032. ...courage stoked...

(morning thinking and a poem)

Photo by Matthias Wagner on Unsplash

I’m exploring the immense power that comes with overcoming fears: spiders, heights, airplane flights, sharks, the dark, public speaking whatever yours are. Meeting our edges and pushing past them. Each one beaten is one less thing to avoid. One less thing limiting our possibilities. With less constraints on what we might do we can live more broadly, open doors with greater impunity, stride down hallways with cobwebs or jump with careless abandon from boats; live in the light. Or dark. Share our voice. The choice becomes ours.

There was a time when the things we love most were things we couldn’t do or that scared us. I think that’s true for everyone. Everything was new once.

I read again at the Loud Poets open mic last night. Spooky poems for Halloween. Standing up, reading aloud doesn't terrify me quite as much as it did the first time, but it's still very new and I still feel nervous going in and exhausted coming out. I’m chipping away at that fear. I'm not the boy who would feign illness to avoid talks at school or the man who wasn't available for work that day.

And I do think it’s about chipping away. You don’t need to go straight to licking a tarantula.

The idea of reading ANYTHING in public was scary to the point of debilitating not that long ago. Standing up, walking to an elevated stage or to a place designated in any way for humiliating failure, reading words from a page, losing my place, mispronouncing, pausing in the wrong place, repeating a line by mistake, goingtoofast, getting tongue tied or repeating a line by mistake.

I'd have been anxious reading menu options to a table of gathered friends in a restaurant. So to consider taking something of my own, words I'd written for me, and sharing them publicly, was off the scale shits inducing.

I remember the anxiety ahead of reading at a friend's funeral service, at another friend's wedding. I remember vividly the shame of thinking that the honour of honouring these beloved brothers was unwelcome.

The awkward discomfort I felt the first time I read bedtime stories to my baby boy made me feel less of a man, less of a dad. But Gus (and Kathleen) invariably smiled while I read aloud - an easy crowd. Maybe these moments between us started to change my relationship with spoken words. I would eventually grow to perform The Gruffalo, with full majestic Shakespearian delivery, to rapturous applause from my audience of one.

So I suppose I started chipping away.

Years later, with many chips chipped, nine year old Gus pushed me into reading my poetry in public. We'd gone along to recce the joint, and started to write and wanted to see what poetry looked like in the wikd. I'd no intention of going near the mic but when he asked if he might… my fear began slowly to thaw. He approached the host courageously, while I watched with awe, to request his own slot and sitting back down asked me would I do the same. Why not?

His courage stoked mine and now I've read to that poetry crowd five times.

When my name's read out from the list of open mic'ers and I'm called up to the front by the host my stomach doesn't lurch and cramp. I don't immediately sheet sweat across my body, drenching my shirt and seat before staggering awkwardly, damp and shaking to the front wondering whether people think I've pissed myself. Not like at school.

I'm happy to share, I love to share, and the reading is scary but joyful and fun and I feel, just a little bit, like this battle is almost won.

Here's my spooky Halloween poem from last night. Not on stage, not at the open mic, just me reading into my phone from my armchair before the sun was up this morning.

The Poem’s called Depilation.

The Loud Poets provide a stage and a mic on the last Monday of each month where new poets can try out their voice. Everyone's invited, everyone is welcome. It's a friendly, open, inclusive space where you can learn to be more confident.

I follow them on Instagram here.

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