ello, it's me

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A few days ago I sent out a poem: lilac bedroom, 2001 and wanted to let you know that this is the first poem in a new collection I am writing called LET’S FOLD SCARVES!

I’m a little nervous about it. It’s my first full collection. And there’s a definite pull away from the DIY scrappiness of throwing a pamphlet together with the passion a special interest, and a limited number of poems. A full collection is 50+ pages, it’s more poems than I currently have written, and I’m feeling ambitious. I want this to be a well crafted book, with every poem purposeful and placed. I want to tell a story from beginning to end.

As I’m filling out a mercifully short application for funding (Society of Authors), I am confronted by how much I dislike writing about myself, or more specifically, bigging up myself: why I deserve funding, why this work is so important, what am I trying to achieve? Imposter syndrome, and other friends, have controlled the narrative of my ambitions for a very long time.

A few years ago I did a Lunchtime Talk at Pervasive Media Studio called Never Enough: Imposter Syndrome. Not because I had authority, or had overcome it, but because I am always doing battle with it, and wanted to push myself to talk about this horrible goblin that keeps so many of us from making things happen. The talk could’ve have had more depth, sure. But what really struck me was the amount of people there, and the number of questions I got afterwards. It was transformative to be sitting in a room with all these people talking about feeling not enough.

One of the greatest comforts (that I always have to remind myself of) is that we are not alone in this feeling. We live in a competitive, capitalist hellscape driven by social media and visual storytelling of people’s lives. We see achievements but not failures, we filter in what we are not doing ourselves. To write is to have autonomy, at least that’s how I feel about it. When I’m writing I am showing up for myself, I am breaking down my own walls for the joy of creating. It’s only when I have to externalise this process that the goblin gets louder.

Anyway, wish me luck with my collection! It’s out in 2028, and I’ll tell you more about it soon.

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🪑 The lovely Matt Abbott gifted me a subscription to Marjorie’s Table, a weekly poem writing session for half an hour on Wednesday mornings. I couldn’t always do them at the time, but you can watch back the live stream and catch up. I really enjoyed it and have kept up the subscription.

☆ Matt has his own substack which is full of brilliant writing ideas and a new series on nostalgia: 30 Years of Hurt.

🍄‍🟫 I went to see Hokum recently and it scared the shit out of me! Very good horror, really enjoyed the ride, and loved that it’s set in Ireland and has so many great, but not super famous, Irish actors in it.

👻 In Bristol, I got the chance to see TWO different plays by a theatre company called Kiss Witness, led by Chinese-Indonesian artist Elizabeth Gunawan. Stampin’ Through the Graveyard is an audio immersive play about the end of the world, AI and the threads of people’s memories. The second is Prayers for a Hungry Ghost, dropping us into a dark comedy about intergenerational trauma, migration and the Chinese mythology of the Hungry Ghost Festival. Both were EXCELLENT, I can’t stop raving about them.

🩷 At the beginning of May, Punk Poetry & Pegging returned to the Chelsea Inn for a special Easton Punk Festival edition! It was the first time we as a collective had been together for 3 years: Malaika Kegode, TS Idiot and the newly returned 1990sChris (and me).

My favourite thing about PPP at the Chelsea is that people who have no idea what’s going on just wander in to the bar for a drink, and then become enthralled by the poetry and stay. I love that.

🗝️ Finally wanted to mention the Threads of Life exhibition at Southbank, which I was really lucky to be able to go see thanks to Immersive Arts. Chiharu Shiota’s work is intricate, emotional and all encompassing. This image below is me in During Sleep, an installation of uniform beds and thousands of black threads. I cried, partly because of the hay fever, and partly because this room reminded me how my memories look through trauma.

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See you soon x