My name is Peter Roe, I am a performance poet and publisher. I love words and I accumulate them as I make my way through this life. If you share this journey with me I will share words: poems, stories, photographs, films… Both mine and others, along the way you may become inspired to ‘Tell Me Your Story…’
Tell Me a Story
Come
Sit by my side
hold my hand
Tell me a wonderful story
Tell me a story that makes perfect sense
Tell me a story that lives in your heart
I need a story about freedom
I need truth and love
I need a tale that never ends
Tell me your story
Give me insights
Give me inspiration
Give me wild and irresponsible
Give me calm and collected
Give me loving and caring
Give me hope
Tell me your story
I promise I will listen
as you weave your words
Tell me your story
Show me a magical realmShow me how to sing and dance
Show me the path not yet taken
Take my hand
Tell me your story
and when the tale is done
in the moment before the ending
Let’s spring together
into this story you have told
into this world you have spun
where we can live forever
Peter Roe - September 2023
Before becoming a poet, I worked in university and secondary education as an educational technologist. In 2007, I was at a music festival with a group of students gaining ‘real-world’ experience of filming and editing bands when I had a life changing accident. I shattered my knee revealing an underlying health condition.
I spent three years trying to return to work whilst fighting a cascade autoimmune condition. I was told I would never work again. I lost my job, my home and my identity. I had gone from what I considered the best job I had ever had to the depths of anxiety and depression.
We moved in with my in-laws and I spent three years feeling sorry for myself before my Mother in Law suggested I joined a local writers group… and I started to write myself better…
Writing helped me to find a way to escape from the jaws of the black dog and regain my sense of self through personal expression. If there is a silver lining to my accident, It was the opportunity to go inside myself, and actually experience aspects of my life that I hadn’t really had chance to feel because I was so busy throwing myself into a ‘career’.
The opportunity to express my lived experiences through regular creative sessions in a safe environment allowed me to regain a sense of self, engage in creative pursuits that helped me connect with a vibrant expressive community and find a new identity .
The personal achievement that I gained through self-expression through writing and poetry was instrumental in my personal growth…
This experience helped me rebuild confidence and an identity as a creative human… It showed me a way back from a bad place and helped me engage in a community where my words and creativity were valued.
I won £100 in a poetry competition. I should say that sort of thing is pretty unusual and is by no means a standard on which you could base a new career.
But it led me down an interesting path… where creative expression allows you to approach problems from a different angle and overcome them… I looked at everything with new eyes… I made new friends and even partnered with another poet and took a show called ‘Jawbone’ around fringe festivals… This then is the origin story of both Peter Roe, poet and The Jawbone Collective.
Someone asked me “How long have you been writing?” I replied, “Since I was about four…” So writing, yes… The poetry? I was playing with the limerick form when I was eight or nine because I loved Edward Lear’s Nonsense Poems and I have since used it as an approachable form for workshops of primary age kids. I wrote my first haiku at secondary school and the subject was the electricity pylons marching across the countryside. I realised that there were rules to poetry and this suited a young boy trying to find a niche to fit into.
As an adult I was finally diagnosed with Autism and ADHD and it was if I had been playing football without knowing the rules. Things were suddenly clear, and I knew where the goalposts were! Some of these things have informed my choice of subjects but I have always had a passion for poems and technology and hopefully I managed to light some fires of my own along the way
As the millennium turned over, I shared a chapbook of my poems with my father and he said I reminded him of Ogden Nash. “Who’s Ogden Nash?” I said. Later I went off to the bookstore and found a suitable volume and this interchange with my father was the trigger that started a real War of Words. An exchange of poetastery where rapid fire poems were exchanged through email that dragged many of my siblings into a Poetry War! As the words flew it created a schism within the family. 'The War of The Words' that followed was a breeding ground for some of my early performance pieces and my first prize winning poem ‘The War of The Words’.