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.
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