In a literary landscape often shaped by intricate structures and lofty interpretations, T.S. Idiot cuts through the noise with raw simplicity and humorous authenticity.

Conceived during lockdown, Back to the Fuchsia finds poetry in the everyday—seagulls, plastic bags, corner shops, astro-turf gardens, and basic pop culture references. Straddling the line between tragedy and comedy, his work invites us to rediscover poetry as an accessible, dynamic form of self-expression.

In this interview with Grace Dewar, he reflects on his journey from punk-inspired lyricist to published poet, exploring his creative process, the role of community, and the evolution of his craft.

G: Firstly, I loved this anthology. Its simplicity, humour and sadness made it such an engaging and enjoyable experience. Your use of everyday objects really resonated with me.

In Back to the Fuchsia,  How do you go about choosing these everyday objects?

T: Thank you. A lot of it comes from the classic advice to ‘write what you know.’ I wrote most of these poems during a time of isolation over lockdown, dealing with mental and physical health struggles, and often being broke.

So, I had only myself and the places I called home: council estates, council blocks, and the streets I walked. Out of necessity, these places become somewhere where you notice the poetry of the everyday. So there’s things like dropping a plastic plate at the tail end of a break up; being in a flat surrounded by dying house plants, or walking to the corner shop.

A few years ago, I was trying to write about bigger picture things and trying to solve the world. But that’s impossible, right? So I look at the narrow and start to unpick that.

G: If you had to choose one everyday object to symbolize your collection, which would it be?

T: I’ve always been associated with a Freddo bar because I ended my live sets by talking about their rising prices. Funnily enough, this question came up in therapy recently. What object represents me? [Tom shows a black bumpy object] I found this on the beach. It’s imperfect, with lumps and bumps picked up along the way, but still strangely beautiful. That feels fairly representative.

G: That’s a fascinating choice. Since you mentioned your other work, you say in your preface that this collection takes a darker turn,

How did you navigate the interplay between the tragic and comic?

T: Humour is quite a natural language to anyone existing on these intersections of queerness, mental health and social barriers. When life looks bleak, gallows humor becomes a good way to cope. If you’re not laughing, you’re crying.

As a performer, I’ve spent a lot of time making people laugh—sometimes at the expense of other emotions. Tragedy, too, can become one-dimensional.

Sometimes the arts and poets in particular can overly reward this idea of a tragic, tortured figure. That’s all well and good but ultimately I want to be happy. I want to share and express the bad experiences, and hope it’s helpful. But I don’t want to be tragic and tortured all the time.

G: That must be a hard line to draw as a creator and performer. But the tittering balancing act is one of the great successes of your work.

Do you have a favorite poem from your collection?

T: I have a few I’m proud of. It’s funny to look back at the ones I wrote early on as I barely recognise them now. Some of the more recent poems, like the one about the dog, reflect a much better place in my life.

It’s simple and sweet. At the time I wrote it, I had found a safe home and a supportive family, and this dog became an important part of that. After writing so much about struggle, it felt good to lean into something simple and joyful.

G:  Yes, you write “a breath of stale air”, a great way to capture a dog’s essence and lean into the simplicity that arises from loving them.

Let’s talk about your influences as a writer. Where do you take inspiration from?

T: When I started writing, I didn’t have poetry or theater references. My cultural reference was music and writing lyrics for bands. Around age 15 or 16, I discovered punk. It was raw, angry, and, at times bleak, but also full of humor. The punk scene really chimed with me. Especially the women and queer people in punk because they were really doing what punk was meant to be – speaking from a point within the marginalised, the not heard, ignored, mocked.

I really like something Patti Smith said: punk is the freedom to create, to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. The idea that whatever barriers you face, you can make something and share it. That really empowered me as a kid from a small town.

G: How did you transform this inspiration into becoming a poet?

T: It took a while. I didn’t get excited about poetry in school. I didn’t understand what a poet was or could be. So, I guess the first way I saw myself as a writer, I was like “Oh, I’ll be a lyricist” and the only person I could find who was a full-time lyricist was Bernie Taupin, who writes for Elton John. I even emailed him, but he never replied.

But then I went to my first poetry night in a dingy room, and something clicked. It felt like ‘Okay, I can do this.’ Even though I’m an artist, I was more concerned with how you get work out there. Poetry felt more direct, more instantaneous than having a studio full of paintings and stuff lying around. How do you share that with the world? There’s loads of steps. But the idea you could just write something, stand up and perform it, was great.

G: So you found poetry, the form that allowed you to communicate the clearest. Is there one particular message or overwhelming feeling in your work that you wish to communicate?

T: When you’re in a position of power, especially when you’re young and have a platform, you think, ‘I want to fix the world.’

When I started, my poetry was about pointing out everything that’s wrong with the world. And that was great—I think you have to go through that stage. But over time, I’ve realised that we already know what’s wrong.

I’ve learned to scale down, to focus on the smaller things, and find meaning in them. More than anything, I just hope that someone, somewhere, can relate to it. You’re not going to reach everyone. You’re not going to solve the world’s problems. But you can share your lived experience, and hopefully, someone will recognise theirs in it. Maybe that’s part of how we cope—by finding solidarity and navigating bigger issues together.

G: That makes sense. You’ve focused on your individual experience, and that’s your way of tackling bigger issues—by offering solidarity and community.

This overlaps with your job as a youth worker, a role that centers around community, support, and solidarity.

How do your two spheres of work influence each other?

T: There’s definitely an overlap and hopefully more and more so. I’m massively proud of that work and it teaches me so much as an artist, learning a multitude of experiences and the ways that people connect, communicate and form communities.

It’s a cliché but it’s really inspiring as an artist to be around that and it definitely keeps me on my toes creatively.

​​I’ve experimented with writing about other people’s stories or collaborating with them to tell their stories. But it is a tricky line to navigate. There is a lot of responsibility involved. Is it my place to tell these stories? How much should those individuals be involved?

I’m always thinking about how these two worlds interconnect. But more than anything, my focus is on empowering others to share their own stories, because that is where the most important work happens.

G: For me, Back to the Fuchsia built towards hope. Was that something you planned?

T: It’s nice to hear that.  Writing the collection mirrored three or four years of my life. It was the first time I thought about how poems can connect and work towards a narrative.

I went through a lot of challenges—false starts, setbacks, reworking both my life and the poems. Eventually, I was able to dust myself off, reflect on those experiences, and take stock of where I am now compared to when I first started writing the poems in this collection.

G: There are nice moments, like Icarus in ripped jeans. I found a lot of hope in your images, a warmth that conveyed authenticity

You chose a stage name, T.S. Idiot, how did that name come to be and how does it influence your work?

T: It was an old friend who made a joke in the pub about 12 years ago. It never occurred to me to use my real name because the people who inspired me were punk poets and singers fronting bands.

As I started to do more gigs, it became this dichotomy. Where I was a fairly mild mannered, quite anxious nerdy guy. T.S Idiot was this loud-mouthed, energetic pantomime character, expressing all this anger and inner confidence that, at the time, I wasn’t able to.

It’s been a blessing and a curse because not a lot of poets have stage names, especially not ones so openly stupid.

It feels like hard work to show people there is a real earnestness there, a lot of vulnerability and real genuine note to what I do. But it’s allowed a lot of space to play.

G: Do you think the stage name allows you to step into different roles more easily?

T: I think so. At this point, I’m starting to see the limitations. Especially with this collection, the name T.S. Idiot feels like it might be a jarring contrast.

G:  You’ve got to hope in creative industries that any difference is a drawing point.

T.S. Eliot and the modernists explore the self through fragments and pull together a range of references to make sense of the world post war. But a regular criticism of the modernists is that they viewed highbrow culture as superior and made their work deliberately opaque.

This collection does the exact same searching for the self through fragments, in the reflection of everyday objects. For them they were making sense of the war and for you, the pandemic, which felt apocalyptic in a very slow and boring way. Instead of being opaque and highbrow, you’ve done the opposite. You’ve got plastic plates, plastic bags, broken showers, dogs and cats. I think the name is fantastic.

T: I appreciate that! I didn’t choose the name with that intention, but I do love T.S. Eliot now. His work is opaque but he also wrote Cats!

G: This is your first collection of printed poems. You’ve moved from theater performer and slam poet to having your work printed.

Do you think there’s a sacrifice when taking your words off the stage and onto the page?

T: I’m still getting used to it. I was really comfortable performing, maybe too comfortable. I knew what people wanted to hear, and I masked my insecurities through performance. Transitioning to the page was a big jump—and a rewarding one

For a long time, my instinct was to say as many words as quickly and loudly as possible on stage, but now I’m learning to be more deliberate with fewer words. A mentor, Rosie Garland, introduced me to the term ‘economy of phrase’ and that’s been very helpful.

Letting go of control has been surprisingly rewarding. It’s a strange shift, but I’ve enjoyed it.

G: This collection has been a change in step for your writing career. How was your publishing journey with Arkbound? How did you discover them?

T: There was a lot of knocking on doors when I knew I wanted to publish a collection. I’d self-published zines and had work in anthologies but I didn’t know where to start.

My approach was fairly punk – I wanted to learn the basics and try to DIY in a haphazard way. I started to write my own collections and got a lot of rejections the first couple of years. I started to feel despondent, I wished there was a publisher that would see my passion and recognise how hard I was willing to work.

Then I found Arkbound. I loved their mission of supporting people who struggle to get their work out. I was drawn to their DIY approach and honesty with writers.

The art world can be really nepotistic and isolating if you don’t have those connections. Arkbound cut straight through that. Their integrity made a huge difference when I was almost ready to give up.

G: Finally, if your poems had a soundtrack or album, what would be on it?

T: Music has had a huge impact on my writing. Some of my favourite poems come from trying to capture the feeling of a song and bottle that in words. One of the references in my collection is Hit Me Baby One More Time—that’s a very simple, very trashy song, but the line ‘my loneliness is killing me’ is heartbreaking poetry – better than I could ever write myself and I love that.

There’s also a poem about a plastic bag where I reference Katy Perry. It’s not ‘highbrow’ poetry, but the image of the plastic bag floating around is crushingly beautiful. I’ve tried to capture those moments in my work, but sometimes the song does it better. It’s a way of writing I’ll continue to use.

G: The Katy Perry reference is great. It highlights how those pop culture moments, often overlooked, can carry a deeper meaning. It’s interesting to recontextualize them. In a way, your poetry works in a similar manner. It’s sadness dressed up and humoured. It’s simplicity speaking to greater moments and you’ve found a way to speak to so many through the small moments rather than let meaning be lost in the bigger ones. It’s the way you dust yourself off from the broken plate, the day that leads to nowhere, self-reflection in the tepid dripping shower and the love and hope you can find in the parts of life we may take for granted.

Thank you so much for your time today.

If you’re interested in Tom’s work, you can buy his work Back to the Fuschia here via Arkbound. For further information and interview with Tom – check out his website.

Arkbound is a charity publisher, which means 100% of profits (excluding author royalties, of course) go back to the charity to support underrepresented writers. While we aim to make our books widely accessible, we encourage readers to purchase from one of the wonderful local bookshops that stock our books on their shelves or directly from the Arkbound website, to ensure the majority of profits go back to the authors and the charity.