#NaPoWriMo Day 8

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.

If you'd been hoping for an Eclectic prompt yesterday, don't panic, there'll be two on their way this week on Thursday and Saturday. The reason WHY that didn't happen yesterday is that I will have finished, self-made chapbooks by Friday. We'll talk more about that in three days time, but for now I'd like to reflect on my first full week of Poetry Nostalgia.

Sometimes it is not helpful to go back and dredge up history. Undoubtedly this has the potential to make certain things more painful, as I know to my cost. However, what the last week has highlighted is that, as it transpires, I am still in the same space I was when all this began creatively. Circumstances have altered, the World had warped often beyond recognition, but my mindset has remains largely intact.

What has become apparent in recent months is how much historic anger is finally being let go of. I know what is possible now, what I can realistically expect under normal circumstances, and the true realities that exist within the publishing landscape. The last year has allowed me to push out of those spaces into more artistically-focused locations as a way to keep momentum moving forward.

It's not what I want, but sometimes it takes a while for dreams to coalesce.

What is massively apparent this year is I cannot complain about anything that I'm doing, because I made all this a reality for myself. Hard work, persistence and bloody-mindedness have served me well in 2026, and it does mean that I may now have some new and unexpected opportunities coming my way. The next two weeks have a number of meetings scheduled which will alter a portion of my landscape.

That has also meant looking back on existing poetry work and imagining it in different media, made as more than simply pages in a book, and the possibilities of different forms of performance. There's a tentative new relationship with an artist, and a painter, quite apart for the personal publishing possibilities that are now on offer. I never wanted to go the Amazon self-pub route, and now I don't have to.

I'm genuinely excited to share that new development on Friday.