Odd things, poems. Prone to turning up when you least expect them. Last Thursday I woke up on a tour bus as it pulled into Wembley Arena – I was busy earning a crust with the day job as a stage manager, in case you’re wondering – and knew the poem I’d been mulling over for the previous couple of days but getting nowhere with was there, tapping its toes impatiently, waiting for me to pull on my clothes, open the laptop, and write it down.
And that’s what I did. Over the course of the day – when I wasn’t moving trees into position or putting garden sheds together – I came back to the draft of the poem and fettled it a little. Tried it out in the air. Let it settle for a couple of hours. Read it again. Tweaked it a smidge. And when I got to the point where the poem decided it was happy with what I’d done, I fired it off to the good folk at Culture Matters, and they were kind enough to publish it on their website.
A day or so later, I shared it on Facebook. People seemed to like it. It struck a chord. Then Yorkshire Bylines asked if they could publish it (accompanied by an excellent cartoon by Stan, which is bang on the money) and that introduced it to a whole new audience. Although probably not the one that watches GB News, which is their loss in every way. Anyway, if you fancy reading (don’t) read all about it! – or sharing it with your friends, your neighbours, or some poor sap you know who hangs on every word Dan Wootton comes up with – then please do. I’ll be on a tour bus somewhere, waiting for another poem to come along.