Poet Cleo Wade’s Next Challenge: Write a Love Story

“I watch a rom-com every day, even if it’s just for five minutes,” says New York Times best-selling author, poet and artist Cleo Wade. 

For Wade, rom-coms are just one of the many ways she connects herself with the love that she espouses in her work. Throughout her career, Wade has focused on innovative ways to connect — be it her lauded Instagram account or her “Are You OK” booths, where she has deep conversations with strangers in public parks. “I’m always thinking of how I can create a friend or a companion for the people who can read my work as they go through their lives,” she says.  

Wade’s new book, Remember Love: Words for Tender Times, encourages readers to find the love and stillness within themselves in a world filled with chatter. “I did hope when I was writing it that it could give people a moment of pause to find OK-ness,” she says. “And that’s why even in talking about the book I stress OK-ness rather than striving for doing your best. I think in our world … it’s hard to be able to reach for anything other than OK, and OK is enough.” 

The New Orleans-born Wade lives in Los Angeles with her partner, writer-producer Simon Kinberg (Invasion), and their daughters Bayou and Memphis. Wade wrote Remember Love during the pandemic, as she explored the importance of real connectivity and community in a world full of quick fixes.

“The first thing you have to know is that you cannot hack heartbreak. If your parent passes or you divorce your husband of 20 years, your algorithm can [suggest] like three things if you are feeling this way, two ways if you are feeling that way,” Wade says. “There is no way to write a prescription for that. We need time. We need art. We need a community of people who encourage those things because those are the only things that support us.”

The book — a collection of poems and short essays — is divided into four sections, each of which deals with a different themes: feelings of being lost in life, finding love and sympathy for oneself amid heartbreak, finding that sense of OK-ness and finding strength in letting go.

Often, the art that helps heal Wade are Hollywood’s most popular romantic comedies — particularly the work of writer-director Nancy Meyers. “I love her so much and even though she makes films that are romantic and comedic and funny, I hate reducing her to a rom-com person — but she is the ultimate,” Wade says. “It feels like such a light genre, and I think her work is so meaningful.” 

Wade’s love for Nancy Meyers is so strong, she even added a line in Remember Love about giving oneself a gift: time on the couch with a Meyers’ movie. But her editor felt it was too specific, so she recommended she change it to just a movie in general. But the sentiment remains. As Wade writes in Remember Love: “I remember love, and I remember my wings. I remember I can fly.” 

Wade spoke further with The Hollywood Reporter about Remember Love, why she chose heartbreak as one of the book’s main themes and her favorite rom-coms of all time.

Why did you focus on heartbreak as one of the themes in the book?

In the past 10 years of my life, the one thing people ask me about the most — whether it’s a friend or someone I’ve never met, a reader or someone who’s just starting following me — they always ask how they get through heartbreak. Heartbreak was always something I wanted to write about. I really mined all the notes I had over the last eight years around heartbreak.

It was just a few weeks ago when Matthew Perry died. Since one of the themes of your new book is heartbreak, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the collective heartbreak people feel when a celebrity dies.

We’re attached because of the intimacy of them being in our homes. I think it’s hard … even just 20 years ago if there was collective loss of an important figure culturally, there was just the obituary that day and perhaps some follow-up stories rather than this whole fresh and constant scroll. Neither one is worse or better than the other — it’s a different processing for our pain … I started noticing it the most in 2015, which is when I started doing my “Are You OK” booths. There is so much yelling online. A lot of our inability to process is because we are being confronted with so much, how could we possibly process it? Imagine if you transported yourself to a room full of 150 people you follow right before you go to bed and you are trying to wind down? And you wonder why you can’t sleep.

Since you are around Hollywood to some degree now, do you want to write screenplays or otherwise be involved with the entertainment business? 

It’s honestly hard to be this up close and personal to the business of filmmaking and be like “I want to do that,’” when you are used to writing alone and writing your love poems and not having to weave in and out of deals or politics. I started as an artist who made these paintings of texts and painted on the sides of walls, and I had done all these public art installations in New Orleans and then I started taking photos of my notebooks and that was being shared. And my challenge then was can I write books? My next great challenge was can I write books in different genres? Can I write children’s books? And next March my next children’s book will come out. Now I’m thinking about what my next challenge in writing will be — I would really love to write love stories … I truly love Nora Ephron. I think if you just love writing words that speak to people, it’s hard to not be tempted by wanting to write dialogue between people, especially them falling in love. 

What romantic movies do you love?  

I love that so many people are being introduced to Greta Gerwig’s work now that she’s had the biggest movie in the world. I love movies that are talky New York movies. I love anything with Julia Roberts. I love any Penny Marshall movie. I love Love and Basketball, Bend it like Beckham, any Gary Marshall movie. I was watching That Old Feeling with Bette Midler the other day. I love It’s Complicated, Something’s Gotta Give, Book Club. One of my favorite rom-coms is The First Wives Club. 

I also love romantic sitcoms. Some of the greatest love stories I’ve ever seen are the love stories on Cheers. 

The best romantic movies are ones where you get to watch them fall in love and there’s so much patience required in that, even if you watch something like The Notebook. Most of the movie is watching them fall deeper and deeper in love. 

Are you touring now? 

I’ll be touring the book for quite a while. I did some of the initial touring, and I’m trying to figure out how to do as many free events as I can do. I want to create community spaces where people can get together. I feel like if you are online all the time … the in-person gathering will be critical to us feeling like we can get through a hard time. My biggest focus is to create a free space to be together and read some poems and talk about our lives. That’s the next focus.