Back in September last year, I received a very interesting package. It was quite big, a proper parcel wrapped in Sellotape with lots of stamps, and when I finally opened it for a while I couldn't even work out what it was. There was a piece of cardboard and resting nicely on top of it was a full page from what looked like a magazine. On one side there was part of an article, with two pictures and lots of print, but on the other, as you can see, was a full page old school Marlboro advert. And that was it.
Me and Kate studied the envelope carefully and it looks like it came from Florida. Yes, Florida.
At first I was quite shocked, and didn't know what to make of it, but now I absolutely love it. I think it might relate to the cowboy hat emoji on my profile, which I added because were watching Yellowstone (which I loved) at the time, and I hope whoever sent it may have been someone who has looked at one of my poems and subscribed to my website because I was equally surprised in the summer to see that 1.8K had viewed a poem called 'Ex Girlfriends' - and even more surprised and delighted when I looked at the analytics to see that 100% of those viewers were male.
I'll be blunt: I think poetry is letting down men and boys at the moment. I think masculinity, as explored so honestly in Yellowstone, is often shunned, or even more, blamed and misunderstood.
Many of the people who have responded to my poems are women, but I am proud of the fact that I try and write about things that may feel uncomfortable for some people at the moment, like Yellowstone.
I don't do it on purpose, but quite a few of my poems are about desire and anger, and, as a man, I feel like I am sometimes straying into hostile territory, hence, as I said in my most recent blog, my decision to self-publish. But that, in turn, along with so much else, has led to the wonderful and genuine surprise of receiving this in the post.
