#NaBloPoMo 2 – My tribe of one

Anthony Wilson, , , , , , , ,

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There I was with my friend, on my second cup of tea. He had just asked me why I do this. And the words I heard myself saying were about wanting to be found, a bit like a child in a fairytale, I thought. Then I said: I always imagine, every single time I sit down, that no one is there. I am always amazed when they comment, when they respond and share with their own stories. But at the point of writing, I am on my own. It is just me and the void. And I find this terribly liberating. Because I know that if I spent time thinking about how this looks, or what might others say I would quite easily persuade myself not to write that blog post about a character called The Book, and then another, and another, and on. So I imagine that there is no one out there. Just me at the desk in the pool of light, with perhaps another, near-me out there somewhere, someone who is far away, whom I have never met and probably never will, someone who is the ideal for whom I write. Someone who gets it. My tribe of one.

Published by Anthony Wilson

I am a lecturer, poet and writing tutor. I work in teacher and medical education at the University of Exeter. My anthology Lifesaving Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015. In 2012 I published Riddance (Worple Press), a collection of poems, and Love for Now (Impress Books), a memoir, about my experience of cancer. My most recent books are Deck Shoes (Impress Books, 2019), a book of prose memoir and criticism, and The Afterlife (Worple Press, 2019). In 2023 I will publish The Wind and the Rain, my sixth collection of poems, with Blue Diode Press. My current research project, with Sue Dymoke from Nottingham Trent University and funded by the Foyle Foundation, is Young Poets' Stories: https://youngpoetsstories.com/. This blog is archived by the British Library.

18 Comments

  2. That’s how I feel too! If I thought about the amount of people who will read my writing (more than one), I’d be intimidated but also try to please them. I’d feel like I was jumping off a cliff and perhaps I’d never write it or it wouldn’t’ be genuine. So I just write for myself and perhaps another like minded person out there and I let the words flow out to the laptop. You can’t please everybody all of the time anyway.

    Liked by 1 person

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