Wigan poet Shaun Fallows with his new book Redundant Butties, his third book of poems. A regular at open mic poetry events, Shaun is getting ready to go on tour to venues accessible for wheelchair users, which has been difficult to plan as most venues who host poetry events are small and not easy to access for people with disabilities.
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00:00Right, yeah, my name's Sean Fallows. I'm a poet from Wigan. I've got cerebral palsy, but I've also got three books, and this is my recent one. It's called Redundant Bottas, and I'm going on a little tour with it.
00:18And the reason behind the tour was because I've done poetry for, I'd say, around 20 years, and it's still a fact that with a lot of poetry venues, you can't get in the venues if you've got a wheelchair or you've got any kind of disability.
00:35You're sort of frozen out with it, really. So the idea behind the tour is that I set it up with my friend and we got funding, so eventually I can do a few more gigs outside of Wigan to a few people who can hear my old stuff and new stuff, and I can just be seen in more places.
01:00And after I've done the gigs, I'll blog about the experience, I'll talk about the access, how I got on with public transport and things like that. So yeah, this is my third book, Redundant Bottas, and I like to think in myself that gradually with each book, I feel a lot more relaxed and it's becoming more myself, really.
01:27The chair's becoming less important with it. Not that I'm sort of embarrassed by the chair, but more things matter to me than the disability. It's just a little thing that I have, and all the other stuff like comedy is really important to me, so I think there's a lot more humour in this one.
01:46The best poems that I like writing in myself are the ones that aren't even connected to disability. That's when I feel most free and most freedom. And this is about one of them times, there's a woman in our street, and every time she sees me, she keeps calling me Stephen.
02:03And when she first said it, I couldn't be bothered with all that, the small talk and stuff, so I was a bit miserable that day and I just didn't bother saying anything. And I left it and left it, and for the last 24 years, she keeps saying, hello Stephen, how are you doing? So this is a book that it's called Not Even Stephen.
02:23There's a lady sometimes in our street who calls me Stephen every time we meet, and because I couldn't be bothered to say my name, repeat or explain, well for the last decade and a half, I'm Stephen.
02:34What would Stephen tweet? What does Stephen even eat? Stephen who just nods with a smirking smile, that nice lad with a second identity around his neck, a constant Stephen, a constant Stephen who is in denial.
02:48I'm just a Stephen who can't explain, a Stephen who fears a conversation, so bemused it would all be too much, too much of a drain.
02:56Oh yeah, there's a lady sometimes in our street who calls me Stephen every time we meet, but one day I might forget anyway and just let it all blurt out, like a medieval ruler, sick of the syllables and stuff with goat, when I've got more chance of being an Olympic sprinter, a unicorn riding leprechaun, some other chap called Sean, or a cage fighting even, cos I'm not even, I'm not even, I'm not even Stephen.