Profile: Andy N
Andy N is the author of 6 full length poetry collections, the most recent being 'Haiku of life' and co-runs Chorlton's always welcoming Spoken Word Open Mic 'Speak Easy'.
He does ambient music under the name of Ocean in a Bottle and has a regular column on the Sunday Tribune.
He runs/co-runs Podcast series such as Spoken Label, Reading in Bed, Comics Unity, Koll, Andy and Amanda and Wrestle Up.
Single ticket to Dyspraxia
You broke down during your answer
after a lifetime of not realising what it was
stating ‘if there’s something to fall over
or something to break
or something to burn myself on
or cut myself on I will do it’
I was 28
barely into my first year
at University
and was wondering
how was I going to cope
when things got more difficult.
You said you were not diagnosed until 40
describing your brain
like a filing cabinet
jammed in a drawer sometimes
and you cannot pull out
the file you need.
I was 29
post-scripting my degree
on a single ticket to nowhere
bobbing up for air
every now and then
when you said I had a problem.
You described your brain
when they asked how it impacted you
throughout your childhood as
“a monkey clanging cymbals
whenever I am trying to have a sensible thought
and always niggling in the background”
Dyspraxia you told me at 30
I had Dyspraxia
after tripping up on her front door
severing my past to the present
hidden emotions
just underneath the edge of the page
Dyspraxia I told myself
in the dead of sunset
on the bus heading home
placing myself in the flames of guilt
waking in the moonlight
celestial with emptiness.