By Robert "Bob" Bussey
This is a story about a British poet is which is being presented in two installments, the second will publish in August. (darn editor!). But, really, there was a lot to say. This young, emerging poet, uses small events and everyday objects to portray larger issues. Similar to the way Robert Frost used a walk or a snowy evening to discuss much larger issues. Similar to the way Willam Carlos Williams used everyday objects to diacuss much deeper human issues. I hope you will read his work closely.
Time to stretch our legs or find our sea legs as the case may be. Time to think outside the CENLA box. My next poet is Sean Docherty. I asked him if he had a middle name. He responded with, “Publicly, I’m happy to be referred to as Sean Docherty.” So, we will do just that. Sean hails from England, in Frome, Somerset. If you are wondering about that location, it is an historic market town in Somerset, England, known for its creative culture, independent shops, and deep historical roots. It sits on the River Frome at the eastern edge of the Mendip Hills. And if you are wondering where that is, well Frome is about 112 miles (180 km) west-southwest of London. It sits directly on the River Frome, which flows through the center of town and shaped its early development. Frome lies at the eastern edge of the Mendip Hills; a limestone ridge designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Frome is in Somerset, in the Southwest of England, roughly between Bath and Salisbury. (I’ve added one or two photos of the area in case you ever visit.) Enough about his location. (Oh, and I forgot to ask him if he is related to William Shakespeare, John Keats, William Wordsworth or Percy B. Shelley. So, maybe all of them or none of them or some of them. Not sure it really matters.)
I first met Sean on Reddit a social platform where poets post their poetry on multiple pages. They don’t try to sell their poetry like you see on Facebook, or X, or Threads without ever giving the reader a chance to read before they buy. Reddit is a place where you can find other poets that will read your work, critique your work and then post their own. No money changes hands, no money is requested. Totally different than the other social platforms where poets are always trying to make a buck all the time.
I’m going to tackle this article a bit differently. Normally, I have the luxury of having each poet come to my office to be interviewed face-to-face. Not this time. So, I sent Sean a list, a long, long, long list of questions. I’m not going to share all of them or all of his responses. But here is what I thought was most important (my opinion).
What do you want in the article?
I’d like the article to show the emotional heart of the poems: that they’re about ordinary people trying to stay tender in a world that can be ridiculous, brutal, funny, lonely and beautiful all at once. I’d like readers to get a sense of the humor, grief, domestic detail and strange little flashes of wonder that keep showing up in my work. I’m not trying to sound grand or unreachable. I’d rather the poems feel like someone has opened a window in a messy kitchen and let the universe wander in wearing damp shoes.
How would you describe your writing style?
Mostly free verse, with a bit of prose-poem energy. I like poems that sound spoken but still have rhythm and shape underneath. I use a lot of metaphors, humor, sudden tenderness, and ordinary objects — kettles, washing machines, council tax letters, chips, mugs, laundry — because I like the idea that the sacred doesn’t always arrive in robes. Sometimes it turns up in a Hotpoint.
When did you start writing poetry? Why?
I started writing poetry because prose sometimes feels too well-behaved for certain feelings. Poetry lets you say the thing sideways. It lets grief make a joke, lets love trip over the furniture, lets a kettle become a religious object for three seconds. I’ve written in different ways for a long time, but I think my current voice really started forming when I stopped trying to sound “poetic” and started letting the poems speak more like me: messy, emotional, funny, occasionally too dramatic, but honest.
Did your poetry evolve? How?
Yes, definitely. Earlier on I think I was more concerned with sounding impressive. Now I’m more interested in sounding alive. The poems have become more conversational, more human, and more willing to put the beautiful next to the stupid. I like that contrast. A poem can talk about death and then mention bad pasta or a council tax letter. That feels closer to real life to me.
Is there something about you that most people don’t know that you would like them to know?
I think I’m quite sensitive to the way people’s pain gets treated at the moment. The world feels like it has fixated on seeing pain, capturing it, packaging it, and turning it into content. I’m interested in the opposite of that, really. Not exploiting pain, but sitting with it honestly. Not making suffering look pretty for attention, but asking what tenderness is still possible inside it.
Tell me something about you that few people know.
I think a lot of people might assume the humour (note the English spelling) in my poems means I’m not being serious, but usually it’s the opposite. The joke is often where the bruise is. I use humour to get close to things that might otherwise feel too raw to touch directly.
Tell me something about you that you would like everyone to know.
I’d like people to know that I’m trying to write honestly about ordinary life without making it smaller than it is. I think the everyday is full of strange, holy, ridiculous things. A cup of tea can be a survival tool. A text saying “home safe” can be a love poem. A supermarket doorstep can tell you plenty about humanity if you’re paying attention.
Does your current employment enter any of your poetry? How? What poems?
Yes, indirectly. Being a delivery driver puts you very close to ordinary life. You see people at their doorsteps — tired, kind, distracted, lonely, funny, rushing, grateful, sometimes having a terrible day and trying not to show it. You also spend a lot of time with weather, roads, petrol stations, small interactions, people’s houses, people’s routines. That definitely feeds poems like “The Small Revolt” and “The Minor Weather,” which are both interested in unnoticed acts of care.
Do you have a particular setting where you write most of your poems? Do you set aside a certain time?
Usually on the sofa while my wife plays Fortnite, or in the van when I have a break. Very glamorous. No candlelit study, no dramatic window, just domestic chaos and a notes app. I don’t really set aside a strict time. At the moment, it feels more constant than that. Lines arrive while I’m working, while I’m sitting down, while I’m meant to be doing something else. Poems are rude like that. They don’t respect schedules.
Are any of your poems that you submitted dream-like?
Yes. “The Moon That Came Out in the Wash” is the most dream-like. It works with surreal logic: the impossible happens, but everyone behaves as if the washing machine has simply become difficult. “The Unnamable, Wearing Last Night’s Shirt” also has a dream-like quality because it imagines creation as something awkward, lonely, comic and intimate.
Are any of your poems that you submitted prayer-like?
Yes. “The Small Revolt” and “The Minor Weather” are prayer-like, though not in a traditional religious sense. They’re prayers for human gentleness. They ask: if the stars don’t care, can we care instead?
Are there hidden meanings in your poems that can only satisfy you and never the reader?
There are private emotional meanings, yes, but I don’t want the poems to be locked boxes. I like when a reader can enter them without needing my biography as a password. Some details mean something very specific to me, but they should still work for someone else in their own way. In the submitted poems, “Three Small Queens” is the most personally private. “The Moon That Came Out in the Wash” also has private meanings around self-doubt and permission.
Tell me about yourself.
I’m Sean Docherty. I live in Frome, Somerset, with my family. I work as a supermarket delivery driver, write poetry, and I’m also working on a novel called When the Woods Learned Your Name. I’m drawn to ordinary life, especially the places where it suddenly becomes strange or beautiful: kitchens, doorsteps, roads, rain, family noise, little acts of kindness, grief with its shoes still on. I like writing that can be funny and wounded at the same time, because that feels honest to me.
Do you post your poetry on the internet? If so, at what sites? How can people find you?
Poetry-wise, mostly on Reddit. Writing-wise, I’m mostly on Substack:
https://substack.com/@
Do you edit your poems before putting them out publicly?
Yes. I edit quite a lot, though I try not to edit the life out of them. I want the poems to feel spontaneous, but that usually takes work. The trick is making the chaos look like it arrived wearing its own shoes.
Do you use metaphors in your poetry? Which ones?
Yes, heavily.
In “The Unnamable,” creation is imagined like loneliness waking up, like a drunk angel, like the universe texting every atom.
In “The Small Revolt,” kindness becomes a form of rebellion.
In “The Minor Weather,” compassion becomes climate and pressure.
In “The Moon That Came Out in the Wash,” the moon/button becomes wonder, self-worth and permission.
In “Three Small Queens,” family becomes a kingdom, and the daughters become queens.
So at this point you, the reader, should have a pretty good idea about what makes this poet tick. So let’s look at this poetry. I need to advise the reader that Sean uses space quite a bit in his poetry at places for emphasis, for thought, for pause. I’m not sure my editor will let me put in all the space simply for lack of space. You know how precious space is. So, use your imagination. When there is a double space between lines, maybe it should be a triple space or more. Perhaps if Sean ever publishes these in his own book he will be able to do justice to space, revel in space, or relax in space.
The Unnamable, Wearing Last Night’s Shirt
At the far edge of whatever came first,
there was no thunder,
no god clearing his throat,
no neon sign blinking OPEN
above the great black pub of existence.
Only a pressure.
A held breath with nowhere to go,
a loneliness so old
it had not yet learned the word lonely,
a darkness rolling over in bed
and thinking,
Christ,
I suppose I’d better become something.
So it did.
Not elegantly.
Not with trumpets.
More like a drunk angel falling through a skylight,
more like desire knocking over the furniture,
more like the universe accidentally texting you up?
to every atom at once.
And look what answered.
Salt.
Blood.
Moths.
Bad decisions.
The moon with its pale arse out over the rooftops.
The sea, forever dramatic,
throwing itself at the land
like an ex who has read one poem
and misunderstood forgiveness.
Then us.
Ridiculous us.
Soft mammals in expensive coats,
naming stars after gods,
naming cats after snacks,
naming love after whoever wrecked us best.
We kiss as if the mouth
is a small cathedral with terrible impulse control.
We fuck as if death has stepped out for cigarettes.
We laugh with our hands on the kitchen counter
because the pasta boiled over
and someone said something stupid
and for three seconds
the whole doomed cosmos
wears an apron
and smells of garlic.
This is the scandal:
that a body knows it is leaving
and still buys fresh basil.
That someone paints their nails blue
though the colour will chip by Thursday.
That a man keeps the cinema ticket
from a date that ended badly
because she laughed once in the dark
and the sound rearranged his organs.
That a woman plants rosemary in a cracked mug
on a windowsill above the bus route,
and every morning the city coughs itself awake
while something green insists,
not dead yet, babes.
We are temporary.
We are filthy with endings.
We are miracles with hangovers,
souls in rented rooms,
brief fires arguing with rain.
And still—
someone sends a voice note just to say,
I saw this and thought of you.
Someone touches the scar
they were once ashamed of
and calls it history.
Someone lies beside someone else
after the heat has passed,
after the sweat cools,
after the jokes about performance and back pain,
and listens to the little animal of their breathing
continue,
continue,
continue.
No eternity could improve that.
Forever is overrated.
Forever would ruin the joke.
A flower matters because it panics beautifully.
A kiss matters because the lips must part.
A life matters because it is a match
struck in a cathedral-sized dark,
burning its tiny yes
against all that endless no.
So let the nameless thing remain nameless.
Let it sit at the end of the bed
while we pull on yesterday’s clothes,
while the kettle clicks,
while the rain rehearses its soft applause
against the glass.
Let it watch us
make love, make tea, make promises,
break them, mend them,
sing off-key in cars,
cry in supermarket aisles,
stand under streetlights
as if waiting for heaven
to admit it has been here all along.
And when the last room goes quiet,
when the last laugh leaves the lungs,
when even the stars forgettheir burning little speeches,
may something vast,
shy,
and impossible to name
bend close to the cooling dark
and whisper—
well, fuck.
That was beautiful.
You use the word god in lower case. Is there any significance?
Yes. I used lower-case “god” because the poem isn’t really about a specific organised religious God. It’s about the unnamable force behind existence — mystery, creation, loneliness, consciousness, whatever word we try and fail to use. Capitalising it would make it feel too fixed and too certain. The poem is more interested in mystery than doctrine.
Why do humans become the best part of creation in the poem?
Because we’re ridiculous and heartbreaking. Humans know we’re temporary, and yet we still make soup, keep cinema tickets, fall in love, buy basil, plant rosemary, kiss, laugh, forgive badly, try again. That feels miraculous to me. Not because humans are perfect — obviously we’re a disaster with shoes — but because we keep making meaning despite knowing it won’t last forever.
Are you one of the humans in the poem?
Yes, emotionally. I’m in the poem’s love of ordinary life. I’m in the jokes, the fear of death, the tenderness, the kitchen, the need to make something beautiful before the lights go out.
Was this poem meant to be a philosophical comment on humanity?
Yes. It’s about the situation humanity finds itself in: we are temporary creatures in a universe that may not explain itself to us. We don’t know why we’re here, how long anything matters, or whether the cosmos cares. But we still love. We still make tea. We still touch scars and call them history. That is both absurd and beautiful.
You mention an ex. Is that personal?
Not directly. It’s more a comic human image than a specific person. The sea throwing itself at the land like an ex who misunderstood forgiveness felt like a funny, dramatic way to describe something ancient and natural through a very human lens.
“A body knows it is leaving and still buys fresh basil.” What does that mean?
That line is about the courage of ordinary living. We all know, somewhere deep down, that life is temporary. And yet we still buy fresh herbs, paint our nails, make plans, save tickets, plant things. Fresh basil becomes a small act of faith. It says: I know this doesn’t last, but I’m here now, and I’m going to make dinner taste better.
Response to your note about God at the end saying, “well, fuck. That was beautiful.”
That’s very much the emotional centre of the poem. I like the idea that after all the grand mystery, the final response might be something stunned, vulgar, tender and human. Not a sermon. Not a thunderclap. Just awe with its tie loosened.
Humanness, in spite of everything else that is not so human is a central theme to Sean’s poems. He expresses it in “small” events, “small” gestures, “small” acts of kindness that might not be that small once you start to think about them. He touches on the bad stuff, the grief of living, but he does not linger there, thank goodness. Too many poets these days wallow in grief in their poetry. I guess it sells, or they are just stuck. Let’s move on to his next poem. Look for differences and similarities between the first and second one.
The Small Revolt
We are not the ending.
We are not the great machine with its cold mouth open.
We are someone putting the kettle on at midnight because grief has come round again without texting first.
We are the spoon left in the sugar bowl.
The note on the fridge that says eat something, you dramatic little ghost.
A man in a petrol station lets the woman behind him go first because her child is
crying and his own loneliness can wait three minutes.
A girl on the night bus pretends not to notice the old man sleeping with his mouth
open, then moves her bag so his head doesn’t hit the window.
A bartender pours water for the drunk lad who keeps saying he’s fine, mate,
honestly, while looking like Hamlet if Hamlet had lost his vape.
A cleaner in an office straightens the photograph on a stranger’s desk: two children, a dog, one small holiday sun caught forever in cheap plastic.
No one applauds.
The lift keeps breaking. The rent goes up. Someone’s god is always unavailable.
Still, someone leaves chips wrapped warm for the boy who says he isn’t hungry.
Someone says, text me when you’re home, and means please remain alive in this
stupid, beautiful weather.
Someone laughs too loudly in a kitchen where everybody knows the bad news already.
Someone kisses a forehead.
Someone buys the good bread.
Someone forgives themselves badly, then tries again in the morning.
This is not revolution with banners and handsome cheekbones and a soundtrack.This is smaller.
This is washing a mug you did not dirty.
This is holding the door for a stranger who will never become a metaphor.
This is saying I’m sorry before pride can get its trousers on.
This is love with no lighting crew, no witness, no tasteful violin having a wank in
the background.
The universe, being rude, continues expanding.
Time chews through apples, wedding dresses, old receipts, the faces of everyone who ever made us tea.
The stars do not care.
Fine.
Let them not care.
We will care instead.
We will put another blanket over the sleeping dog.
We will turn the porch light on.
We will save the last good biscuit for someone who has had a bastard of a day.
We will say, come in, it’s freezing, I made soup.
And somewhere, in the dark’s long throat,
one small kitchen window keeps glowing
like a match that has no idea how outnumbered it is.
Are there any hidden meanings in this poem?
The hidden meaning is probably that I believe quiet kindness matters more than we admit. The poem is not about heroic goodness. It’s about tiny acts that no one applauds. Washing a mug you didn’t dirty. Holding a door. Saving food. Saying“text me when you’re home.” Those things look small, but they are a way of refusing despair.
Do you often reflect on the human condition?
Yes. Probably too much, if we’re being honest. But I’m less interested in abstract humanity and more interested in people in kitchens, petrol stations, night buses, offices, doorways. That’s where the human condition actually shows its face.
Is this poem a wish or a prayer? Which one and why?
Both, but more of a prayer. It’s a prayer that we keep caring. It doesn’t ask the universe to save us. It asks us to save small pieces of one another.
Where did the idea originate?
It came from noticing ordinary kindness. Not one single event, but lots of little moments: people making room for each other, checking someone got home, feeding someone, giving someone dignity. I wanted to write about compassion without making it sentimental or glossy. Real kindness often has crumbs on it.
Now you will have to wait until July for more of Sean Docherty’s works. Stay tuned.
