Hello, it’s been a while since I wrote a post.  Despite the silence on this blog, there’s been quite a bit going on. There have been several creative projects and work; one of them was this wonderful bursary awarded by Sunderland Culture called New Encounters.

The aim of the bursary was to allow us recipients to further our creative careers.

The basis for my bursary was to create a spoken-word piece that focused on the more surreal moments of the lived  Dwarfism experience. This also included receiving mentorship from an amazing poet, performer and spoken-word theatre performer.

Kirsten Luckin’s mentorship taught me how to project my voice (goodness, it can be loud!), write for spoken word and more so my self-confidence in performing.

As a Dwarf person, I found the idea of performing in front of people very triggering regarding the content of the pieces and being stared at. While that was a huge part of my apprehension, Kirsten aptly observed I don’t get the rush of excitement of being in front of an audience, which was why I was hesitant (procrastinating) in putting the work out there.

Unfortunately, despite all the amazing mentorship and persuasion Kirsten gave, I could not perform due to illness at the Twoomph – Open Mic Night online.

Step in the amazing Alice Lambert – a performance artist, to read the work at the Open Mic, who was absolutely fantastic.  This is where I felt the excitement – seeing my work, my words performed!

Now it’s time to make the work public.  It’s not without trepidation due to the nature of the pieces, but I feel there needs to be more creative work about the lived experience of Dwarfism (and disability) out there. 

Huge thanks to the following people for helping to make this opportunity possible:

• Helen Green, Head of Performance at Sunderland Culture
• Kirsten Luckins – poet, performer and spoken word theatre maker – amazing mentor!
• Tees Women Poets for platforming my work
• Alice Lambert – performance artist and actor

Watch the video below