The biggest influences in my life are a small group of poets that belong to the Button poetry stable. The reason is that when I first started writing my scribbles and trying to turn them into poetry I felt I didn’t fit in with what poetry was supposed to be. All I’d ever read was the stuffy “I wandered lonely as a cloud” style of classical poetry.

That was until I was scrolling through YouTube one night and came across button poetry and one of there poets called Kyle Tran Mhyre aka Guante, with a piece called “Ten responses to the phrase, Man-up” it was raw, emotional, and so passionate. What I’d discovered was slam style poetry and this was more my style. It didn’t have to rhyme, and you could use any language you wanted to get your point across. The more I watched of Guante and other Button poets, such as Neil Hilborn and Rudy Francisco, the more I realised that this was the style of poetry i wanted to write myself.

That was nearly twenty years ago.

Since then I’ve continued to write slam style poetry and I’ve found my own style and voice. I’ve written about some painful subjects and I’ve raised awareness of mental health, with poems such as “This poem Ends Every Forty Seconds” (statistically a person takes their life every forty seconds) The crowning achievement for me was probably having the people that inspired me, become more than just my peers and become virtual friends. I also (anonymously) took part in a No Kings event organised by Guante, where poets, artists etc all worked together and shared their work and ideas.

So the people that inspired are

• Kyle Tran Mhyre
• Neil Hilborn
• Rudy Francisco
• Jesse Parent

Stay safe Bc