Update!

Hey! I just thought that I'd give an update as I haven't had much time to write much poetry as I've been concentrating on a piece of prose for a competition. I will post that one after I have heard the results of the competition as I'm not sure I'm allowed to publish it at the moment.

So I haven't really told you what inspires me and what kind of poetry or writing I love.

Well my favourite type of poetry is performance poetry and within that area I love comedic poetry and love poetry. I absolutely love it when the two are combined. Anna Freeman, a performance poet from Bristol once came to speak in one of my uni lectures and she said that when she writes poetry about love she thinks of the images that she wants conjure and takes them further so that they're a bit weird but funny and light-hearted. I use that mantra when I'm writing my poems now because it's such an unusual way to think about poetry.

I do also love page poetry, my favourite page poet being Siegfried Sassoon, a poet who wrote his most famous poetry during the First World War. I also like Carol Ann Duffy's anthology called 'The World's Wife' because I like the twist that she puts on traditional stories and tales. And Spike Milligan! Who doesn't love Spike Milligan? I love absurd comedy and he is all about that! I've also read one of his memoirs called 'Hitler: My Part in his Downfall' and if you can get your hands on that you should definitely read it as it's one of the funniest books I've ever read.

Back to performance poetry though! It's so hard to pick my most favourite so I'll just give you all of them. I'll start with Taylor Mali who is an American poet and teacher. My poetry lecturer got to meet him and I'm just absolutely so jealous I couldn't tell you! He is so witty in his poetry but what I admire most is his deliverance. He is so confident and he never uses filler unless it's to make a point.

I also really love Anna Freeman who I spoke about above. There aren't many videos of her poetry on YouTube but you should definitely check what she has on there out. She is really funny and all of her poetry is relatable and down to earth. When she read at my university I just found myself thinking 'Yes! That's exactly how I feel!'.

I'll give you one last one and it's another American poet called George Watsky. I know I said I couldn't pick a favourite but if I had to it would be Watsky. I urge everyone to check him out on YouTube. He has a channel for his poetry and rap and a channel for video blogs. Again, I find I can relate to his poetry so much and he talks about real things and his poetry is not pretentious at all.

In a later post I'll talk about music that inspires me as that's a massive part of my writing process. But I don't want to make this post too long and bore you to death!

Peace out!