We were lucky to catch up with Ash Raymond James recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Ash Raymond , thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
Despite having a degree in creative writing, I don’t credit a lot of what I have learned towards it. Almost everything I have learnt about writing has come from workshops or classes run by poets outside of a strictly educational space. Button Poetry has always been a fantastic place to learn, and now they provide workshops and courses that I recommend to anybody wanting to hone their craft. It was also a lot of self-teaching. It is reading poetry books, watching videos, going to slams and throwing yourself into the scene. Now I coach poetry and run a writers club; one of the most important things I teach is stress lines. Stress lines are these tiny pieces of dialogue that circulate in our heads and become obstacles. It’s the ‘I will never be as good as this person’ or ‘what I am writing is terrible’ when we shouldn’t compare or judge ourselves harshly, especially when the words have started coming out. Having an idea or a concept on the page and learning to allow your writing to exist are skills we must learn. These were obstacles for me, and going through that allowed me to provide an accurate perspective. I also spent too much time in serious places, which put me off. Poetry is fun, and it shouldn’t always take itself seriously. When you start writing, you aren’t going to be great, but learning is doing, it is absorbing outside of social media, it is going to the cafes and the art spaces, and it is reading beyond your comfort zone. You must read to write and take in as much of whatever world you are trying to be a part of.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
To begin, my name is Ash Raymond James. I am a global slam champion and a regional Auckland finalist in 2023 and 2024. I have now retired from slam and focus more on teaching and running Woofenberry Writers Club in person and online. I am also the founder of a New Zealand-based poetry space called ‘Yellow Lamp Poetry’. I am writing a lot lately about autism as I am diagnosed with autism and ADHD, and I feel there is still a great deal of awareness that needs to reach certain places. I also run a graphic design company called ‘Savvy Bear Studios’ which focuses primarily on book design and general promotion. I love to take people’s work and make it bigger. A good manuscript will shine on its own, but it will explode if you put good design behind it. Creating something visually special means people are drawn in before reading the words. Bad design can push people away from a good manuscript, so the cover and the pages must be done in a way that reflects the quality of the writing. The branding behind the book should also be inventive and connect with the themes. I love doing this alongside poetry, and they strangely go hand in hand. If I am not doing this, I am coaching people to win slams or enter their work for publication consideration. I love poetry to the core, and getting it widespread and highlighting the different sides that are too often ignored has been my mission from day one, and it will be forever.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I get to push the boundaries. We are in a place where so much has already been done, and trends catch on quicker than ever, but as creatives, we get to try new things, and I am pretty uncomfortable being somebody who repeats one thing repeatedly. I embed a personality into my books, and then that personality is gone. In the pipe, I have an interesting book called ‘Fourteen Thousand Ducks’ which pushes format, and ‘Cowboy Sextape’ which pushes my writing in such an unusual direction. I like being outside the box; what I do keeps me here. Nothing excites me more than an idea that feels impossible and getting to wrangle it into possible. There is a degree of fleeing from challenges sometimes, but I am a runner towards the flames.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I find the most rewarding in working with writers and helping them improve their skills. Workshops are so fun because you get a room full of writers at multiple levels who produce such a variety of work. I started a writers club to encourage other creatives to join—songwriters, novelists, etc. It also isn’t designed as something that will consistently educate you, but rather something that will encourage discussion and thought that, in turn, will help propel people forward. I want a community. I want to do Zoom quiz nights and get people all over the globe together to watch a movie. Mental health is real, and through writing, mental health is eased. We can help alleviate loneliness by being together, and I hope the club creates this eventually. Being in a position to build community and host these welcoming spaces is an endless joy. The in-person spaces give me the same feeling, and one day I will finish my solo show, and it will celebrate all of this. I have titled it ‘An Excuse To Leave The House’ because sometimes that is all we need. House being literal and metaphorical for the houses we build in our heads and insist on barricading ourselves within.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.woofenberrywritersclub.com
- Instagram: ashraymondjames
- Twitter: ashraymondjames
- Soundcloud: ashraymondjames
- Other: Tiktok: arjpoetry
Image Credits
Savvy Bear Studios