested in their practice. People who are thinking a lot about creativity, and language, and words, and if you’re hiring people who are thinking that way, even if writing is not what they do — they’re organizers, or they’re running email programs — then you have an entire team of people who are putting a priority on language.
C&E: How do you stay creative?
Felix: I read as much as I can. I’m always reading because that’s where you pick up new tools, new tones, new techniques. But also I try to stay really connected to my literary community outside of politics, even if it’s just on social media. Funny enough, I don’t spend all day talking to other people who work in political comms. I’m engaging with a lot of different people who have a lot of different ideas about how language works as a way to keep myself fresh. Beyond that, I write all the time. In the middle of a really busy day in politics, I’ll try to write a poem in between press releases. And I never forget that, even though I love politics, I am a writer first and I can’t just talk all day.
