What a library full of other people's poetry showed me about my own.
From my camera roll. In the National Poetry Library, Royal Festival Hall.
Yesterday I went to the National Poetry Library at the Royal Festival Hall to scout a room. I came home with something else.
I went for practical reasons. I'm planning a small author meet-up and wanted to see the space. The shelves, the light, where people might sit. But somewhere between the rainbow-ordered shelves and the quiet, the practical visit turned into a personal one. As a writer and a creator, I feel like my brain is always working, because I get inspiration from just about anything.
I travel with my books. That sounds like a line, but it is literally true: Heart is Home and Webs, Love & Fireworks go where I go, because I reach for them. A poem when I need steadying. A reflection when I need reminding. Yesterday, sitting in that library, I set them down among all that poetry and took their picture, and something settled in me, and I sat with that for a few minutes, still and grateful.
From my camera roll. What the day gave me: poetry journals, open submissions, and my own books among them.
Here is what I know: if I had not written Heart is Home first, my 7-day self-love journey, my first published book, I do not believe I could have written Webs, Love & Fireworks the way I did. The first book taught me how to be honest on the page. The novel asked me to be honest about other people: Maris and André, their love story, the Negril I knew. One made the other possible.
Sitting there, I felt the thread of it. Not pride, exactly, but recognition.
My work belongs in rooms like that.
It took a library full of other people's poetry to show me what my own had been doing all along.
It also brought back the shield I keep for anyone who questions my plainspoken lines. If someone ever says anything negative about the writing style of my poems, I'll ask if they know W.H. Auden. "Time will say nothing but I told you so."
A true line does not need dressing up.
And then, because the day was feeling generous, I found the Hampstead Literary Society Journal sitting on a shelf. Open submissions, poetry and prose. I thought: why not me? Five poems, fifty lines each. I have those. So I am submitting those too.
From my camera roll. The purest love will always lead you back to yourself.
I came to scout a room for a meet-up. I left with a submission plan and profound certainty: keep writing.
The work knows where it is going, even when you are simply holding space.
Keep showing up for yourself, in whatever way that looks like today. And pay attention. Inspiration is all around you, waiting for you to notice.
I'd love to know: when did a room, a book, or somebody else's work show you what your own was doing all along?
With my sweet love,
xo, Marcia 🌹
Marcia M. Allen
Founder, AUBRIEA
Author of Webs, Love & Fireworks and Heart is Home
From My Verandah
The two books that travel with me — and the reason this piece exists.
Heart is Home: the 7-day self-love journey where my honesty on the pages began.
Webs, Love & Fireworks: the novel that grew from it. Maris and André's love story, with Jamaica in its bones.