Wild Thing Poetry: one year on
Approaching our first ever eco poetry event to celebrate the Spring Equinox, I have been looking back over the last year of Wild Thing Poetry. What a year it’s been: one of wildness, community, and creativity, which are, incidentally, the priorities of Wild Thing Poetry.
From standing up in front of a group of poets and enthusiasts at Morocco Bound to seeking a co-founder/partner in crime, to winning funding with the Woodland Trust, a space at Transmission Roundhouse podcast academy, recruiting a brilliantly talented collective and setting up our outreach offer, it’s been a year of learning, growing, and of course, writing poetry.
I started the collective out of a need to find a niche in the poetry community. After spending some time finding my feet in the London scene, I quickly realised that to get the most out of a community, you’ve got to put something in.
The idea for Wild Thing came from a poem I wrote in 2023 that helped me realise that the discomfort I was feeling was borne of a disconnect with the city, a feeling that I didn’t quite fit, that I needed something else, something wilder.
And two years later, my life has completely changed. I have been lucky enough to afford to go part time, to dedicate more space to my wildness and creativity. I have been lucky enough to afford several sets of wheels: most months I have at least two or three wild days where I can get out on the bike or in the car and immerse myself somewhere that feels far away from the city.
But even in the day to day churn of the city, my exposure to this new way of thinking helps me see it in a different way. It is less a place of Tube lines and streets, and more one of parks, ponds and trees. I get out as many mornings and evenings as I can to see the sky change colour from my little patch of South London.
With Jess and the collective, a network of land experts and conservation enthusiasts, recording equipment funded by the Woodland Trust and advice and platforming from Transmission Roundhouse, I am spending hours immersed in our country’s habitats, writing, learning, feeling and listening to bring my vision for the audio documentary series to life.
Together we are finding ways to express environmental activism through creativity. I used to struggle to find my place in the climate fight, but now I feel as much a part of something bigger as those on the frontlines of activism, making headlines and making change.
It started with an idea, but I couldn’t have done it without the people. Without Jess, who came up to me when I was looking for a co-founder, the poets we found at Katie’s Poetry Lounge in April who wanted to join the collective. The folks at Woodland Trust and Transmission Roundhouse who have believed in the vision and the world that I’m trying to breathe into life. Without each and every one of these people, Wild Thing would just be the line in a poem that made me feel something deep and dark and green.
“where the wild things are is where I wish I were
where you’d find me not sophisticated but horrified
that I’d betrayed our wilding place”