How many 21-year-olds do you know that spend their spare time writing poetry? The answer is probably not enough! This month we sat down with one, Jacob Davies, who has just published his third collection of poetry.
Read on to learn more about his process, and why Jacob thinks more young people like him should be giving poetry a go.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself Jacob?
I’m Jacob, I’m from West Yorkshire and I’ve written poetry for about as long as I’ve been able to write really. But I never showed anyone anything I’d written until I was about 17 when I entered a competition and won!
From there, I put together a collection and published my first book in December 2020 which is about four years ago, but feels like about 40-years-ago! Now I’m here with collection number three. And I’m really proud of it. It’s certainly the best I can do.
That new collection is called “The Dream Must Die”, but what does that mean?
It’s not an upbeat title, I appreciate that! The dream is ambition, it’s love, it’s a universal statement, I think. People will look at the title and think of it as something quite negative, but I see a positivity and hope in it.
So, the dream must die, but then let’s live in the glory of the aftermath of it, and drop all the pretence, the nonsense, to become our true selves. It’s gritty, it’s real, it’s not a comedy but there’s a sense throughout all the poems that you [sometimes] have to lose something to gain something much bigger.
Poetry, isn’t a super fashionable artform for young people these days, so why did you choose writing poems, rather than music or something else, as the method to tell your story?
There’s a couple of reasons really. One is that I absolutely love poetry, I’m an avid reader of poetry — I read everything. Secondly, I’m a massive fan of music, I love the lyrics of music, but I don’t really have the musical talent.
Unlike music, poetry just comes really naturally to me, it’s my process.
Would you encourage more young people to give writing poetry a go?
100%. I feel like that feeling you get when you capture an emotion, or you capture an idea [through poetry]— it’s keeping me sane. I would encourage anyone to pick up a pen and give it ago, because words can save lives, and they can help you find out things about yourself that you didn’t know.
If your poetry could leave one impact on readers, what would you like it to be?
That there is extreme beauty to be found in the grittiness of living in the modern world. Whilst there is a lot of negativity in the work, there is also so much hope.
If your poetry could be summed up by any animal, what would it be?
There’s just so many! Something that’s probably not the best looking but is quite well intentioned.
‘The Dream Must Die’ is available to buy from amazon or directly from Jacob’s publisher Troubador here.
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