A Soft Launch
A Tribe Blog Entry from 6th January 2024
Hello lovely readers.
I originally wrote this short piece as an exclusive for my paid subscribers when I launched my Substack. To celebrate 6 months today of being on Substack, I have decided to make it publicly available as a way of marking the occasion.
Thank you to all the wonderful people who have read and shared my poetry, and continue to do so. I am incredibly grateful that I have the opportunity to continue writing pieces that are resonating with those who find them.
With gratitude,
Tom
Well, here we are! With this post, the whole of this website is, in theory, fully operational. I say “in theory” as I still have some work to do before the site can be classed as “fully launched”. Namely, I’m working to get a book on the Shop for people to be able to buy should they feel inclined to. It’s coming along very nicely, and I’ll be sure to provide some sneak-peaks for the Tribe before the book comes out to the public.
For today’s blog, however, I want to tell the story of the journey I took to creating this space, offer some reflections, and give some hints on where we might be headed. 2024 feels like a year of big change for me, and from what I can tell, it is for many others too.
Why Poetry?
The first time I ever remember taking poetry seriously as an art form, I would have been in my early to mid teens. At the time, me and my friends had become big fans of Bo Burnham’s comedy. I no longer resonate as much as I used to with the content and themes of his skits, but at the time I was so infatuated with work that I went out of my way to pick up his poetry book, “Egghead: Or, You Can’t Survive on Ideas Alone“. While most of the poems were silly and humorous, it did at least show me that poetry could invoke something meaningful as an art form and be effective in engaging a reader or audience.
About a year or so after this, I was then subject to looking at the “Power and Conflict” poems of GCSE English classes. Some of the poems I can’t say I was too attached to. Two poems, however, had a profound impact on me, and complete collections from both of these authors now happily occupy a space on my bookshelf. Those poems were “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and an extract of “The Prelude” by William Wordsworth.
One summer evening (led by her) I found
A little boat tied to a willow tree
Within a rocky cove, its usual home.
Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in
Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth
And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice
Of mountain-echoes did my boat move on;
Leaving behind her still, on either side,
Small circles glittering idly in the moon,
Until they melted all into one track
Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows,
Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point
With an unswerving line, I fixed my view
Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
The horizon’s utmost boundary; far above
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin pinnace; lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow tree;
There in her mooring-place I left my bark, –
And through the meadows homeward went, in grave
And serious mood; but after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days, my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being; o’er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.The Prelude (Extract) – by William Wordsworth
The Prelude in particular captured my imagination in a way that many pieces of writing on-the-whole had thus far not accomplished in my life. Here I could feel the awe and power that experiencing nature had over Wordsworth through his writing style – something that growing up around the Peak District in my youth had allowed me to experience first-hand. Wordsworth communicated a respect for nature that harmonised with my own, but expressed in a manner that was new to me. It allowed me to witness the power that poetry can have in unearthing the truths and perspectives we carry round with us.
And with that, I figured I could write my own.
The First Attempt(s)
Songwriting was my first real foray into writing something poetic of my own, and my hometown of Sheffield has been home to many notable lyricist; it was impossible to find a wanna-be rock-star in the city not adding an Arctic Monkeys cover into their set list. Through the latter years of school I played in a handful of bands and tried writing songs for many of them. Although the odd acoustic sketch and demo was birthed, none of my writings ever materialised in to full releases. Some of those lyrics I keep to this day, with the intent of re-using some of those ideas in future poems.
A career as a musician, however, was not meant to be, and I put that work aside to go and study Dentistry at university (which is a topic for another day!). Towards the end of my time at University, I did play around once more with the idea of a solo music project, but I ultimately laid the project to rest in favour of pursuing poetry directly. I did, however, save the lyrics for the songs I was most proud of, carrying them over almost exactly into the poetry book I mentioned back at the start of this blog.
Concurrently to this music, I started writing poetry and publishing it through Over To The Youth. I was finding I could use poetry and that platform to collate my own thoughts on issues and comment on the trends and narratives being played out in society. This was where I really came to terms with how powerful poetry can be and how I could leverage it to say things about what was happening in the world that I struggled to say otherwise. This pathway then crossed over with the other work I was doing for Over To The Youth in producing video podcasts, resulting in what was perhaps my magnum opus in that first phase of Over To The Youth’s life: “What Do I Want For Christmas?”
Thousands of people watched the audio-visual version of the poem within the first 24 hours alone, and I was blessed to hear from people across the world about how much the poem resonated with them. It was clear to me then that I did truly have something to offer to the world through poetry, and it made sense to pursue it. “What Do I Want For Christmas?” became the stepping stone into this venture you now find yourself reading, and hence why it is the very first poem listed on this site, for all to read and watch. Partly due to the nature and context of the poem, and partly due to its significance, I never intend it to be part of any anthology or physical publication. It deserves to stand by itself, in the format originally published, as a landmark for this new venture.
A Website Is Born
With Over To The Youth going into a period of maintenance during the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024, but yearning to do more with poetry, the idea of this website came to me. I began building. Huge credit to my close friend and OTTY Founder
for helping me on the back-end setup and giving me guidance on setting up some of the front-end features like the Tribe and the Shop. This venture would have likely not materialised if it wasn’t for his support.That brings us to here: the “soft launch”. Thank you for choosing to join me in this Tribe as I take on this journey, and I can’t wait to share more with you. I’ll talk next week about what’s happening behind-the-scenes in the run-up to the full launch of the website, and share some insights I’ve gained from building this place from-the-ground-up.
Until next week, my friend.