An Interview with a Creative Adventurer: Meet Dawn Vincent
Dawn (she/they) is wearing sunshine yellow in the form of a top with a patterned, sausage dog dress, sitting in the living room with light behind them. She looks relaxed and grounded as we speak about her morning prior to our meeting where she had been at a local Farmer’s Market with a friend and their golden retriever.
Dawn and me meeting for the conversation via a video call
About Dawn
I am a poet. I have probably been one since I was about fifteen, but I only started taking it seriously, performing and having more fun with it, from about twenty-five. I think when I was fifteen, it was more a get all your angst out and put it on Deviant Art (if anyone remembers that), and then burn it all down later. I write about mental health, body image, and for the last few months, about a very difficult and prolonged breakup. Hopefully we’re coming to the end of that bit now ‘cos I really want to write about something else.
My friend Lorna Mackinnon and I run a night called Poetry’s a Drag. We have one in the Dragonfly Lounge in Colchester and one in Ginny’s in Maldon. We started talking about running a night maybe probably eighteen months ago and thought, that’s a few years off. But then we heard that Dragonfly was going to start running a poetry night, so we offered to host and they were like, great! So we got it running like that and it’s going really well.
We start with a workshop that’s usually themed, and then have an open mic. The one we’ve just done was ‘cosy poetry’ which was just an excuse to get into some really cosy pyjamas and perform in them. They were matching because apparently we’re just giving old married couple vibes now even though we’re not. We went from wanting to do this but thinking it’s not going to happen for years, to suddenly running two nights within the space of a year.
I’ve written a few books now which I try to remember to plug anywhere I go. There are a couple that kind of work in tandem. One’s called A Jar of Fury, which is available digitally, and then another called NeuroShiny (hard copies and digital are available). They’re about my story of being bullied as a child to an adult and going through a therapy journey, and NeuroShiny was written when I was working out that I have ADHD. Both of them are a bit of a biography, a bit of poetry, and they seem to have helped people, which is really nice. My other books are a very old collection I wrote from some of the Deviant Art days called Softest Sin, which is available digitally (but I might be able to dig a paper copy out from somewhere), and then I wrote a novel called The Happy Accidents of Silva Jones, which is a cute, beachy, rom-com read. I think that’s all, but I’ve been featured in random collections and things as well.
I mention here that Dawn has a very active presence on social media, sharing upcoming work and events, reading poetry on camera and via images they have made (links at end of article).
Clockwise from the left: Dawn performing poetry, Dawn and Lorna at Poetry’s a Drag
Creative roots of things Dawn is drawn to
My mum had to keep four kids busy, so she was always getting paints out and things like that. There’s a really cute picture of me when I was maybe four, and it’s just this little chaotic creature with an easel covered in colourful mess that I look very proud of in the picture. So yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever not been creative? There’s always been something… mum was good at keeping us busy doodling, drawing, writing.
I think the first thing I remember writing was a short story about seals on my dad’s very old… it wasn’t quite a typewriter, wasn’t quite a computer…machine. It’s the first thing I remember writing, finishing and being proud of, and being ADHD, finishing something is half the achievement. The creativity has always been there!
The adorable little Dawn
What it was like to write poetry at age fifteen and put it online
At age fifteen I think it kind of felt like a release more than anything else. Then immediately after posting it online I felt quite proud and noticed that I was getting some attention from random strangers. I don’t think it was about the attention, but more like the shared experience and actually that sense of them saying, “I can relate to this” and that’s when I got my first glimpse of, “maybe I can help people by sharing what I’m feeling” and yeah, that’s kind of been what’s driven me to carry on.
I started thinking about getting on stage and saying things out loud because I thought it would help if I ever get a book deal to be able to perform at events. Maybe six years into doing that, I started actually enjoying it because previously it had just been torture. I’ll still get nervous now, but nine times out of ten, I’ll come away grateful that I did it.
My favourite reaction [from an audience member at a gig] was after I read a really silly poem about running out of toilet roll. Someone gave me a handshake for that and it’s the first reaction I’ve ever had quite like that! The fun is definitely more there than it used to be. Before it was kind of like I just need to get these words out and now it’s that I need to get these words out for who they’re being read to, so it’s more thoughtful now I think.
Dawn’s relationship with colour, playfulness, and dopamine dressing!
In early life I don’t really remember about wearing colour because we were quite poor. There was a lot of hand-me-downs. There is a photo somewhere of a pink and white onesie that looks like a Flump that I’m pretty sure all of my siblings had at one point. I don’t remember the specific garment, but I can recall the happy look on my face. I also remember a red dress which made me feel like a ballerina even though it looks nothing like a ballerina’s dress!
I was a bit of a grungy, emo kid when I got older. Black was the only colour I knew that existed for quite a long time and I think for some of that time it was about hiding my body/just kind of swamping it. I’d love to look at pretty dresses online but would never buy them ‘cos I was like no, not for me, I don’t have the body for it. Then I lost a load of weight and started wearing these pretty dresses, not stopping wearing them after I’d put weight back on. This was partly ‘cos I had a better relationship with my body by then (dieting had led to a breakdown), and also that I had learned a lot about body image and weight issues. Then, after I realised I had ADHD I realised I had been dopamine dressing, and have been growing in confidence ever since.
Having been bullied throughout our childhood and adulthood, dopamine dressing in colour contributed to stopping caring what people think ‘cos no matter what I did, someone was going to tell me it was wrong or I was wrong for something. So I got to adulthood and was like, “Might as well do what I want then.” So yeah, if you see me in all black then I’m either going to a rock concert or be worried. That’s kind of how my friend puts it!
Dawn performing in their colourful clothes
On publishing
Everything I’ve published up to now has been self-published. I did put the novel to a couple of publishers and agents but had no interest. I didn’t really have the patience to push it out to loads and loads of people, so what I love about self-publishing is that you can do it yourself. You can design, you get creative control of your cover, your blurb, everything, which is really fun.
At school, a lot of kids who were diagnosed with ADHD and autism were on a register called a Gifted and Talented register and would have their work put up on a board to celebrate it. I was never on that board because I wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood, and now, at thirty-six years old, I feel like I should have been. With self-publishing, I can recreate that feeling of celebrating my work for myself and be like, “I got my thing on the wall because I put it there!” I don’t need that validation from someone else.
There’s a poetry collection I’ve been working on for a little while that I’m gonna try and get out into the real world via a publisher because I feel like it deserves it and is some of the work I’m proudest of. It’s in a three-stage format of surviving to striving to thriving and I think, if that can be seen by a wider audience, I think it will resonate with people.
Working on poems
Sometimes I’ll go to an open mic, read it out, see how it feels saying it, and if the bits that I want to hit home do, you’ll get a feel for how an audience is responding through picking up on the energy in the room. There was one I read the other night and afterwards I thought, “okay, maybe I’m finished writing about the ex-relationship now” because I just wasn’t getting the same vibe back, and it wasn’t giving me the same catharsis as it was. I think that’s a sign that I’m ready to move on with that bit of my life. So thought-workshopping in an actual open mic or just at home reading it to myself, I learn if the poem’s clunky, and then it will go for line edits.
Poetry in community
I think I found it hard to ask for help and didn’t really realise that I needed community. I initially went to a poetry writing group and they were really helpful in learning useful things, like putting your most impactful word at the end of a line even if that’s not necessarily where you’d read it. Then I moved on from that group and found online communities, before beginning Poetry’s A Drag where I felt, “Yes, I have been looking for this and I just haven’t really realised it”, ‘cos with ADHD you just kind of fall into what you need and don’t really realise it.
Poets Dawn admires
Andrea Gibson was amazing. They passed away I think last year or the year before, but were an incredible poet. For the Brits, Harry Baker is just really brilliant. All of his stuff is really warm and beautiful and just very uplifting and yeah, I don’t know how he does it because I’m way too depressing for that.
Hollie McNish is a really good one to go and see. She’s an odd one in that she knows all her poems off-by-heart, but she reads from a book to look more like a poet (whereas normally it’s the other way around). And I just love that she shakes it up, but I don’t know, she’s just great. But there’s hundreds out there.
Dawn’s chosen object of inspiration for today – A disco ball in a wall alcove
The alcove at Dawn’s cottage, featuring a new disco ball
I am currently buying my ex out of our house after our breakup, and the disco ball is the first thing that I’ve put out in the house that’s just mine. The alcove is part of my living room because it’s a post office cottage and was perhaps previously a teller’s window. It’s got a light in it and is very pretty.
I don’t quite know what that’s going to look like [in the end] but it’s going to be a rainbow disco room. At the moment, the colours in the photo are a little bit muted and I think that’s quite a nice metaphor for, “okay, we’re getting ready, but it’s not there yet”. So other than my poetry creative projects for the year, making this house feel like it’s all mine is the focus, and that’s going to be quite fun! 🌈 🪩
✨ Find Dawn & support their art✨
Poetry's a Drag Instagram page
Other links:
Dawn’s recommended book: How to Be a Poet: A Twenty-first Guide to Writing Well by Jo Bell and Jane Commane
Instagram Accounts linked with ADHD and Body Image:
Taynee Tinsley's art on Instagram
Fat Art History Instagram account
Ashlee Bennett aka Body Image Therapist on Instagram
