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103: Poetry, Schooling, and Flourishing Creativity w/ Joshua Seigal
17 Plays3 years ago
Joshua Seigal is a highly acclaimed, award-winning professional poet, performer and educator. Joshua uses poetry to develop literacy skills and inspire confidence and creativity in communication. He has worked in hundreds of schools, libraries, theatres and festivals around the world, had books published by Bloomsbury and other major publishers, and has written and performed for BBC television. Joshua Seigal has recently been awarded the 2020 Laugh out Loud Book Award for “I Bet I Can Make You Laugh”, and shortlisted for the 2021 Peoples Book Prize for “Yapping Away”. In this episode, I talk to Joshua about his journey from academia to poetry as well as his own experiences attending British schools and the perspective he has on them now as an adult, and of course we get a bit of a poetry reading near the end. I should add that I recorded this at home with a very busy 3.5 year old, who you may hear throughout the episode. Thank you Joshua, for being very gracious during a chaotic recording on my end!
GUESTS
Joshua Seigal, award-winning poet, performer, and educator
RESOURCES
Recommended
Transcript
Defining Personal Success
00:00:00
Speaker
Outside the classroom the other day, a little boy came up to me and, tugging at the hem of my garment, asked, how do I be a success like you?
00:00:10
Speaker
And I didn't know what to say.
00:00:13
Speaker
You see, I've never thought of myself that way, because after GCSEs, A-levels and 2 degrees, society does not tend to see reading poetry to kids as a natural progression.
00:00:25
Speaker
And sometimes it feels like I'm not listening in the lesson, like this isn't proper work or the kind of thing a man should be doing.
00:00:33
Speaker
My parents tell me that I'm better than that, that this isn't a proper job, that of course giving kids the joy of words is no bad thing, but to leave it to someone else and to go out there and be someone.
00:00:47
Speaker
Wear a suit, son.
00:00:49
Speaker
Commute, son.
00:00:51
Speaker
And of course we read poems and books to you, son.
00:00:54
Speaker
But this was not an end in itself.
00:00:56
Speaker
At no point did we dream that one day you would be doing such a thing for anyone other than your own kids.
00:01:02
Speaker
What are you?
00:01:03
Speaker
A glorified bloody babysitter.
00:01:06
Speaker
And so the bitter taste at the back of my throat when the boy asked, how do I be a success like you, arose from not believing it to be true.
00:01:17
Speaker
It arose from skulking in the shadows of people my age on 80k a year.
00:01:22
Speaker
Of people my age with their own flats and cars and even of the bloke at the bar who, upon being told that I work with children, drunkenly snorts perverts.
00:01:32
Speaker
As though that could be the only excuse for a man wanting to do such a thing.
00:01:36
Speaker
It arose from having memorised the lines of a play in which I play no part, but no.
00:01:44
Speaker
Through that boy's eyes, I saw myself anew.
00:01:48
Speaker
So to the boy who asked me, how do I be a success like you?
00:01:53
Speaker
I say this.
00:01:55
Speaker
Believe that what you're doing is worthwhile.
00:01:58
Speaker
Believe that anyone who doubts you is mistaken.
00:02:03
Speaker
Tell yourself every day that you can be whatever you want to be.
00:02:07
Speaker
Tell yourself that success is not just reading from someone else's script, but believing what you say, or even better, writing the words yourself.
00:02:17
Speaker
And know that what counts is not whether you've spelt them correctly or whether they're in the right order, but that they are yours.
00:02:26
Speaker
Success does not come in manuals.
00:02:29
Speaker
Success is not flat-pack furniture.
00:02:31
Speaker
And you know what?
00:02:32
Speaker
Success certainly doesn't come from listening to poems about what success is.
00:02:38
Speaker
So, son, do it your way.
Podcast Introduction & Guest Overview
00:02:42
Speaker
Don't listen to what I say.
00:02:47
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 103 of our podcast at the Human Restoration Project.
00:02:53
Speaker
My name is Nick Covington and I'm a social studies teacher from Ankeny, Iowa.
00:02:57
Speaker
Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Julie Wolver-Judkins, Trent M. Kirkpatrick, and Aubrey Holliman.
00:03:07
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:03:09
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
00:03:22
Speaker
My guest today, whose work you heard in the intro, is highly acclaimed, award-winning professional poet, performer, and educator Joshua Siegel, who uses poetry to develop literacy skills and inspire confidence in creativity and communication.
00:03:36
Speaker
He has worked in hundreds of schools, libraries, theaters, and festivals around the world, had books published by Bloomsbury and other major publishers, and has written and performed for BBC Television.
00:03:47
Speaker
Joshua Siegel has recently been awarded the 2020 Laugh Out Loud Book Award for I Bet I Can Make You Laugh and shortlisted for the 2021 People's Book Prize for Yapping Away.
Joshua Siegel's Journey to Poetry
00:03:59
Speaker
In this episode, I talk to Joshua about his journey from academia to poetry, as well as his own experiences attending British schools and the perspective he has on them now as an adult.
00:04:10
Speaker
And of course, we get a bit of a poetry reading near the end.
00:04:13
Speaker
I should add that I recorded this at home with a very busy three-and-a-half-year-old who you may hear throughout the episode.
00:04:20
Speaker
Thank you, Joshua, for being very gracious during an otherwise chaotic recording on my end.
00:04:26
Speaker
I hope you enjoy the episode.
00:04:35
Speaker
Yeah, so it's a really interesting journey.
00:04:39
Speaker
I've been a professional poet, believe it or not, for about 10 years.
00:04:44
Speaker
And it's kind of really difficult to trace back the steps and connect the dots in terms of how I got to do that.
00:04:51
Speaker
I think what happens initially was when I was at school myself, I wasn't massively into poetry.
00:05:00
Speaker
I think I've always enjoyed words and wordplay and writing.
00:05:04
Speaker
But I decided to go into academia initially.
00:05:08
Speaker
So I did a degree in philosophy, and then I did a postgraduate degree.
00:05:15
Speaker
And during those studies, which I guess we can talk about a little bit later in the conversation, but I developed some quite brutal mental health issues.
00:05:28
Speaker
And I really found that writing creatively and kind of fitting words together in interesting ways was a really, really helpful way of dealing with the stress of my studies.
00:05:47
Speaker
And then eventually I... So I was just writing, you know, for fun, for myself.
00:05:54
Speaker
And one day, and this was when it was just after my postgraduate degree, when I loved writing and I discovered performance poetry as well.
00:06:07
Speaker
But I had no idea that it was even a possibility as a job.
00:06:13
Speaker
But then I read an interview in a local newspaper with a professional poet.
00:06:20
Speaker
And he talked about the work he did visiting schools.
00:06:23
Speaker
And I thought that's what I, you know, that's what I could do.
00:06:27
Speaker
So I, I, um, I looked him up, I sent an email and he invited me to come along and meet him and, and see what he did.
00:06:36
Speaker
And I thought, you know, this is exactly what I want to do.
00:06:39
Speaker
Um, and, you know, initially, you know, I was not able to do it.
00:06:44
Speaker
It took a long while before I was able to make a living off that, but that's, that's kind of how the ball started rolling.
00:06:50
Speaker
And, um,
00:06:52
Speaker
I made myself a website on Wix.
00:06:55
Speaker
They're not paying me to say that, by the way.
00:06:57
Speaker
But they're the people I use for my website.
00:07:00
Speaker
And I just started initially, I just started calling up all the schools in the local area and just asking if I could come and visit and share my poems.
00:07:12
Speaker
And I think one in about 100 schools said yes.
00:07:17
Speaker
And again, that kind of got the journey kicked off.
00:07:21
Speaker
And along the way, I got books published.
00:07:25
Speaker
And social media, which you mentioned at the beginning, has, well, increasingly so since the pandemic.
00:07:32
Speaker
But it's been absolutely crucial for me.
00:07:35
Speaker
It's enabled me to meet people.
00:07:38
Speaker
and connect with people and share my work.
00:07:41
Speaker
As you'll know, I post a lot of my work on the socials.
00:07:46
Speaker
So, yeah, and you mentioned the awards.
00:07:50
Speaker
The awards was for something called the Laugh Out Loud Award, and it's awarded every year to the funniest children's book.
00:08:00
Speaker
And it's voted on by the public.
00:08:02
Speaker
So it was really special to me to win that.
00:08:05
Speaker
And that was in, that was actually, I remember it because it was a month before the first lockdown.
00:08:12
Speaker
So that would be February 2020.
Education, Intelligence, and Creativity
00:08:15
Speaker
So that was really, that was really special.
00:08:18
Speaker
It's interesting how that time kind of becomes a milestone in our heads, isn't it?
00:08:22
Speaker
That March 2020, there's like a pre and post.
00:08:24
Speaker
So you can kind of date yourself from that.
00:08:26
Speaker
It's so weird.
00:08:28
Speaker
Speaking to your experience, though, kind of in that in that world of academia, we kind of hear and I've heard from from my own friends and colleagues, too, you know, who have who have moved between careers.
00:08:39
Speaker
That's a pretty common theme, you know, struggling with with mental health, perhaps purpose and stuff in those institutions.
00:08:46
Speaker
And then through maybe the power of relationships or mentoring is maybe what it sounds like in your circumstance there.
00:08:53
Speaker
I'm kind of getting involved in what you perceive as being, you know, this new, powerful, purposeful work.
00:08:59
Speaker
So I wonder then, too, if.
00:09:01
Speaker
So many of our interactions have been around those issues.
00:09:04
Speaker
We don't have to necessarily speak to intelligence testing and all those other questions just yet.
00:09:08
Speaker
But I want to know just generally about your experiences in the British education system, perhaps as a younger person before your secondary collegiate university level stuff.
00:09:19
Speaker
Because I think through social media, we get such a narrow lens of what that looks like.
00:09:25
Speaker
So I'm really curious about your experiences with that.
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, well, you did briefly mention intelligence, and I think that has been a crucial facet of my mental health journey.
00:09:38
Speaker
My own schooling, my experience of the British system is not at all representative of
00:09:46
Speaker
So my parents actually paid for me to go to, we call them private schools.
00:09:51
Speaker
I think you call, I don't, or, so we say public schools, which means you've got to pay for them.
00:09:57
Speaker
But when you say public schools, that means it's free.
00:09:59
Speaker
Is that correct?
00:10:00
Speaker
Yep.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yep.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:02
Speaker
So basically my parents paid for me to attend school, which is not, you know, so I had a privileged or what would be called a privileged education.
00:10:13
Speaker
And throughout my schooling,
00:10:17
Speaker
Grades and exams and passing exams was of absolute paramount importance.
00:10:27
Speaker
The whole system that I was part of was geared towards getting into a good university and from then on, you know, getting a job which makes lots of money.
00:10:39
Speaker
That's the message that I kind of imbibed from the education system.
00:10:45
Speaker
And somewhere along the line, I internalized the notion that intelligence is what defines human worth.
00:10:54
Speaker
And ever since I've been about, you know, in my early 20s, my journey since then has been a kind of deprogramming of that notion.
00:11:07
Speaker
And...
00:11:09
Speaker
I've learned a hell of a lot about, and, and, you know, as, as I've progressed on that journey, I've learned a lot more than the average, um, non-specialist, uh, in, in intelligence testing and what intelligence is.
00:11:25
Speaker
And, um, I don't know whether you want to go into that at all, but I've, I've worked and through the work I do, um, especially, um, I, I, I know that, um,
00:11:37
Speaker
There's no correlation between intelligence and what you might call lovability, you know, being worthy of love.
00:11:44
Speaker
And that's been, I mean, I'm very, again, we don't need to go into this necessarily, but I'm very interested in psychoanalysis.
00:11:53
Speaker
So that might be a slightly, you know, the idea of love and being worthy of love is quite a,
00:12:02
Speaker
you know, a deep topic, shall we say.
00:12:05
Speaker
But yeah, my journey with the education system, when I was in education, that's what it was like.
00:12:13
Speaker
My role in education at the moment, it's fairly self-selective in the sense that the schools that invite a poet in
00:12:22
Speaker
are by their very nature schools that are amenable to having a poet in so you know they tend to have a fairly progressive bent to them they tend to be schools who are willing to look at creativity and mental health the schools that aren't interested in that i don't have much experience of um other than through twitter you
00:12:47
Speaker
No, I would love it if you could unpack, you know, perhaps your own journey in that.
00:12:51
Speaker
I had pulled so many of the Twitter conversations that we do get involved in, kind of start with that seed of intelligence or testing and those kinds of things.
00:13:02
Speaker
And a frequent comment from you is like, if you were assessed purely on those tests or those intelligence tests,
00:13:10
Speaker
That is not a measure, perhaps, of your success or even of the way that you feel about yourself.
00:13:14
Speaker
And yet it is the way that we measure kids in so many different circumstances.
00:13:19
Speaker
So, yeah, feel free to go into that a little bit more in your journey.
00:13:23
Speaker
I mean, it's interesting because I have taken IQ tests and I don't do that well.
00:13:31
Speaker
Well, it's again, this is going into the technicalities of the tests, but that, you know, there's nonverbal elements and verbal elements.
00:13:39
Speaker
And I do well in the verbal stuff because that's my job and words and language is my life.
00:13:47
Speaker
But I can't do those bits with the shapes and all of that stuff.
00:13:53
Speaker
I'm just awful at that.
00:13:54
Speaker
And the notion that someone's performance on that kind of test defines their subsequent trajectory is just terrible.
00:14:04
Speaker
And not only that, I've actually got experience...
00:14:09
Speaker
Well, I spent a few years running a weekly club.
00:14:14
Speaker
This was when I was a resident poet in a school.
00:14:18
Speaker
And the club was a weekly lunch club for students with, I don't know whether you define them as disabilities or learning, you know, learning needs, shall we say.
00:14:28
Speaker
And when you work with poetry, it just opens up an avenue to be so imaginative and creative and express such deep feeling and
00:14:39
Speaker
notions and ideas that are just totally uncorrelated to how a student might perform in a standardized test.
00:14:47
Speaker
And I've got real firsthand experience of that disconnection.
00:14:51
Speaker
So it is something I feel passionate about.
00:14:54
Speaker
Even that notion of the IQ, the intelligence quotient somehow, you know, refers to your capacity for goodness.
00:15:02
Speaker
And so often we translate that into the capacity for value or, you know, your worth or what you had called that lovability, too.
00:15:09
Speaker
I think, you know, when I think of kids writing poetry, too, you know, I think of the lens through my own children, but...
00:15:16
Speaker
A little while ago, there was this poem going around from this student.
00:15:19
Speaker
And I don't know what the context of this book is.
00:15:22
Speaker
Maybe you had seen this.
00:15:23
Speaker
It's from a student.
00:15:24
Speaker
I'm assuming it's Niall.
00:15:26
Speaker
It's called The Tiger.
00:15:27
Speaker
And I don't know if you've seen this.
00:15:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:15:31
Speaker
So let me see if I can recite that off by heart.
00:15:33
Speaker
I think it goes, the tiger has escaped its cage.
00:15:38
Speaker
No, the tiger, he destroyed his cage.
00:15:41
Speaker
Yes.
00:15:42
Speaker
Yes.
00:15:43
Speaker
The tiger is out.
00:15:44
Speaker
That's it to a T. Oh, I love it.
00:15:47
Speaker
And just the... I'll spend the rest of my career trying to outdo that and probably fail.
00:15:52
Speaker
Exactly.
00:15:53
Speaker
And it's so interesting that just, you know, this is not a six-year-old who has been trained in, you know, in the art of words or poetry or meter or rhythm and rhyme.
00:16:04
Speaker
And yet it contains all of those things and is just so pure.
00:16:07
Speaker
And I loved seeing the... Just seeing the...
00:16:11
Speaker
joy that people had from sharing, you know, adults sharing that in mass, just this most pure form of that.
00:16:18
Speaker
I even saw somebody who had gotten that tattooed on themselves.
00:16:21
Speaker
And oh, that's incredible.
00:16:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:24
Speaker
And it is just a testament to, you know, the power of expressiveness here.
00:16:28
Speaker
We might think a six year old doesn't have a lot to say or or even to contribute.
00:16:33
Speaker
And yet here's this thing that they've produced, you know, from from the purity of their own
00:16:38
Speaker
you know, experience just through the joy of the words.
00:16:41
Speaker
I mean, there's what, maybe a dozen words throughout that whole poem.
00:16:45
Speaker
And yet it's resonating with so many people who, you know, adults in London can recite it by heart.
00:16:51
Speaker
I mean, I want to find, I want to find Niall and talk to, talk to that young student, kind of see where they're at.
00:16:56
Speaker
I wonder if he's got any idea about, about that.
00:16:59
Speaker
The fact it's, it's resonated beyond his own book.
00:17:02
Speaker
I wonder if he's, he knows it's,
00:17:05
Speaker
it's it's been shared so widely that would be really interesting to find yeah i want to do like a where are they now for niall age six the tiger poem and get him on the get him on the podcast yeah exactly um and and i wonder too what what is the impact of having peaked at age six like that you know like if niall went on for a career as a poet you just know like i'm going to be walking in the shadow of the tiger yeah
00:17:26
Speaker
For the rest of my life.
00:17:28
Speaker
That would be the title of his autobiography, Walking in the Shadow of the Tiger.
00:17:32
Speaker
Walking in the Shadow of the Tiger.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yes, that's great.
Reflections on Education and Poetry
00:17:38
Speaker
So I think then kind of thinking, I love kind of the perspective that you might have then, again, thinking of yourself as a young adult and then in your collegiate experience.
00:17:49
Speaker
And now what you see, again, kind of through the...
00:17:53
Speaker
through the lens of the perhaps progressive schools that you're involved in, that you're able to bring your wonderful poetry to as well, what you perhaps see as being successes in British education.
00:18:06
Speaker
And that could be in your experience or from what you just perceive in the policy realm or in the news world.
00:18:12
Speaker
And where do you see perhaps as areas of growth or areas that need to change?
00:18:17
Speaker
I'm not someone who does research very much about policy or that kind of thing.
00:18:24
Speaker
But from my experience, I perceive, and I'm sure you'll be aware of this as well, a more traditional or trad style of education is very fashionable at the moment.
00:18:35
Speaker
I think a lot of it, or certainly a portion of it, has its genesis in the research ed organization, which sprung up in
00:18:46
Speaker
Britain, but which is now worldwide.
00:18:48
Speaker
It has its genesis also in the current, well, they've been in power since 2010, but the Conservative government and their education ministers.
00:18:59
Speaker
And it seems to me like...
00:19:02
Speaker
the so-called traditional style of education, direct instruction, preparations for exams, standardized testing.
00:19:10
Speaker
It seems to me like they're fashionable at the moment.
00:19:14
Speaker
Maybe I only think they're fashionable because they get, you know, that's what I notice.
00:19:18
Speaker
But it seems to me like the, I mean, again, when I visit schools, it's fairly self-selective in the schools that I personally visit.
00:19:29
Speaker
But it seems like, you know,
00:19:31
Speaker
Yeah, there's a kind of traditional flavour of education at the moment.
00:19:37
Speaker
And from what I can see on social media, that seems to be fairly worldwide, not just Britain.
00:19:43
Speaker
But again, other people are far more qualified to answer that question than I would be.
00:19:49
Speaker
And it is such a curious thing.
00:19:51
Speaker
I think so much of how pedagogy is like kind of a society holding up a mirror to itself and kind of reflecting its own values.
00:20:01
Speaker
So it's really curious, I think, that
00:20:04
Speaker
A lot of the genesis, as you said, of that traditionalist kind of movement is reflected in a movement that calls itself research ed, which sort of takes it out of the realm of social values and puts it in this realm of objective science.
00:20:17
Speaker
Right.
00:20:17
Speaker
Because then it says what we're doing is not just a value driven proposition.
00:20:22
Speaker
It's somehow rooted in it's the science that classrooms have to look like direct instruction and have to look like this.
00:20:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:30
Speaker
And I mean, as someone who calls themselves an artist, I do.
00:20:35
Speaker
I should I should preface this by saying I'm not a qualified teacher.
00:20:38
Speaker
So maybe my views are maybe the worth of my views on this are limited.
00:20:43
Speaker
But I see education as being as much an art as a science, if not more.
00:20:51
Speaker
And having worked with children, you know, right the way from two years old to 18 years old, you just can't replicate laboratory conditions in a classroom.
00:21:03
Speaker
You know, I'm sceptical of the value of applying a scientific paradigm to education.
00:21:11
Speaker
And that seems to be a very fashionable paradigm at the moment.
00:21:14
Speaker
Since you've hedged yourself so much on speaking as authority on classrooms and education, I am really excited then for you to get to share, you know, what your expertise then is in creating wonderful, punny poetry.
00:21:29
Speaker
And I don't know if you had picked a selection for our listeners and things, but I'd love it if you could lay some on us.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll just say, I'll just recite it.
00:21:37
Speaker
I mean, I should say I haven't planned, you know, I wasn't rehearsing.
00:21:41
Speaker
I didn't know I was going to be asked to do this.
00:21:44
Speaker
This is a poem which is from my first book, which is called I Don't Like Poetry.
00:21:49
Speaker
And it's written for people who don't like poetry and also for people who do like poetry.
00:21:54
Speaker
And it's based on a true story.
00:21:56
Speaker
It's something that happened to me when I was about eight years old.
00:22:00
Speaker
And it's called The Most Embarrassing Moment Ever.
00:22:02
Speaker
And it goes like this.
00:22:04
Speaker
The most embarrassing moment ever was at the beach.
00:22:08
Speaker
I ran up to my mum, wrapped my arms around her legs and cuddled her tight, screaming, Mummy!
00:22:15
Speaker
Mummy!
00:22:16
Speaker
But then I looked into the distance and I saw my mum and my dad and my sister.
00:22:23
Speaker
And they were pointing at me and laughing.
00:22:25
Speaker
And the lady I've been cuddling started laughing too and said, I think you've got the wrong lady, little boy.
00:22:31
Speaker
And I wanted the sea to wash over me like a little sandcastle, like a shallow rock pool.
00:22:37
Speaker
And I decided that I would never cuddle anyone again.
00:22:43
Speaker
There we go.
00:22:44
Speaker
And to this day, I have kept that promise.
00:22:46
Speaker
I haven't really kept the promise, but the rest of the poem is true.
00:22:50
Speaker
Oh, that's wonderful.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:51
Speaker
A life without cuddles from there.
00:22:53
Speaker
That's for that's great.
00:22:56
Speaker
Or at least without cuddles that I initiate.
00:23:00
Speaker
That's true.
00:23:01
Speaker
Are there are there any others that you've committed to memory that you want to that you want to share?
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah, I'll do a rhyming one because I, firstly, I love to rhyme.
00:23:10
Speaker
I love playing with words and playing with language.
00:23:14
Speaker
So I love rhyme, but I always say when I do workshops that poems do not have to rhyme because if children, especially younger children, if they try and rhyme, then they'll spend the whole hour trying to rhyme a few words together and it might not make much sense.
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:32
Speaker
So I'm very careful to share non-rhyming poems as well as rhyming poems.
00:23:37
Speaker
This is a short rhyming poem.
00:23:40
Speaker
Again, from my first book, I Don't Like Poetry.
00:23:43
Speaker
And it's called Warrior King.
00:23:45
Speaker
And it goes like this.
00:23:47
Speaker
I'm the warrior king of the garden.
00:23:49
Speaker
I'm a revolutionary with my gun and my axe and my telescope and my lookout in the tree.
00:23:55
Speaker
I'm the warrior king of the garden.
00:23:57
Speaker
I'm a soldier, a fighter, a winner.
00:24:00
Speaker
I don't take orders from anyone until mum calls me in for dinner.
00:24:05
Speaker
I love it because, you know, the, the, the buildup is like, you're going on this big adventure and then suddenly mom intervenes.
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:11
Speaker
And I think, um, I, I, one of my avenues into poetry was, was through comedy.
00:24:17
Speaker
Uh, I'm a huge aficionado of standup comedy.
00:24:21
Speaker
I, I, it's one of my favorite art forms to go and see.
00:24:24
Speaker
Um, so a lot of my poems are, are jokes effectively with a punchline.
00:24:30
Speaker
Um,
00:24:31
Speaker
Fairly lightweight punchline sometimes.
00:24:34
Speaker
But yeah, a lot of my poems do have that build up and then the reveal at the end.
Career Advice and Personal Growth
00:24:44
Speaker
You know, this maybe wasn't something that I'm thinking about it here just spontaneously, right?
00:24:48
Speaker
Imagine having a spontaneous thought.
00:24:50
Speaker
But my thought is, you know, I don't know if your advice per se is for people to pursue your line of work in particular, only because, you know, that's not how you came into this, you know, the powerful kind of purpose-driven work that kind of aligns with the way that you see yourself and see the world.
00:25:08
Speaker
It's hard to maybe posit a one-size-fits-all approach to
00:25:12
Speaker
to that kind of thing.
00:25:13
Speaker
But I don't know, what do you say about people who maybe find themselves in your similar position that you were in, perhaps in academia or in stressful, unfulfilling work and kind of say, okay, what kinds of things can I do to help align myself with where I really see myself?
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, my situation is probably... I don't know how typical it would be of a general situation, but I've been lucky enough to have really supportive, stable family and people around me who give me love and support.
00:25:56
Speaker
I have, for many years, on and off, had...
00:26:01
Speaker
had therapy, which has been hugely, well, life-saving, really.
00:26:06
Speaker
So I would say try and surround yourself with people who believe in you because it's almost impossible to do it on your own.
00:26:19
Speaker
And I'm really lucky and fortunate to be able to have those people.
00:26:24
Speaker
I would also say it's difficult being, I'm self-employed and it's difficult because if I'm ill, I don't get paid.
00:26:31
Speaker
And it's not for everyone.
00:26:32
Speaker
My wife is very, she needs that regular paycheck.
00:26:36
Speaker
That's just her mentality.
00:26:38
Speaker
But I, I'm kind of quite spontaneous with my, with, with the nature of my work.
00:26:44
Speaker
That's so I'm, I'm okay not knowing what I'm going to be doing in a month's time.
00:26:49
Speaker
But yeah,
00:26:50
Speaker
you know, a lot of people, probably the majority of people wouldn't be comfortable in that kind of situation.
00:26:56
Speaker
If you hear guitar noises, my son has found the guitars that we hang up because I have the wall hangers for a couple of my acoustics.
00:27:03
Speaker
So he has found that now as his thing.
00:27:05
Speaker
So, I mean, it has just been chaotic on my end.
00:27:08
Speaker
But is there anything that you think I missed that you want to, that you feel like is worth adding on to this that we didn't get a chance to talk about or that I didn't think about?
00:27:19
Speaker
I think we met, I can't remember when it was, but it was on Twitter.
00:27:23
Speaker
And it was a few months before the start of the pandemic, I think.
00:27:28
Speaker
And it was actually a really crucial time for me, really, because I was getting really psychologically, well, I don't know what the word is, distressed is too strong, but dissatisfied, maybe.
00:27:41
Speaker
That doesn't, you know, I was being ground down a bit by what I perceived to be the traditionalism.
00:27:50
Speaker
And then I can't remember how I happened upon you, but I was just opened up to a whole world of progressive education, which I didn't really know existed.
00:28:00
Speaker
So, you know, people who don't view IQ testing as the be all and end all people who don't necessarily have much respect for standardized tests.
00:28:11
Speaker
people who see beyond grades, people who value creativity.
00:28:16
Speaker
And so I guess you were kind of my gateway into encountering that whole community.
00:28:22
Speaker
And it's been really, it's been really great.
00:28:25
Speaker
One quick thing.
00:28:26
Speaker
So I grew up kind of just playing a lot of music and being very musical.
00:28:30
Speaker
So we also have a nice little keyboard in the background.
00:28:33
Speaker
Oh, lovely.
00:28:33
Speaker
And so, yeah, perhaps you'll be able to hear those wonderful – we just have a basement.
00:28:37
Speaker
That's what this curtain is hiding, is a basement full of musical instruments and just play things and stuff.
00:28:42
Speaker
So my son is just going from bass to guitar to keyboard and just making – I was in a band a long time ago.
00:28:49
Speaker
So, yeah, I was a bassist and singer in a punk band.
00:28:53
Speaker
Oh!
00:28:54
Speaker
That is the most, you know, that is the least surprising thing I think I've ever heard from you.
00:28:58
Speaker
So that would be 15 years ago.
00:29:01
Speaker
And if anyone wants to check it out, it's the barbacle communication problem.
00:29:06
Speaker
And we're on YouTube.
00:29:07
Speaker
So if you just look for me on YouTube, there are, I think, two songs which we recorded 15 years ago.
00:29:14
Speaker
I'll tell you, the irony of having an award-winning poet in a band called Communication Problem is not lost on me.
00:29:21
Speaker
Maybe that's British humor, I suppose.
00:29:24
Speaker
You know, I I'm just I'm thankful for you for for sticking with me through that.
00:29:29
Speaker
This is the most chaotic recording experience of my entire life.
00:29:32
Speaker
So I'm a little bit proud.
00:29:34
Speaker
Well, I think, yeah, no, that's that's good.
00:29:36
Speaker
I'm enjoying it.
00:29:37
Speaker
I'm enjoying the chaos.
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:39
Speaker
So and I just, you know, appreciate you generally.
00:29:44
Speaker
You know, again, I might have said it, but but punny, prolific.
00:29:48
Speaker
It kind of seems like there's a poem for every event and day of the week.
00:29:53
Speaker
And I just love it if I, whenever I end up posting something and it must get picked up in your feed, usually I can find a poem that either gives it some kind of perspective or at least lets me smile a little bit about that situation.
00:30:07
Speaker
Oh, well, that's, if I can bring a smile to people, then that's sort of 90% of my job done, I think.
00:30:13
Speaker
So I really appreciate that.
00:30:15
Speaker
Well, thanks again, Joshua.
00:30:17
Speaker
Pleasure.
00:30:23
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Project's podcast.
00:30:26
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:30:30
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.