Ripple Effect: Poetry in the everyday with Brain Pebble Poet
Herne Bay’s Brain Pebble Poet aims to stop you in your tracks…
Image by @Dave_Fudge_Music
“I think the joy is, if someone takes one of my booklets and they’re having a really crappy time… I like the idea that someone might pick it up and get some comfort from it.”
Gail Fawcett (@brainpebblepoet) started leaving small booklets of her poetry at bus stops, cafes and train stations during lockdown. Perhaps better known as Brain Pebble Poet, Gail’s works have now moved from paper to paint, with her poems finding their way into designated art spaces as well as public areas such as the beach promenades of Herne Bay.
“I started writing poetry in lockdown and went down the route of joining open-mic events and then realised that I’m not really a slammer or anything like that,” she says. “I think with my poetry, it’s more about stumbling across them and then picking from it what you want. You know, you either like it or you don’t. That’s just what fitted me.”
Using washable chalk-spray-paints, Gail was invited to recreate her works publicly as part of the Herne Bay Festival last year but has since gone on to create bespoke works for designated street-art walls both in Kent and London’s Leak Street and Brick Lane.
“I got some stencils made and I started spray-painting them across the town. And I got really good feedback,” she says. “I called it Poetry In The Everyday (@poetryintheeveryday), the idea being that people would sort of stumble across them and stop and look at the town a bit differently.
“I kind of think it’s the inner rebellious side of my nature coming out. I want to do more and more of it, so I’m always looking for legal sites.”
“I just lob them out and if they land, they land, and if they don’t, you know, it doesn’t matter.”
If you have come across one of the works, it stops you in your tracks. And much like looking at graffiti out of a train window, you can’t help but twist your head round to try to read what it says. And for Gail that’s the most satisfying part.
“I did sneak around and sort of watch people stumble across them,” she says. “My poems are quite short and very simple but accessible. So hearing parents and carers read them out was just wonderful.
“With the spray-painting in particular, this guy approached me when I’d finished spray-painting one - it was this poem called Morning Walk. And he just said to me that he was a veteran and had PTSD and the poem really resonated with him. It’s those moments and the interactions, people actually talking to me or reading the words. That, for me, is the most powerful thing.”
Since starting poetry, Gail has chucked herself into the deep end, hosting spoken-word events at The Umbrella Cafe, the Labour Club and, more recently, the Bruce Williams Gallery in Whitstable while also uploading her recorded works to platforms such as BBC Sounds and having it read out on live radio.
“I just threw that out there,” she says. “It’s like pebbles. I just lob them out and if they land, they land, and if they don’t, you know, it doesn’t matter.”
Another pebble landed at the Royal Festival Hall in London’s Southbank Centre when Gail chucked her hat in the ring for the open-mic spots at the London Literary Festival.
“It just popped up, a call for artists. And I was like ‘Oh, you know, I’ve got this great poem called The Curry Pot. It’s about my mum and her father, her sisters making curry’.
“I didn’t actually think about it until I got there and I started to get really nervous because it was a huge audience. I was absolutely terrified but loved it.”
The subjects Gail writes about are wide-ranging, from talking about her British and Guyanese heritage and being of mixed race through to being a teacher.
“They sort of write themselves,” she says. “I’m called Brain Pebble Poet because they’re like a brain pebble - they drop and then the ripples come. One I wrote called Clumsy Love was just sitting milling around in my head for ages. I’ve got a teenage daughter and she hates it when I hug her - I sort of launched myself at her and I was like ‘Oh God, you know, that’s clumsy love’.
“It’s very much about things that happen in my life, or things that I see or interactions with people that pop up.”
**Gail’s partner Dave Fudge, who was a big part of her journey, sadly passed away suddenly on 10th February 2024.
Gail said: “I am embracing my grief in my poetry as I spray paint his favourite poem ‘I saw you’ in places of personal significance e.g. Peckham Levels, London and Margate Lido.
“I will do one in Newcastle where he will be buried in March. In his memory I continue my poetry journey, giving voice to the fragility of our lives felt so keenly now in the wake of his death.”
