Many moons ago, whilst in London as the world was about to welcome a new millenium, I went through a very, very dark phase. So I started writing texts. Not poems as such, just weird little verses. Some went on forever, like mini-narratives. Some were only a few lines long. Some had a structure, like songs. Some were just random. They were scribbled longhand in a school notebook over a few feverish months. Then the notebook got put away into a box and followed me as I moved around North London, then further afield. I didn't look at the texts for years. Back in 2010, as I was just embarking on the journey of creating my imprint and writing my first novel, the notebook came out of its box and I spent a few weeks typing up the poems and grouping them into vague sections to form a relatively decent edited manuscript - I didn't touch the texts themselves at all as I wanted them to express the rawness of the time. It was my intention to publish them as a small illustrated booklet with the title: "Dysfunctions: Tales of Urban Alienation". Then my sister, a visual artist in her own right, asked me whether I'd like to collaborate on an exhibition she was having in Highgate. Some of those ugly little texts ended up being matched up to some genuinely stunning artworks. But afterwards, Dysfunctions... got forgotten as I threw myself into writing then publishing I Am a Muse, and then I launched Arcane Publishing and started working on The Book of Thoth. I have given up the idea of publishing the small poetry booklet, but it somehow pained me to let my writing go to waste. Therefore, when I started work on my third novel, The Right Place, I decided to give my texts to Kat, one of the main characters of my novel. She does write "ugly little texts" herself, and some lines of her texts (i.e extracts of those "poems" I wrote myself all those years ago) will be used as chapter openers and will feature within the narrative.
Waste not, want not. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI think therefore I write. Archives
March 2025
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