My God, what a learning curve this whole process is…in terms of self connection, self belief and risk taking! I’m blown away at times that this is me… finding my creativity and my soul… who knew!!

Someone asked me the other day what was the best thing about all this…writing, collaborating with Martin, performing etc… And I said t was the moment i said out loud to another person (Martin) that I was a writer. These words coming out of my mouth felt so strange and I felt so shy about it that I could hardly believe I said them. To be fair, the few vodkas helped!! I feel proud of myself that I was able to follow through on the very first meeting with Martin even though I did a really good job of trying to talk myself out of it. I told myself all the negative things you’d expect….self talk like “they’re no good, they’re just ramblings, they’re very amateur, we’ll just have lunch and I’ll tell him I’ve changed my mind” etc… Then I calmed down when I’d decided to pull out….all was well…

Then we met for lunch and I was all over the shop again. In fact I’ve never been so nervous in all my life…. I was babbling like a fool…. jabbering in avoidance, blurting out my life story (please!), ordering wine and generally avoiding reading a poem to him. He was entirely patient, nodding sagely and waiting for me to run dry…and then he said “Why don’t you just read one?” With my heart in my mouth and my face on fire I eventually read one (at the speed of light) and he was in. The rest is history, as they say.

The poem Naked is about that first meeting and it’s about taking a risk to reach for what you want for yourself and being ok. That’s my inspiration here, one of my prouder, albeit shakier moments…