Tag Archive for: Creativity

Golden Brown

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Last year I remember clearly the moment that my artistic journey hit a new stage. 

I wrote the poem 7 Bar Loop. I wrote this while attending a multi week workshop with Rachel Long. 

Rachel Long is an incredible poet and arguably the best poetry teacher I’ve ever had the privilege of studying under. She simply got me to think about poetry, creativity and my own writing differently. 

She single handedly got me to expand my creative, artistic and expressive vocabulary.

During the class she repeatedly came back to Terrence Hayes, an American poet who wrote a new book packed with Sonnets. His Sonnets do not adhere to the same structure as Shakespeares. There are NO rhymes.

But they adhere to one simple rule.

They’re 14 lines.

The other week I attended a poetry workshop run by Hannah Gordon of Word Down. I was asked to write a Terrence Hayes style sonnet. 14 lines, no rhyming. 

Here’s a link to the Terrence Hayes sonnet that inspired my poem….it’s from his collection “American Sonnet for My Past”.

Seven of the Ten Things

I’ll be doing more sonnets……however, this is my first:

Sonnet #一 (Golden Brown)

Golden brown. The Stranglers.
Omar. Married to tomato and
onion stew. Leisurely chopping
of onions releases a baptism
of grief. Wash my eyes and
wash my face. Baptism followed by
baptism. Apt. I forgot to bathe.
Dopamine dips do that daily.
The key is to accept, but not
succumb. Keep working quietly.
Onions learn to share space
with softening tomatoes. Alchemy
creates aromas. I create 
joy disguised as food.

Staying Fluid

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I’ve been quiet on here for a while. I lost someone close to me to Covid19 and I’m still struggling to come to terms with my loss and the loss to my community.

I’m working my way through my grief at my own (crawling) pace. Creativity is my refuge. It always has been a way to process loss, pain, and trauma. Right now my creative urges are moving towards bite size thoughts and musings. This is a departure from how this blog got started. I loved writing those long sweeping narratives and I know I’m not done writing them. But right now microblog posts are what emerges on the page when I sit down to write.

I’ve held off for a while, fighting my current direction, thinking that if I could only concentrate harder (it’s fucking hard man, I have ADHD) I’ll write a longer narrative piece. But then I went through my first 13 posts and saw that I’ve broken form, posted poems with little explanation, posted poems with backstories longer than the poem!

My current urge to write shorter pieces will likely get me penalised by Google, but it’s another evolutionary step in this blog that I find so much joy in writing and sharing with you.

My blog doesn’t have to be just one thing, it’s a document of my creative journey.

My takeaway from this? As an artist, you turn up to do the work and if the muse appears, don’t question what form She takes. Stay fluid.


The Key to My Creative Process

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I’m having a fascinating journey as a writer right now. 

The past several weeks have been interesting. Some days I’ve lacked inspiration and other days I’ve been furiously jotting down ideas that I want to come back to. 

Recently, I was reading a book called “Feck Perfuction” by James Victore and an idea popped into my head. I jotted it down dutifully, as I had 15 other ideas the past couple of weeks. I was tempted to file it away, just like the others. I promised myself I’d return to it when I’m in a better position.

Fortunately, I’ve read “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. I now recognise “resistance” when I see it.

The reality is, as artists and creatives, inspiration simply isn’t enough. It MAY be the beginning of a process, but it’s not the entire process. 

I decided to expand upon the concept of “Artist’s Sign Their Work”, an idea I stumbled upon when reading “Feck Perfuction”. I had no planned direction when I began writing this piece. I just had one starting point:

“I’m going to change my signature. Going forward I will sign all of my creative work with this new signature”

That’s it. I knew there was something there, but I had to work at it. I wrote a couple of paragraphs and then I scrapped them.

I began writing again, from scratch.

It’s not fun writing and disliking what you’ve committed to the page or screen, but you have you to get past this minor speed bump and often this requires pushing through it. This is the rent you pay to create great work.

Once I get past the initial “resistance” I’ll begin writing and often I end up liking what’s taking shape on the page or screen. Which is progress, but I always give my writing some space. I’ll go off and I’ll read a book or I’ll listen to some music on a walk. I need to develop some objectivity. Later I’ll return to my writing, then as I re-read it, I’ll realise it doesn’t work, not yet. 

I love rap and poetry, and it influences the way I write and assess my work. I like my writing to have a rhythm to it. I want everything I write to roll off the tongue when I read it.

Quite often that rhythm is about re-arranging paragraphs so that a piece flows well. Other times it’s about editing sentences. To write really well though, you need to do both. 

I also love film, so I’m always aiming to create a narrative arc. I want my writing to feel like a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. I’m a sucker for a good start and a good ending. I want to grab your attention, take you on a ride and then close strong. 

But the process is messy, it’s doesn’t follow a straight line. 

I can alternate without any justified reason between cleaning up sentences where I: 

  • Rid my work of redundant words
  • Change the punctuation
  • Shorten sentences
  • Lengthen sentences

Yes, you read the last one correctly. Sometimes lengthening a sentence can make it and the paragraph it sits in jump to life. 

So, going back to what I was saying before, I will repeatedly alternate between cleaning up sentences and rearranging the order of paragraphs.

It just makes sense in my head and I LOVE the process of doing this. 

Creativity is play, it is tinkering.

However, none of that can happen IF you don’t begin. If you don’t begin to rest your hand on a piece of paper or your keyboard.

It’s by starting, however imperfect, that I was able to write my last blog “My Name Is Haroon and I’m An Artist”.

I started writing this current article the day after I wrote the above article (2 weeks ago), but I kept stopping. It could have died a death like so many other ideas I’ve had, but it’s never too late to start again, to resuscitate an idea, to return to a dream. 

I may stop, but it’s temporary. I promise I’ll never stop starting and seeing through ideas and sharing them with you.

I hope you start something new and see it through, I hope you share it with me and with everyone else.

I can’t wait. 

Potsa Luv xx

My Name Is Haroon and I’m An Artist

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Far too much of my adult life has been shaped by what others wanted for me.

My parents wanted me to have an arranged marriage to a (British) Pakistani girl. I did that. It ended in divorce. Badly. 


My parents wanted me to get proper qualifications and do “respectable work”. So I got an undergraduate business degree, then an MBA from London Business School. This was followed by a decade of working in startups. But something didn’t feel right, I never thrived in any of the jobs I did. 


It led to low self-esteem and a lack of direction and purpose. 
There is definitely a dissertation waiting to be written about the pressures South Asian parents heap upon their children to conform. It has a detrimental effect on their mental health. I attribute a lot of my own issues with mental illness down to this pressure to conform. I’ve made it my life’s work NOT to repeat this cycle with my own daughter and I think I’m doing alright at this parenting lark….so far!


However, I’m not here to blame others. I mean, there is blame to apportion to my parents, but still, at this stage, my gaze is fixed firmly in front of me. 


I played my own role in the above incidents and many more I do not wish to catalog at this point. Poor mental health, low self-esteem, these and many other factors played a role. But, I made choices. 

Choices are powerful. They create vectors that can take you off on adventures. Or can take you down paths that are jarring and unfulfilling, creating a sense of existential angst that will cripple you. 

My choices have largely taken me down the latter path. But there’s always time to change. To make new decisions. 

What I love about the new path I’m taking in life is that I make decisions that favour:

  • Inspiration
  • Creativity
  • Joy
  • Self Awareness

I’m currently reading James Victore’s book “Feck Perfuction”, a book full of wisdom and inspiration. It’s essential reading for creatives, artists and anyone wanting to live a more fulfilled life. 

While reading the book, I was struck by a section he has titled “Artists Sign Their Work”.

For my entire life, I’ve signed my name using the exact same style as my father, simply substituting the first letter of my first name with the first letter of his first name.

It seems like such a simple decision, but I feel this choice had massive implications. I chose to let my father influence me with his signature. What started as a small snowball turned into an avalanche as I made decision after decision to please him and win his approval.

As I read this mini-chapter, I asked myself the question:
“As an artist, how do I want to sign my work?”

Here’s the answer:


This is my name “Haroon” in Urdu, the language spoken by Muslims in the sub-continent, where my ancestors came from. 
I have chosen my own signature. 

I have chosen my own path.

I have chosen to be an artist. 

What will you choose?