poet·ings

Hey folks

Are you feeling the too-muchness of life? I hope not but I reckon I can’t be the only one feeling this way. I’m also feeling the not-enoughness of it too. Life is so short and a lot of the time it feels like flailing or floundering or… failing. Yeah. That’s it. Failing. Failing to balance everything. And I guess I’m particularly thinking about what failure means in the context of parenting grown up children. Failing to find a balance between letting them make their own mistakes and knowing when (and how) to step in when they need (and want) you to. I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

In the meantime, here’s the ‘news’…

Some thoughts on… procrastination

It always seems to me that I have too many things that I should be doing and I always seem to be putting off doing them. What’s that all about?

I'm mithered by procrastination on most of my working days. When I’m working without a deadline I often don’t get started until the sun is well and truly over the yardarm, if I’m lucky! Spending my time instead on Duolingo or NY Times games. Or most recently, learning Rubik’s cube algorithms. 

One expert on procrastination describes it as a form of emotion regulation. Another describes it as ‘self-harm’. I’m not sure I entirely agree with the latter but it definitely doesn’t feel like self-care!

For as long as I can remember, I’ve rarely just got on with the task in hand. Two things seem to be at play in my case - the first is being overwhelmed by task initiation. Not knowing how to just get started. Despite knowing that I’ve always managed to get the thing done in the past… eventually. The second is fear. Fear of fucking things up. Or, in the case of the PhD literature review I should have finished by now, revealing myself to be a charlatan. Fear of looking like an idiot. If the thing remains undone no one will know I’m an idiot. The idiocy of that reasoning is not lost on me…

Somewhere to catch me, if you can…

Did I mention I’m going to be performing at Glastonbury Festival? If you’re going to be there too, you can catch me on the Poetry & Words Stage at 18:28 precisely on Saturday 29 June.

That’s the last gig I’m booked in for until October so in place of any other gig news, here are a couple of poems from my collection Proof of Life on Earth.

Something else that caught my attention…

I came across this next artist via Stefan Sagmeister’s Instragram account (worth a follow if you like interesting artwork). He absolutely loved this piece by Pantónio - a tibula and fibula painted on a skateboard, inspired by a quote attributed to the anthropologist Margaret Mead. There’s no direct evidence that she actually said that a healed femur is the first sign of civilisation but it’s still a cool image.

You know I’m a sucker for an Instagram rabbithole and, appropriately enough, this one led me to Pantónio’s giant rabbit mural painted eight years ago in Kyiv.

Poems often inhabit a very small physical space so it’s inspiring to see work on a grand scale. And there’s something really restful about watching the artist paint whilst the cradle sways in the wind. The absolute sureness of the strokes of paint, the fearlessness of working at such a height. Maybe I can take some of that sureness and fearlessness the next time I feel like I’m failing.

That’s all from me for now. Thanks for reading.