People Have Phenomenal Capacity
Celebrating #WorldHarryBakerDay and emerging from a dark tunnel of admin to a wonderful new book.
Hello friends.
Me and Grace have recently started rewatching The West Wing. It was a staple in her childhood and so we watched all 7 seasons in our first year of marriage, when we had just moved to Margate and had no friends yet were settling in to a new place. Grace has been trying to get me to rewatch it for years and I have resisted, so she got bored of waiting and started without me, at which point I started watching over her shoulder, immediately got hooked and have become obsessed all over again.
In a recent episode, President Bartlett is giving a speech at the state of the union and he chooses the Secretary of Agriculture to stay behind as his designated successor (to take over if all of the important people in the room were killed at once). As he is leaving the Oval Office he runs him through the first steps of what to do when he takes power, lets him know which toilet in the Whitehouse has a dodgy flush, before catching himself and ending on:
“You’ll do fine. People have phenomenal capacity.”
I just spent a week in Devon with my parents, my brother and his wife and my three nieces. My Uncle and Aunt very kindly let us stay in their house while they were away, and my nieces are currently being read the final Harry Potter book. As a result my eldest niece Flo has memorised the Top Trumps and if you name any character she can tell you the first year they attended Hogwarts. (Albus Dumbledore, 1892). Meanwhile her and middle niece Thea have taught 2-year-old Olivia to say Avada Kedavra so she spent a lot of the week running around putting the killing curse on us all which was equal parts adorable and chilling.
People have phenomenal capacity.
Of all this messages in my poems this is one that I think I come back to the most. I believe we all have such extraordinary potential and try to use my poems and shows (and life) to celebrate that in ourselves and one other, both in good times and bad. It is why I feel so enraged when I see people’s capacity stifled, whether that is by uncaring government policy, societal expectations, or just rubbish partners. It is in part why I love the queer community in Margate (and beyond) so much because I think to be queer is to begin to understand that you have more capacity within you than the world is traditionally willing to give you space for, and so a moment of coming out is the first step of exploring your phenomenal-ness and finding a community committed to doing the same.
I feel strongly about this in part because I feel I am a living embodiment of what happens if you nurture your own capacity and allow others to support you on that journey. I never knew that poetry could be a job, but thankfully there were others who believed in me before I was even ready to believe in myself, and fifteen years later I just sent my third book off to the printers and on May 1st I am performing my poems at the Royal Albert Hall. I could have just as easily ended up studying medicine or getting a graduate job at Deloitte or other paths that at the time seemed to make a lot more sense to a lot more people, but from the very beginning I felt that when I wrote and shared my poems I was putting my full self into them in a way that I hadn’t felt doing anything else, and that was enough of a reason to stick with it. As I’m about to tour around the country to rooms (hopefully) full of people willing to hear some of those poems, I’m so so glad I did.
Right now I am showing a phenomenal capacity for going off on a tangent in the introduction to what was already going to be a jam-packed newsletter, so here are a couple of things I’ve been up to or am about to be up to, before I come back to one more phenomenal piece of news at the end. Thanks for being here.
#WorldHarryBakerDay
One thing people have shown they have a phenomenal capacity for is humouring me. On realising March 21st was World Poetry day and March 23rd was World Maths Day, as that nations only favourite Poet with a maths degree I declared March 22nd to be World Harry Baker Day and offered some free books/gig tickets for the best entries. There was everything from computed coding rhyming haikus to making pottery inspired by my poems, recreating classic photos of mine to having a Harryoke at work complete with flamingos and Schöfferhofer, and even someone making their own Falafellöffellaufer outfit! I’ve included pics of a few faves above but highly recommend looking at the #worldharrybakerday hashtag on instagram to find more, and this is now officially a thing so feel free to start preparing your entries for next year.
Prayer For The Day(s)
Last week saw my annual-ish return to Radio 4’s Prayer for the day slot, where at the peak time of 5:45am I gave a week’s worth of reflections on Trains, April Fool’s Day, My new bike, (not) going on tour, Sticky toffee pudding, and one more that I will come back to at the end as part of the aforementioned phenomenal news. If you enjoyed the general vibe of the introduction to this newsletter where I take a recent innocuous event in my life and try and make it into some kind of vaguely inspirational thought then you might enjoy them. One thing I love is because of the demographic of people who listen to Radio 4 at 5:45am in the morning I don’t get any messages on social media about it, but do get people taking the time to email me personally to thank me and tell me they enjoyed it.
Something Borrowed
My Live show/podcast/cultural phenomenon Something Borrowed is going from strength to strength. After coming out of the period of busyness mentioned last month I finally had time to edit and put out the last two episodes featuring Raymond Antrobus and Georgie Jones and enough time had passed that I got to experience them with fresh ears and it was an absolute treat. The above picture is with the fantastic Brigitte Aphrodite who rocked it last month, this month’s edition with Laurie Bolger is sold out but you can be the first people to get tickets for May here! It’s honestly one of my favourite things I’m involved with and I’m very grateful for the people that turn up each month and make it so special.
Tour Kicks Off This Month!
I am currently writing this from Cardigan in Wales where I am staying longer than expected because Storm Kathleen meant my ferry to Ireland was delayed. I will however be travelling over later today ahead of my first gig of the tour in Dublin (!) where we’ve had to turn a 70 seater venue into a 200-person standing event and there are currently about 20 tickets left - other ones to flag up are Bristol where we’ve added extra shows (including a matinee) on the 11th and Norwich where the May date has sold out but July is now on sale, as well as Leeds just because it’s Leeds and I love it and want to pack it out if I can. Unrelated to tour I’m also playing at the Royal Albert hall on May 1st!
Some Wonderful News
I sent my book off to the printers last week! And as a thank you to my Auntie Susie for letting me stay in her house last week here is an exclusive cover reveal for you lovely newsletter subscribers. My brother Joel has worked his design magic on it and I will have more info for you next month about where you can get a hold of it.
Some Phenomenal News
Speaking of phenomenal capacity, Grace is currently growing a tiny human inside her. Those of you who have followed me for a while or seen me perform in the last year or two might know that this hasn’t been the most straightforward journey for us, but it’s all starting to feel a bit more real so I wanted to share it with you beautiful people even if I don’t feel ready to put anything on social media yet. The book and show are called wonderful in part because of a new poem which I wrote as hopefully the first of many for the little one, and which I snuck in a version of under the guise of a prayer on the Radio here. The plan is to have tour finished in time for baby to come and then take some time out to work out what being a dad looks like, as well as marvelling at the phenomenal capacity of what was nothing more than a tiny ball of cells just a couple of months ago.
It’s been a bit of a long one this month so thanks for sticking with me, but at least I didn’t have to mention the speed awareness course. My (brief) recommendations are to listen to Lois (who I did a Sofar sounds gig with and loved so much she is doing a support slot at my Leeds gig on May 17th!), to read Grace Pengelly’s very excellent substack, and of course to watch the West Wing.
Stay Brilliant x
Congratulations to both you and Grace - such wonderful news. Can’t wait to see you in St Albans
Congratulations to you both. Your poem at last year’s Greenbelt moved me and has stayed with me since. I am so pleased for you. Wishing you all good health and a safe arrival of the littlest Baker x