Eating my own dog food

Hello kindreds,

How is the shift in season treating you? After an initial cold snap, which my bones and immune system did not appreciate, it’s turned out to be a deliciously warm month. I love autumn and have written more than one poem about the season.

I collected conkers, watched a good friend get married and indulged in another hobby - taking random photos, capturing the day-to-day changes around me. I like to think that photography and poetry use similar skills; observation and capturing a snapshot of everyday moments, moods and imagery.

It’s been busy!

I’ve been

• sharing poems at a cafe at a local foodbank

• sharing at a Black History Event in Metro Bank, Ilford

• sharing poems at Speak and Spoke open mic

• meeting lots of new women poets courtesy of the Rebecca Swift foundation

• tying up a few loose ends from book production

I’ve sold over 90 copies now, which was my target for the first 3 months, so that’s great. Engagement has gone up too, with more followers on Instagram.

It’s been a balancing act with promotion. I created a very detailed strategy for the few months after publication with many elements to it, but I’ve had to step back and do things at my own pace. I’m still experimenting with how I want to present myself, how much I want to give away and what I want to focus on. I’m glad I created an overarching strategy giving me my main themes and messages, as this will help me in the long term. There’s still a lot to learn though.

At the Black History Month event, I was met with quite a deep silence. I tried to choose a mix of poems, but my topics are deep and heavy, and sometimes the audience is hard to read. The topic cut across the celebratory tone of the event, which felt uncomfortable. It’s easy to expect praise and positive comments and make it all about yourself, but it’s really about how it stirs things in others.

I didn’t get roaring applause, but a couple of women spoke to me afterwards and said that they were touched and told me to keep going. This is something that has been said to me a lot, especially by older people - the uncles and aunties, and I take it to heart as a deeper message. These moments where people connect my poems with their stories are so precious.

I once worked on an editorial team that was responsible for setting standards for multiple departments. One phrase we had was that ‘we have to eat our own dog food’ that is, the standards that we set for everyone else, we had to apply to for ourselves.

This came to mind this month as the emotional impact of talking about grief and loss so intently came home to roost. I thought I’d neatly packed away my grief about my dad, but there was a lot more stuffed away, so I needed to take time to process that. It was actually blocking me creatively to the point that I couldn’t face sitting down to write. One of the sayings I’ve taken from The Artists Way is ‘My creativity heals myself and others’ and that is certainly true!

Also, over the last couple of months, I’ve been focused on managing everything around the poetry; the social media posts, publishing, organising myself for events. I have moved away from actually writing. I haven’t written a poem for a while; there was so much else to do! I’m hoping to go back to leaving space to play and write. This may be poems or may not be - let’s see!

Conversely, writing has always been an avenue of processing; even this newsletter helps me reflect on where I am month to month, so thank you for reading.

This coming month I’m thinking and planning what to do in the next few months and going to a few book-related events, including the The Black British Book Festival, which I’m really looking forward to.

Till next time,

Adukeh