Who is crazy enough to blog again after 5+ years?

So yeh, that feeling when you re-discover a whole website and blog that you had literally… forgotten you had ever created. Not just put aside, not just left in the past, but its existance had literally fallen out of my head. It was only when randomly deciding to seek out another, even older blog that I once tried to start, failed to keep up and somehow did not manage to completely forget, that I re-discovered that I had once attached a blog to my poetry Google account. Guess it could happen to anyone huh?

So what has happened since my fourth and previously-last blog entry, in September 2018? I mean, apart from all the obvious stuff, like Brexit, global pandemics, several new or ongoing terrible wars, political upheavals, and millions of people tragically dead before their time due to any of the above? (I have always maintained that Brexit would end up killing people, but I guess I can’t declare on that one just yet).

Well, although one wouldn’t think so from the evidence of this sad attempt at a website, my personal poetry journey has very much continued and evolved, more-or-less shaped by events, world-changing or otherwise. I continued to post on writeoutloud.net (where the poems linked to in the “texts” section of this site are still posted), learning a lot from interactions with fellow poets and discovering a knack for pointless and clichéd comic rhyming. I discovered Instagram mainly by accident, setting up an account with the intention only to read the poetry of others, then falling into a trap of needing to “produce” as people started “following” me, whatever that meant. Through this platform I have made some poetry friends, learned even more from interactions with interesting people, and fallen in love with the intellectual puzzles of obscure form poetry (anyone for a quick clogyrnach?) I started attending the IG transmissions of various poetry-sharing groups and gurus, setting alarms for 3am to join in a “live” from a different time-zone that might possibly include the reading of one of my texts. I even attempted a couple of “lives” of my own, carefully planned for occasions when there was no one in the house to hear me and wonder what the hell I was doing. I don’t see much of any of that kind of thing happening any more on IG; I think COVID killed off that part of IG amongst so many other things (and people).

I went to quite some lengths to keep attending open mic nights for a while, then suddenly lost my mojo and  stopped – even before COVID brought all that to an abrupt halt. I’m not going to go into the traumas of the 1^st lockdown (the sudden, chaotic conversion to online teaching, the massive explosion of an already-heavy workload due to (my own) bad management of the tools and requirements, in parallel with the obligations of home-schooling…). Nor the 2^nd lockdown and its surroundings (obligatory hybrid teaching, or presence v. distance teaching in alternation, masks, contact cases, queues for COVID tests… blah blah). Oh, I guess I did after all. Now we’ve survived all that, I’m not quite sure how, all I know is that even just the mention of online teaching has the potential to bring on symptoms of PTSD (diagnosis unofficial but reliable).

BUT the COVID lockdowns spawned one amazing and positive thing: the Zoom poetry open-mic/slam scene. I do not know if COVID prompted the discovery of the possibilities of video-conferencing for poetry performance, or just pushed it necessarily to the forefront, but for the likes of me – stuck poeming in a language that is non-native to my location, remember – it was a total revelation, and liberation. Suddenly I could easily share in an ENGLISH-SPEAKING, international poetry community! There are too many events and communities now in existence to even begin to mention or attend more than a tiny proportion: I can just say I became a regular at Oooh Beehive and Blot from the Blue, and also participated in various events by the Gloucester Poetry Society (including having a couple of poems published in their 2021 Trawler anthology). I even participated in a couple of international online slams – AND qualified as a finalist in them – and had the immense pleasure of being invited to do a headlining set for the open mic of Oooh Beehive in September 2022. Through all of this, I have once more learned such a lot from amazing interactions, and met lovely poets who I now count as friends, real friends, although I have never encountered most of them in person. And a few of them I have; I made a crazy trip to Morecambe Poetry Festival in September 2023, to meet some lovely zoom poetry ladies in the flesh, and have the immense pleasure of getting to perform live in Blighty for almost the first time (although the open-mic nights were scheduled between midnight and 2am, so the audience was rather limited… I guess world-wide acclaim will have to wait a little longer).

So where am I at these days? I have to confess that the “continued and evolved” poetry journey mentioned above has distinctly slowed down in recent months. I’m down to 2-3 new slam poems a year if I’m lucky, and my comic or form poetry flow has trickled to almost nothing. My Instagram account is pretty much dormant except for occasional non-poetry-related posts (I am sooooo bad at managing my presence and prominence on social media – as I guess this blog proves!) I’ve attended a grand total of one live scene ouverte in Grenoble since lockdown, although I did also have the amazing opportunity to do my first ever live, full-length slam sets at the “Speak It, Sing It” festival of English language held at Grenoble Atelier du 8 in July 2022 and 2023. Worst of all, I’m simply not taking the time to attend Zoom open mics these days, to maintain contact with those amazing and supporting poetry communities that have already given me so much. I could blame life, just the plain old overwhelming pressures of balancing work, parenting and trying to stay alive, before creativity even gets a look in. But by “life” I mean “me”.

I’ve written about creativity before. I tend to write about my need to create more than I get on with actually creating – or I should say, practising creating: learning by doing and all that. The online expedition that led to the accidental re-discovery of this blog is part of yet another, misguided flurry of determination to once more chisel a space for the elusive “creativity” in my life. I WILL WRITE. For better or for worse. This year, I WILL find time to put words down, properly and carefully, and try to learn from the process, so that I get better at combining them, manipulating them, and using them in my own miniscule attempt at making the world a better place.

Will someone please, PLEASE hold me to that?

Back to work

Heading back to “school” after the summer holidays is always a … delicate… time of year. Heading to the office on public transport the other day after the 3-4 week break of the summer holidays, it could of gone several ways. Luckily, I think I chose the right path.

I fully intended to pull my paperwork out of my bag and make use of the commuting time quasi-productively by beginning the oh-my-god-I’m-no-where-near-ready-for-la-rentrée panic a full twenty minutes earlier than if I waited to get to my desk. I didn’t do this.

I could have chosen instead to turn my brain-cells towards chiseling away at one of at least five poetic ideas that are kicking around in my head at the moment. None of them have reached pressure stage yet, bugging me to give them form, making me wander around distractedly, muttering to myself and occasionally walking out in front of cars. Having so many ideas awaiting attention has created its own sort of limbo, as I don’t really know where to start. I’m currently more bugged by a general feeling that I’d like to be writing, and the knowledge that if previous back-to-school experiences are anything to go by, writing time and brain-cells are going to be at a premium in the near future. So today, trying to poem on the commute could well have created as much mental tension as trying to confront the rentrée work overload. I didn’t do this either.

Instead, I forced myself to sit back and listen to music. For some unknown reason, whilst waiting for the bus, I had an urge to listen to Joni Mitchell “Both Sides Now”. As I hadn’t mp3ed my Joni Mitchell albums onto my phone’s SD card, this meant going online (using precious subscription megabytes). But oh boy was it the right thing to do. Her soaring voice somehow lifted my soul and soothed my spirit, and I spent a happy bus ride plus bus-stop-to-building walk partaking of the rest of the “Clouds” album.

I’ve noticed the benefits of commute music before – arriving relaxed and/or energized, pumped by someone else’s creativity instead of clawing at my own, the music releasing my brain from the obligations both of searching for its own words or fretting over the day job. Poetry has its limitations after all.

Picnic Poems

During this summer holiday I have learned something more about my methods of poeming. A little while ago, when going on a picnic at a local beauty spot, I snuck a print-out of my latest poem-in-progress into my bag. Whilst the kids were happily playing and the mother-in-law was reading, I pulled it out and took the opportunity to chisel away at a couple of missing verses and awkward rhymes. Bizarrely, I found I couldn't sit still at the picnic table to do this, but instead started pacing around the play area, muttering to myself and occasionally awkwardly balancing the paper on my thigh to scribble down or cross out words.

I was fascinated by this discovery of a new way of working, which lasted precisely until the kids clocked on I had access to pen and paper and insisted I instead used them to create a treasure hunt. I stalled for a few more circuits of the field but in the end had to capitulate and join in the games of hide-and-seek and lou-le-loup. I actually had good fun, helped - I suspect - by the fact that I felt I had nailed the poem, the last couplet had fallen into place and it simply awaited typing.

[The scary thing is, now I try to think about it, I can’t even remember which poem it was. I have so many floating around in my head at the moment it’s getting quite uncomfortable in there.]

As an addendum to the above story, more recently I took the kids on another walk/picnic, each carrying our little backpacks like proper hikers. We stopped to lighten my rucksack not very long into the expedition, when the moans of “I’m hungry” got too much to bear. Once this was done, I discovered that my daughter had in fact stuffed her rucksack with her dolly plus accessories, which she preceded to extract and set up for a long “play” session, right there in the middle of the footpath. They insisted they wanted to play before going any further. Bewildered, I protested that they could play at home, where I was at least in the vicinity of all the pending laundry, tidying and other housework. I pointed out that, not anticipating this interlude, I had not brought a book to read or even my little scribbling notebook. My son, as usual, had an answer for everything: “don’t worry mummy, you can sit down and write slam in your head”.

And so that was precisely what I proceeded to do. I was intrigued and gratified to learn that the kids have integrated Mummy as poet into their everyday. They mostly left me alone to muse, passing close at one point to say “I can see your lips moving Mummy!” They even let me start pacing up and down next to their improvised play area, as long as I didn't get in the way.

The time may be coming where I can get away with “sorry kids, Mummy is busy writing right now”…

Parallel poem processing

Since I caught the slam poetry bug, about two years ago now, I can safely say I always have at least one poem kicking around under construction in my head, if not two or three (or four or five).  I leave them to fight it out to see which theme will really take root. I feed them occasionally, adding to them little by little. Many will wither away and be forgotten. Usually one takes precedence; it will push to the top as the ideas start to accelerate, more couplets and images sprout as they occur to me. If there are gaps remaining, holes in concepts or lines awaiting rhymes, I’ve learned not to fret.  They will come to me when the time is right, if I let them.

As the poem gains momentum I really start focusing in, chiseling away at it during down-time – on public transport for example, or when I finally switch off the light at night and should really be trying to let my brain sleep. If it really takes off I may end up trying to sneak off into quiet corners to write it down, switching on the laptop when I should be cooking dinner, or hurrying into the office to quickly type up the creative products of the morning commute before getting on with the day job. In this way, poetry can be my pleasant mental retreat, my buffer against the mundanity of routine: but just occasionally it takes over and won’t leave me along until it’s spilled out onto the paper or into the screen.

So when is the poem finished? When there are no more gaps? When I feel that the meaning is sorted and the message is clear? When it is typed up and saved? I’ll admit I feel a kind of lightness, a satisfaction, a sense of achievement. This feeling can last… ooh, two or three days maybe. Then, little by little, my brain starts getting the mental equivalent of itchy feet: it would quite like to be working on something else please, to be chiseling away at a few more ideas.