A housing crisis shelved his debut collection for a year. Then a call from the Southbank Centre changed everything. Rob Mason writes for BSC on self-publishing, losing faith in his work and finally admitting he’s a poet.
I’ve finally admitted to myself this year (2026) that I’m a poet. It wasn’t something I’d considered back when I wrote the first poem for myself in 2021, but the flood gates had been opened and a new channel for my energy was rapidly developing. Add to this collaborating with local poet Nathan Parker and taking the poetry I’d written to stage with our spoken word nights, By The Metre and we were truly cooking with gas. So much so, that in two years I wrote an entire collection.
With the collection ready to go, concept, first draft, title, all that was left to do was… get evicted. The greed of the housing market had engulfed me. Some poets write their way through adversity, I suppose. I am not that poet. My poetry explores the smaller niggles in life, and things out of your control whilst living a peaceful existence. I need to be happy, and so, poetry went into storage along with the rest of my life.
Emerging from our chrysalis after six months, it was probably a further six months until the PC was reinstated, by which time, I’d lost faith in the work which was now rapidly approaching two years old. Why would anyone want to read about politics from two years ago? I guess I should get a better understanding of what poetry is, huh?
I was invited to apply for an opportunity with the Southbank Centre, by Mel Whitehead from The Old Electric invited to apply for an opportunity with the Southbank Centre at exactly the right moment. Mel’s continued encouragement and support is never received without great heed, and so I submitted my application.
To be completely honest, I’d forgotten all about the application. I’d been busy studying the Taoist concept of Wu Wei (effortless action), so when an email arrived congratulating me on making the cut I was fairly chuffed, but not as chuffed as my mum.
It took a week to settle in, then I realised the magnitude and potential of this offering. The Southbank Centre is the largest arts institution in the UK, and I’m on a two-year programme to support my journey as a poet. And I’m not even a bloody poet (in my own head).
I guess the joy of this news brought my mood back around to writing, because since then I’ve been quite prolific again. It also spurred me to open The 5 Ps of Poetry, the manuscript I’d put away, and take another look. Having read two or three poems, I realised that not much poetry can be published in the moment, and this was my record of a time I lived through. Poetry is the historical dipstick by which we measure the viscosity of the worlds oil, at any point in history.
The plan had always been to self-publish and so I decided this would still be the route, because if I’m off to London, I need to be selling something to make some money. It’s the Blackpool in me. We don’t just do the fleecing at home!
And so, after a little work tidying the manuscript up and endlessly going backwards and forwards with the page numbers and content order, the book was ready. I’d managed to get the cover looking how I wanted it to (sorry artists, AI prompts and photoshop kept it inhouse because I’m too poor for commissions). I swallowed down all my self-worth, mixed it in with my morality to create a thick paste and headed to Amazon to smear my work all over Jeff Bezos’s website.
Publishing on Kindle Direct Publishing is actually a fairly simple process, once you know the process and have the templates (cheers, Nath). So for just £4.50 I had a proof copy of the book in my hand. All that was left to do was check for any last-minute alterations, amend and hit publish.
The 5 Ps of Poetry was born.
Having self-published, this is entirely my own work – from the poems to the editorial choices, to the proof reading and editing down, a fair few hours slogging away I present to you, my heart and soul on the page. The book has nearly 100 poems and is a fairly substantial first collection. It comes with a promise to be a first in a series, and with the support of the Southbank Centre over the next two years, until 2027 I will be nothing more than a poet, along with the tribulations that accompany this walk of life, such as being broke and generally drunk.
Since publishing, I’ve realised that the book exists for as long as copies remain being published, and as long as the copies survive. That’s a great feeling, and the messages of support, reviews and hearing how much people have enjoyed reading it, brings me endless joy.
And so, dear reader. Thankyou for lending me your ear, this is Rob Mason Poet entering stage left.
Rob Mason’s debut collection, The 5 Ps of Poetry, is out now on Amazon. Find it here.
