Poetry
The original words. Personal, dedicated, general, experimental and sometimes difficult to categorize. Some pieces are decades old. Others are still becoming what they are.
Words Into Waves / Shane the Poet
I write
I write
what remains.
Poetry began as a way to put words around things I couldn't explain. Over time, those words became books, songs, stories, memories, experiments, and a place for other people to find something that sounds a little like themselves.
01 / The personI'm Shane.
My name is Shane Clouthier. Some people know me as Shane the Poet. Words Into Waves is the place where those two things meet.
I've been writing poetry since 2003. What started as writing became a record of time: relationships, places, mistakes, departures, memories, people I couldn't forget, things I couldn't say, and things I didn't understand until years after I wrote them.
My writing has changed considerably over the years. So has the person doing the writing. I don't think either of those things are supposed to stay still.
The result is not one neat genre or one perfectly consistent voice. It's an archive of a life being interpreted in real time.
“The poem doesn't have to fix anything. Sometimes it just has to prove that somebody felt it.”Why I keep writing
02 / The workMore than
More than
poems.
Words Into Waves began as a home for poetry, but the work has grown beyond the page. Writing, music, books, stories, visual art and experimentation all belong to the same larger project.
Music
Poetry transformed into songs through the Only Anthem project. The music doesn't replace the writing. It gives the writing another language.
Books
Collections that preserve the work in its original form, allowing poems to exist without needing a melody, a screen or an algorithm to introduce them.
Stories
Some ideas outgrow the shape of a poem. Narrative, memory and recurring imagery sometimes need more room than a stanza can provide.
Visuals
Images, album art and visual experiments extend the emotional world around the writing rather than simply decorating it.
Archive
The timeline matters. Old writing stays here alongside new work because the person who wrote something years ago is still part of the person writing today.
03 / Only Anthem
Words
become
waves.
become
waves.
For a long time, I used to say that the reason I was a poet instead of a musician was simple: I couldn't sing.
I loved music. I always had. Punk, post-hardcore, emo, indie and everything that found its way into the mix shaped the way I heard emotion. But hearing a song in my head and being able to make that song were two very different things.
Then technology changed what was possible.
Only Anthem is my way of crossing that distance.
The poems come first. The words are mine. They aren't AI-generated, rewritten or secretly manufactured by a machine. The technology is used to help translate the existing writing and musical vision into something I couldn't previously record myself.
Only Anthem isn't an attempt to pretend I suddenly became the singer I always wished I could be. It's something more interesting: a way to let the words leave the page.
The name itself isn't new. “Only Anthem” began as a band name during the MySpace era, back when I was experimenting with FruityLoops and getting nowhere particularly fast. Years later, I reclaimed the name for what it was always trying to become.
04 / The booksBefore the
Before the
music, there
were pages.
Poetry has always existed independently of the music. Books are where the work can stand completely on its own, without production, instrumentation or interpretation getting between the reader and the words.
Poetry collection
Minced Words
Poetry collection
Twenty Twenty
Poetry collection
Shattered Reflections
Poetry / interpretation
As Interpreted
05 / The timelineA lot of
A lot of
life happened
between lines.
2003
The beginning
I started writing poetry. The earliest work belongs to a different version of me, but I keep it because history doesn't become less important simply because we've outgrown it.
2009+
The archive takes shape
The Words Into Waves archive preserves years of writing, including personal, dedicated, general and poetry work. Some years are prolific. Some are nearly silent. Both tell part of the story.
2025
The floodgates open
A large body of newer writing begins reshaping the project, reconnecting older ideas with a much more deliberate creative direction.
2026
Words become waves
Only Anthem grows into a larger musical project, while Words Into Waves becomes the home for the poetry, stories, music and evolving archive behind it.
06 / Why it existsFor the
For the
person who
needs it.
I don't think every poem needs to be universally understood. I think it needs to be understood by the right person.
Maybe that's someone who has lost somebody. Maybe it's someone who stayed too long. Maybe they left. Maybe they are trying to understand a version of themselves they no longer recognize.
Maybe they just heard one line and thought, “I've felt that.”
That's enough.
Music has had that effect on me for most of my life. A song can arrive at exactly the right moment and make something impossible to explain suddenly feel completely obvious.
If something I've written can do even a fraction of that for somebody else, then it has done what I wanted it to do.
Words Into WavesRead the words.
Read the words.
Hear the waves.
Explore the poems, follow the timeline, discover the stories behind the writing, or start wherever something catches your attention.
Shane Clouthier / Shane the Poet / Only Anthem · Writing since 2003