We Launched The Book! Part 1: Emily Writes’ Speech
Emily Writes gave me permission to share her speech from the launch of “The Richard Poems”. I hope you like it. A chance for those that weren’t there, and worth reading again for those that were!
We launched the book on Saturday. And it was a great event, lots of people, some sales, some signings, some drinks and nibbles, chats, and reconnections. All of those things. A reading, some speeches, a guest performance.
To launch the book, I asked my dear friend
to say a few words, and raise a glass, to smash the metaphorical bottle against the side of the ship. I’ve known Emily for years. When I started sharing some of the Richard poems online she told me that she’d like to do a panel chat with me one day about toxic masculinity. I knew she would be the right person to launch the book. She had worked out straight away that this was more than just a bunch of personal-memoir poems. Anyway, with her permission I now share the speech in full. Partly so those that weren’t there but wanted to be can read, and also because many people there remarked on how good it was — and how they’d love to be able to read a copy. I believe this speech to be not only a kind and compassionate read of the book, and celebration of our friendship, but its own resource. And, yeah, I realise there’s some nice things said about me in there. Which of course I’m grateful for — and hoping you’ll indulge me the reprinting of those as well, to not interrupt the flow of the analysis and commentary included also.
I’ll hand you over to the words of
:It’s such an honour to be here in celebration of my dear friend Simon and his collection The Richard Poems.
The Richard Poems is a story about friendship or rather friendship imploding — which is somewhat ironic because many of you here will know very well what a good friend Simon is. I am lucky enough to have been friends with Simon for well over a decade, probably almost two decades.
At one point we were both at home parents, trying to figure out how to raise kids. Specifically raising boys. Raising boys often side by side has meant we have spent many years picking at the sore that is toxic masculinity, wondering how we can ensure the young men we raise aren’t dicks.
Maybe it’s because Simon is a good friend, and is a man very capable of interrogating what it means to be a man — I think he is in a very good position to press at the bruise of misogyny and the way that the patriarchy harms men, and try to respond to that pain.
The Richard Poems feels like an interrogation of ourselves. It’s asks us all how we can figure out how to spare our children from the booze-soaked fear that our generation, and our parents generation survived. It’s also about forgiving ourselves for not being spared and maybe forgiving those who knew no better, but wanted so much for something better.
Simon is a fan of horror as many of you know — big rec for Oscar’s podcast which Simon co-hosts We All Float Down Here - And The Richard Poems I think is a modern day horror. But also a timeless one.
The horror of blame and guilt and the way we try to let people into our lives knowing we shouldn’t. The horror of a leg bone snapping. The horror of an abattoir. The horror of a punch. The horror of public humiliation. The horror of Havelock North.
There’s a profoundly sinking feeling that’s perfectly captured in The Richard Poems — that feeling when you know you wanted to, in the words of Roger Waters, “go to the show, to feel the warm thrill of confusion”, yet now you’re in a situation you can’t control. Someone else is and they’re asking you: Is this not what you expected to see?
The Richard Poems illustrates so powerfully the little horrors of our lives. It is vulnerable and intimate and it’s a cautionary tale while also being a tale of something we just can’t avoid if we’re living authentic lives.
The only way to survive the horrors of this world is to be part of a community: Friends, chosen family, flatmates — within that community, what do you do with those who reject community? What do we owe them, what family ties bind them and us if their own families have let them down?
What role does community and friendship play in reducing patriarchal harms and misogynistic attitudes?
Simon has encouraged us to ask painful questions. What is left when you have nothing to talk about? Where do our friends go? And why do they go?
What is left unsaid when you leave behind all of that unsettling rage that so many men feel entitled to fill our lives with?
Ultimately I think we’re asked to reflect on growing old and growing up. Of facing our demons — our “Richards”. To hope we’re not someone else’s “Richard”.
And because we all have a Richard, some of us have to be the Richards — what can we do if we see a little too much of ourselves in our enemies and rivals? What do we owe betrayers and foes? None of these questions are easily answered. So it helps that The Richard Poems is also a darkly hilarious collection. Brilliant blackest of the black comedy. I would expect nothing less from Simon.
So please raise a glass to our friend and his ‘difficult second album’ that’s really a third album but whatever. Cheers to you, your family, your friends and community and cheers to this bleakly vulnerable and intimate collection that we need right now. It’s full of heart, just like you.
I’m so grateful to for friendship, for this incredible speech, and for her giving permission to share her words here.
