Month of Brave

I was reading author and writing coach Jacqui Lofthouse’s excellent blog yesterday and it has spurred me into action.

Inspired by the Eleanor Roosevelt quote, ‘Do one thing every day that scares you’, Jacqui has decided to follow this advice for a month, making sure that every day she does something that nudges her out of her comfort zone. Already a week into it, she has seen some amazing results.

So I have decided to follow her call to action and will report back on my progress on this blog.

If you like the sound of being scared witless every day for a month then please feel free to join in and post your results on this site too.

Tomorrow I am going to begin my Month of Brave by writing a poem.

Now this might not sound like any great shakes to some of you reading this – ‘What about bungee jumping or watching Strictly Come Dancing’ I hear you cry. I know some poets who can trot out a perfectly respectable stanza in the time it takes me to sneeze – but writing poetry scares the hell out of me.

Like that great poet Phillip Larkin, I blame the parents – or more specifically my dad, whose feedback on one of my first serious attempts at poetry has scarred me to this day.

It was back in my angst ridden teenage years when I was going through a period of insomnia. As it was before the time of the internet and the joy that is late night facebooking I turned to poetry to pass the long lonely nights. And what better way to deal with your problems than to write poems about them, eh?

My poem on insomnia was called, ‘This Wolf Called Night’ and it started with the immortal lines:

Howling at the moon

It stalks into my room

This wolf called night.

And it got much, much worse, trust me.

At the time however I had thought it pretty damned cool. And had shown it proudly to my dad.

I remember there being a long pause after he finished reading it – in my naive, ever hopeful teenage mind I had imagined it to be the type of pause that is usually described in novels as ‘awestruck’ or ‘silenced in the face of literary magnificence.’

You can imagine my shock therefore when he eventually uttered the immortal words (add your own sarcastic Irish accent for full effect):

‘Jesus Christ, what the hell are they putting in the water over here?!’

My poetry career was over before it had even begun.

But I continued to love poetry from afar – attending spoken word events and occasionally scribbling an elicit line or two of my own on the back of a till receipt – before remembering my dad’s harsh words and throwing my words to the wind.

So what better way to start my Month of Brave than by having a serious stab at a poem – and if I’m feeling really brave the following day I might even publish it on here!!