I’m keeping the intro short this week, as most of the reflections I want to talk about this week are better housed in the “From Me” section. It’s been a great week, with last weekend giving me lots to think about in terms of my approach to writing and getting as many great pieces as I can to you. With all that said, let’s look at something…
From Poets Past
I spoke about one of
own poems in last week’s newsletter, but this week he introduced me to a poem by Anaïs Nin entitled “Some Never Awaken”. Having had some profound realisations regarding what we’re seeing in the world come to me through my readings, this poem certainly resonated with me strongly. It is also a reminder that, while some of us may wish to get everyone to see through the damaging ways they may be living their lies, we cannot make a horse drink - only lead them to water. Go and read it on own Substack using the link below:From Poets Present
I originally shared this poem through my Notes, but it felt worthwhile re-sharing it here. I met
in-person over one of the breakfast sessions for the Bournemouth Writing Festival. What I didn’t realise at our meeting, however, is that she has some excellent poetry, and I discovered her excellent poem “Courage”. I can certainly seeing it being a powerful piece for anyone feeling like they need a bit more courage in their lives. Check it out on her Substack using the link below:From Me
New Poems
This week saw the release of “Sorry, I Must Have Forgotten”, which toys with a similar feeling that It Was No Accident explored, but in a slightly different context. It concerns itself with the loss of responsibility of different sectors of society in the roles that they take on, and I had fun going for a more deliberately repetitive format than I usually do. Take a look below if you missed it:
Reflections From NaPoWriMo
Now that NaPoWriMo has also concluded (thanks to
for her efforts in bringing this to Susbtack!), I have an opportunity to re-visit many of the pieces I wrote for the month and decide if I’d like to do anything more with them. Some were thought-provoking and perfect as they are, some were thought-provoking but would benefit from refinement, some were silly and thought-provoking, and some were just downright silly. I’ve found a home for one of these silly ones at the end of the page “There’s No Treat Like Herbal Tea”, but I suspect it will be a while before I bring back any others.All this said, NaPoWriMo has taught me something super valuable, and that is the power of combining consistent practise with community. I’ve been aware of the idea that conscious, deliberate repeated practise can be beneficial in forming new habits. But, it’s always been a struggle for me to actualise this.
NaPoWriMo has been an excellent exercise for me in building a repeated writing habit while having a community that provides encouragement and accountability for me to sustain it. I had a few days where I dropped off of releasing them due to personal commitments getting in the way, but because I felt guilty of leaving the community and the great interactions I was having through the threads on each day’s note, I felt compelled to come back and write more. And, as I discovered, many of those I’d been interacting with had been looking to see where I’d gone! Knowing this helped push me through to the final day of writing on Tuesday.
I included the picture above as I don’t think this kind of approach needs to be exclusive to writing practises; there’s a lot of habits I’m looking to implement in my personal life that I’ve been struggling to maintain over the past few years. This includes cold showers and deliberate grounding exercises each day, both of which have been shown to have great benefits. I’ll link some of the resources I’ve found most enlightening on this below:
I can certainly see corralling together a community who are all willing to do this and are willing to keep each other accountable to be a better way of getting these practises to stick for me long-term. If you’re reading this and fancy doing it too, leave a comment and let us get going on this together! Alternatively, if you have other experiences and tips on how you’ve made new habits stick, I’d love to know that too.
This isn’t the last of reflections on writing-based happenings in April though. Keep an eye out next week for more on that.
“Born Anew” Anniversary
We’re coming up to the 3-month anniversary of the release of my poetry book, “Born Anew”. As such, I want to do something special to mark the occasion. I’m happy to announce that I’ll be doing some live readings from the book online on Tuesday 14th May at 7pm UK Time. I had a wonderful experience sharing some of my poetry over a call with the Canadian Sovereignty Coalition, which has given me an itch to be able to have a proper dialogue with my audience in-between each poem about how what I’m sharing is landing with them. As such, this call is a great opportunity to be able to share a bit more about my process with those who are interested.
This will be available to all my email subscribers, both free and paid, so if you want to be able to join (and that includes those of you only following on the app!), make sure you’re subscribed below when I send out the details later in the week.
In preparation for the event, I’ve lowered the price of the physical copy of Born Anew to £4.99, so people who haven’t thus far read all of the poems get a chance to get their hands on it. It’s a great time to get your hands on something physical if you’ve been enjoying my poems and are interested in something more. You can find out more about the book below.
And Finally
Thank you for continuing to follow my progress. It's incredibly heartwarming to know you are here and believe in the work I'm doing, and I can't wait to be able to share more with you and the rest of the world soon.
With gratitude,
Tom
Hi Tom, great post! I loved it and since you did ask whether readers have other experiences and tips… well… I have. So much so that it fired me up to respond with a podcast, postscript and transcript, and I’ll share the link in case you want to see my post:
https://okeko.substack.com/p/raw-responses-to-community
Of course, I love to hear your feedback ☺