NaPoWriMo Day 1: First Steps
Things don't properly settle in 2018 until I unexpectedly win something...
For the next 30 days we will be dredging up highlights from nearly eight years as a published poet. Many of the pieces you will see here and on Instagram have never seen the light of day, some are from failed projects and many have been published in places that, if I'm honest, I wish they'd never been placed in. You learn a lot on the journey. I hope some of these lessons may therefore be of value to those reading here, and provide insight on how I reached this point as a creative.
It is 2018. The existence of water on Mars is announced by NASA. The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Lion Air Flight 610 crashes off the coast of Java, killing all 189 people on board. I'm working downstairs in the front room of our semi having moved out of our now defunct conservatory, and I am becoming frustrated.
I accept I did a great many things wrong in those earliest days as a writer. However, the things that were written in July 2017 still hold lot of merit. There's a 2000 word short story which I hope was not fed into the LLM without my permission (as it was written daily on Twitter). I looked again at my first ever entry for a contest whilst writing this post, which I'm now sorely tempted to re-edit using my new skillset into something far more powerful than it was back then
Things don't properly settle in 2018 until I unexpectedly win something.
The Beast in Cyberspace
(after W. S. Graham's 'The Beast in the Space')
Log off. Delete. There’s no worth here.
To search for reason within the Cloud
through high-speed Fibre, honestly don’t
waste your time. That wail announcing
entitled arrogant self-destructing
fanboys’ latest hill to die on.
If you crave freedom of speech
I’d mute the beast then block his mates
through curation, less grief associates.
The beast that lives in Cyberspace
does not care whose life’s consumed.
It scares and lies, dividing us. Now
it laughs then retweets hate as bait.
Screenshot it. Instagram this moment.
You pointless, over-vain human race
get a life, outside phones and screen,
make noise. Find truth. Emerge
from cocooned ignorance, quick change.
Facts gone, and if he’s deceived you
it’s all your fault. Four different apps
won’t make lame words look great.
Weight of responsibility breaks
fresh internet lament, refrain, all
minds sleeping, will soon forget
they ever really lived at all.
Learn. It lies. Fact check and think
to break dark grasp of siren’s song.
Feed only truths, combined with soul
so finally, perception’s whole.
Fall, then rise. Follow true allies.
This poem, when I look at it now, was literally years ahead of its time in so many ways. It was one of half a dozen winners in The Poetry Society's member's magazine Autumn contest, and it gave me an opportunity to go to Covent Garden in February 2019 to read next to three people whose careers I have followed closely in the intervening period. It's also an event I can recall with staggering clarity.
This win galvanised a lot of hope in my head and heart. I'd been playing with poetry without a real direction, and to be validated when I was became a potent motivator going forward. Looking back now, from where I sit writing this, things could have gone in a very different direction, were it not for what COVID did to me and so many others. However, that has ended up as no bad thing.
I don't intend to do a daily blog about this for April, but I will be creating content tailored for Instagram as a starting point for its use in association with the Art Trail. So, if you are interested in what that means in practical terms, and would like a look into what got me to this point as a creative, sign up using the convenient button provided below to expedite the process...
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