Writing the Perfect Beast #32

Starting in October 2025, I decided to talk honestly about the business of how I write poetry. There are people who teach how to create poetry, how to format it, how to submit and how publishing in general, works. I am not seeing that many people shining a light on what you need to do with your brain and mental attitudes to make all of that knowledge stick, grow and then evolve. HI THERE.

On what now becomes a new, regular on Sunday post, LET'S GET SERIOUS.

Okay, children, it's Story Time :D

We are nine days into the Sealey Challenge (where you are encouraged to read a daily piece of poetry, or a pamphlet, or maybe a poetry magazine) in an attempt to enrich your poetry brain. Late last night, after a Saturday when I got a lot of outstanding stuff organised for the first time since late-May, there was an epiphany. Having failed this challenge before, I thought I had worked out why.

It turns out my previous assumption was incorrect. The consequences of this are still resonating through me now, and the whole of my body is itching. It’s an overload response that’s been familiar for decades, the canary in the coal-mine of my subconscious, desperately warning me that we’ve reached the point where all the thinking has to stop. Except, this time is different from those before.

This time I can accept the inevitability of my construction.

I can only be myself as a poet. Trying to pretend to be ANYONE else is inevitably doomed to failure: the remains of these half-built structures are scattered throughout my narrative. As I am condemned to time travel backwards and forwards, revisiting those moments when failure was the only thing I could see, it is easy to let the damage and emotional weight overwhelm me.

Friday night's Sealey book was what broke me, published by someone I still dream might pick up my work. It won't happen, of that I am reasonably certain, because reading what they have published I am physically incapable of creating poetry in that way. It is forged in a manner that simply does not fit inside the complexity and irrationality of this body.

All there is that lives and breathes within is all that can sit on a page.

It's taken a couple of years to rationalise what I am and what that means in practical terms when it comes to creating work. It is only in the last six months that I've begun to properly lean into this, and as yet it's still not clear whether the work that is resulting is going to be attractive (or indeed saleable) to anyone. The first whiff of this, I know, is what made Forest Management happen.

What is becoming increasingly apparent is the reality of my authentic response in work across multiple spaces, not simply the writing. 'Being myself' has taken a phenomenal amount of time make happen. I've been hiding in one form or another for the entirety of my adult life, and only this year has it felt as if this space, the one where we do simply focus on my emotional core, is the correct one.

Those who can express themselves without the baggage are very lucky indeed.

When I look at my generation, the people I am descended from, and realise many of these people have absolutely no desire to alter their bigoted, narrow-minded ways, there is an even greater determination to try and escape from the repeating cycle of poor self esteem and shame. I know what I have done wrong in my life. Those things cannot be altered. What can be improved is the here and now.

Poetry can yet become the superpower that nullifies my tainted origin story.