Notes from the 4am writing club

Black history month this month and every month

Notes from the 4am writing club

In the dark times will there be singing? There will be singing of the dark times.

People often ask why I get up at 4am to make work and all I can say is I love the magic and the silence and the foxes and the first signs of light and life and dawn. I love to watch the light change from season to season. I love to write with a head full of dreams, full of the illusion of limitless possibilities.

Writing. Listening. Watching for first light. I feel like a surfer waiting to catch a wave on night oceans. Waiting for the tide to turn, or for a favourable wind to blow my sails in the right direction to finish a big thing that must be done. I don’t know why I sometimes take these lonely pictures at my desk, maybe to document the isolation, the process of being in here working intensely on this big thing that must be done that has nothing to do with anyone else, that sacrifice, it has nothing to do with reviews or sales or hearts and likes. The pure feeling of making art that is like no other.

Maybe so when it is another era and another time and things are different and changed, I’ll see it, and know how this time is done and gone. How nothing changes and how everything changes. One day these grainy pictures of me alone at my desk at 4am will be in the past and long ago, and we will be in another world, we don’t know what that will look like yet, we do not know tomorrow, but I have faith in it, and faith in us, I hold onto all that hope, and I want to meet you all there.

Truth is, I have been in this book for so long now, I actually cannot remember what it is like not to dream hard and leap out of bed in the middle of the dark and feel these urgent stories of Life and Death and Time and Hope and Love in dire need of care and attention: Save Life! Save Love! Save Life!

I think that is all I write, almost every morning of the last decade. Save Life. I think that’s the chorus in most of my work. I believe that I am not alone in this. I think this is at the core and heart of many of us. We are sharing different versions of this global feeling across the universe. Our ancestors blood calling, Save Life, our future bloods calling, Save Life. Our now and here, over and over again, for 50 years. Save Life! Until my hair is silver-white, 100 years. Save Life. And when my rattling breath is gone, I believe I will be a sexy skeleton and come and haunt you all each and every morning at 4am, how I will jangle my bones at full moon and sing, save Life!

All over the planet and throughout the centuries poets and writers make pages and pages of this same feeling, but in different forms and fonts and languages and voices and rhymes and formats and inks. I feel like it is the same prayer, for centuries, the same hope, the same story, the same longings, over and over, we unite in this, it is timeless, we echo it, we feel it, we dream it, paint it or sing it or write it, the same basic truth, the same fight, looping, forever and ever, and over and over: Save Life! Fuck war! Save Life!

Black history month this month and every month

I'll say it again, like I do every year, please buy books and support the extraordinary and powerful work of your fellow black and brown writers this month. This year, especially, please let's get the message amplified. Lots of poets and authors lost work and gigs and income this year for speaking truth to power and standing up for peace and justice and for people and planet.

This year we are witnessing ugly race riots and brutality and murder in real time. We have seen libraries and mosques burnt down. Right now as I type this, so many of my friends and heroes are being censored, banned, blacklisted. However the writing community keeps pulling together and is consistently courageous, with powerful poetry and spoken word, writers using their platforms to speak up and stand up, narrating, observing, writing from a place of empathy, a place of trauma, a place of mourning.

I write this to salute the poets I know that are making beautiful and hopeful work, as our world leaders quite literally show us which lives matter. In many years from now this will be our literary legacy, these poets, this art, these incredible bold and brave and brilliant books, pages written under fire, a documentation of what went down in the 2020s. So if you are reading this please boost your solidarity, buy and share books, get tickets to gigs and fundraisers, show your support, most especially to those who live it up close.

This month I am honoured to be asked to contribute to Words 4 Gaza and Artists for Gaza, please scroll down for a link to our latest fundraiser.

This year we witness a terrible escalation of racism, hate crimes, war crimes. Even typing this feels stupid as I know the phone in my hand was made with the blood of slavery.

But books are good. Buy books! Buy Banned Books! Buy protest books!

Support indie bookshops, please shop local! Look, I know, it's the same 'let's pull together' BHM message I write every year, but more so this year, it is 2024 and it feels urgent, like what the hell … what the actual … Hell?

I just hope you know what I am trying to say. I know certain words limit who will see my work and posts. I imagine if you are following my posts you’re already doing all you can. Thank you. Let's celebrate lighthouses, the peace poets, the protest poets, the art and artists, the writers of the global majority.

Thank you! sgxx

*the writing in this post comes from my notes and instagram but I wanted to expand it and post it to my substack page. Thank you for following these dreams and thoughts and writing adventures. Onwards and upwards, my lovelies, onwards and upwards!

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ARTISTS FOR GAZA

POETRY AND ART RAFFLE 

Thousands of displaced families are still trapped inside camps in northern Gaza - facing constant assault without daily necessities. This is one of the most difficult times so far, in an entire year of horror. Please take notice. Don't let saturation numb you and your humanity. You can help and donate money by entering this draw - helping artists to help everyday people who need food and medical care. By doing so, you can also win one of many amazing prizes; including bespoke work written for you by eminent writers, or professional coaching for your own writing or performance and fabulous book bundles ready to be signed and inscribed and all for as little as £2 a ticket.

We can make a difference with Art.

https://dandelion.events/e/poetry-raffle