My first author's fair

Keeping the dream alive

Yesterday was a big day of connecting back with my creativity and I wanted to write about it when it is all fresh and fizzing in my bones.

Saturday morning

After reading back a post of my own (oh, the vanity!) :

In this article I talked of the joy of naivety in my initial rushes of creativity. Not being overthought. Just jumping in and seeing where it leads me. With my own words ringing in my own ears, I decided to use a spare hour or so I had at home to do something that has crossed my mind before, but I have never got around to committing to see it through.

As someone who loves performing poetry who hasn’t performed in over 3 months I wanted to share my voice, and what better way than by recording my own poems? I have a bandcamp account that I have even used to set up QR codes to scan in my book to listen to handful of them. I had not uploaded anything to it for over a year, so I decided to use it again.

I have a mini collection of poems dedicated to curse of my smartphone. Well, all smartphones. And I absolutely love performing them. My favourite poems are the ones that have a rhythm, a tempo. I love nothing more than bringing the words to life with my voice. So I spent about 40 minutes recording them and another 20 uploading them to Bandcamp¹ alongside some quickly made album cover work. It exists! And I am proud of it. I could have procrastinated over it all. I could have teased it on social media, and here. Built it up. Been my own hype man, but time like that is a rare gift so I hit publish there and then. I can promote it in my own sweet time.

Just the act of creating something new and putting it into the world was such a joy. I felt like I switched a part of myself back on when I performed them. Yes it was to myself, and my laptop… but someone will listen to them and they become something new. They become another person’s experience of listening, and maybe relating. Maybe not. Feeling something. That’s a bit of magic to put into the world.

Saturday evening

I was lucky to get a place as part of the Chester Literature Festival’s Local Author’s Fair, and I packed a bag of my poetry collection, bookmarks and print’s of a popular (when I perform it) poem to sell. I have never been able to attend an author’s fair as an author before so I was absolutely thrilled.

When I got there some authors were already set up with really impressive merch and banners to boot. I was so excited placing my books on display and spent the first few minutes just grinning at the reminder that I had made a whole book.

All authors were given the opportunity to speak about their books, which I watched and truly enjoyed. Authors who had found publishers, authors who had self published, authors with new ideas of what they wanted to do next. Screenplays, sequels, writing groups, observers of the world around them, imaginations so fast they needed to make notes in notepads as ideas popped into their head as they were in the middle of typing up a different part of the story. I loved the backstory to how their books came to exist. Many of the authors spoke about how a book feels like leaving a bit of a legacy in the world, which I really resonated with. I didn’t call my book ‘PrOving I ExisT’ for nothing. Indeed, my book was born out of stopping performing so regularly but still wanting to connect with others through my words in a different way. When authors talked of pinch me moments of finding a publisher and others getting frustrated with traditional querying and self publishing each story was born from a need to connect. Hoping their words find their right audience. I loved being with writers, they switch something back on in my head. Imagination and inspiration in equal measure.

When I got to perform, I chose poems I hadn’t planned to share that seemed to connect with what other people had shared. One author had talked about football and music so I did my poem about football that references Tinie Tempah. After the authors talk we both bought each others book and I look forward to reading it. It was worth going to find a book I may not otherwise of found that is up my street, a mix of music and football culture. Another author, who wrote children’s books also bought a copy of my book, having said he didn’t really know much about poetry but really enjoyed my performance. The act of performing itself made me realise how much I love it, and dare I blow my own trumpet, I am good at it. And I have missed it. Sometimes over the last 12 months I have forgotten how much I love it, and how I am actually good at it. I got an opportunity to follow up just by being in the room. That was a huge cherry on the cake of the event. Hopefully, more on that another time!

My final poem tells other people to write their own stories. And I that is a bit of advice I need to remind myself of over and over again. All the best things in my poetic second lease of life have come from just going for it. Finding a way to do what I love doing. Making that band camp album was one way of doing this. There are other ways. That is the point of creativity, you can be creative to keep making it happen.

I am bottling up this lesson by writing about it fresh and sharing it on here, so I can come back to it to remind myself of the lessons I re-learned this weekend.

Thanks for reading Poems & That. A publication that shares lessons I have learned beyond the poems. If you would like to read more of my poetry you can find my collection here. All royalties go to Choose Love and Refuge.

1. Of course you can have a link! You can even listen (without paying for the first 3 times) if you fancy clicking it and listening along. It’s around 16 minutes in total, and you can dip in and out, poem by poem.