Poetry / T.S. Idiot
Tom Stockley, aka T.S. Idiot: ‘Bristol has made me the artist I am’
Tom Stockley, also known as T.S. Idiot, is a poet, artist and filmmaker who recently published their debut collection Back to the Fuchsia (Arkbound) after a successful crowdfunder.
For a six-year period from 2018, they lived and worked Bristol as a youth and community worker, as well as setting up creative projects across the city around art, poetry and collaboration.
As T.S. Idiot, Stockley has created a punk poet persona, characterised for their humour and energetic live performance style.
is needed now More than ever
However, the poems selected for Back to the Fuchsia are suffused with solitude and space, raw emotion and reflection, written through the lens of a fictional day in the poet’s life when they harness that rare silence to interrogate grief, lost friends and broken relationships.
Written between 2019-2022, the collection examines a period of collective as well as personal trauma, and represents, in Stockley’s words – “the start of my attempt to cultivate resilience”.
Reflecting on notions of identity and connection, they spoke to Bristol24/7 about poetry, punk, and the future:
Back to the Fuchsia was successfully crowdfunded. How does that feel?
“Massively validating! I think all artists work hard to try and cultivate self-belief, bordering on stubbornness – to keep creating, and putting yourself and your work out there. But that external validation is vital sometimes, especially when it comes so directly from your audience. To know that a hundred-odd people believe in a piece of my work before they’ve even seen it was the encouragement I needed, especially at a time in my life when various things were going a bit upside-down.
“It resonates with my DIY approach too – not relying on one big sum of money from an arbiter of creativity (hi Arts Council) and years of paperwork, but being able to simplify the process and ask: ‘I’d like to make something, who would like to see that happen?’”
T.S. Idiot – photo: Charlotte Lake
You have said that while you are more used to humour-inflected work, you wrote many of these poems during lockdown, when there was nothing to laugh about. For you, what does poetry offer you as a creative outlet in dark times?
“I think a lot of us found solace in creative acts over lockdown. Even those who maybe don’t think of themselves as artists were falling back on routines of nurture and creation – gardening, baking, knitting. Everyone is an artist at the heart of it. As someone who’s experienced lifelong mental health issues and navigates the world as a queer, neurodivergent person wanting it to be a better place, I’ve turned to creativity at my lowest points as long as I can remember. I think it comes from not feeling heard, from hurting, or from struggling to articulate those raw emotions.
“There’s this howl of feelings in things I make, particularly when I’m struggling; whether it’s a collage in a sketchbook or a poem in a punk band. Comedians do it well – the funniest people in the world are often the saddest when they’re alone.”
How do you relate to the poetry and spoken word community?
“It’s one of the most caring and honest spaces in the art world. It’s got its pretentious corners, but I do think there’s a certain atmosphere that’s created when a crowd of people are sharing their thoughts and feelings in such a direct way, without filtering it through the structure of visual art, music or theatre. I love that directness – it’s an instant form of creative communication that needs no equipment or space other than a room and an audience (and even that’s flexible – I did a poetry set to one man and his dog once).
“The Bristol scene in particular has made me the artist I am. People have seen me, supported me, picked me up from the kerb – both personally and professionally. It’s the total opposite of gatekeeping (gateopening?) – in that everyone wants to support newcomers, big each other up and celebrate each other’s success. As pretentious as poetry can be, the scene itself never looks down on anyone, and that DIY element is a big part of that.
“We’ve seen a gradual rise of poetry and spoken word as a more mainstream art form, which I think is a good thing – it’s becoming even more accessible. Kae Tempest has been great for that, and other poets too, particularly those talking about working class communities and unheard voices. Toria Garbutt, Joelle Taylor, Jay Burnard and Danez Smith are smashing it. Closer to home we’re massively lucky to share our city with poets like Bridget Hart, Malaika Kegode and Aish Humphreys – all powerhouses in what they do.”
Photo: Gabrielle McCormack
Although you are no longer in Bristol, how would you define your connection to the city?
“To quote Gwyneth Paltrow, I’ve had a bit of a conscious uncoupling from Bristol this year. I will always love the city and lived here for six years – time that I’ll always be grateful for – but if it was a 2010s Facebook relationship status, I’d say it’s complicated.
“Bristol is the place where I fine-tuned my skills as a writer and performer, where my queerness blossomed, and where I’ve made friendships that will last for the rest of my life. And I love that it is a city of revolutions – but, my experience as a youth worker, and as someone who’s lived for most of that time in a council tower block – tells me that its spirit of revolution is not something to be taken for granted. I think there’s still big gaps between the image of Bristol that we often have, and the reality of those who are struggling to survive.
“I love the Bristol industries of nightlife, queer culture and creativity, but I think we need to be more pro-active, more reflective on how we move forward. How do we actually look after each other when the (metaphorical) party’s over? How do we share what we have with people who need it? How do we challenge the commodification of creativity and community spaces? I do think that Bristol, like many other cities, is in danger of becoming somewhere where the dream only exists if you can afford it. Also, I’m too old now to engage in the posturing and hypocrisy that come with being part of certain scenes. I want to be kind, and go to bed at 10pm.”
What do you see as the relationship between poetry and punk?
“This is literally my special interest, so I’ll try and keep this essay brief. If you look at the most engaging spoken word stuff out there today, it has a common ancestor with punk music. Go back to 1916 when the Dadaists were putting on silly outfits and performing nonsense to each other in bars, or the 1920s when the Situationists were writing radical texts that literally caused students in Paris to riot through the streets.
“The Harlem Renaissance of the 1940s involved various queer people of colour, using poetry as a revolutionary tool. The beat poets of the ’50s were literally called punks – an early insult for gay men, which most of them were. The earliest punk bands of the ’70s had vocalists who were basically performing aggressive poetry – like Black Flag and Death, three African-American siblings shouting about life in post-industrial Detroit.
“And then over the following decades you had the real crossover of artists who were both poets and part of the punk scene – Patti Smith, Penny Rimbaud, Ben Zephaniah. I think poets have many different lineages, but there are lots of us around today who owe our sharp humour, disruptive attitude and DIY approach to our punk ancestors. Some of my favourite contemporary poets with a punk spirit are Jonny Fluffypunk, Jay Mitra, Henry Raby and Chuck SJ. I also have to mention Bridget Hart again here as well. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.”
Photo: Chris Russell
As a queer artist, how has your creativity helped you to explore concepts of identity?
“Most of us were never given the language to describe ourselves, or the role models to see who we could be. Art acts a surrogate for these missing pieces – with creativity, you can build your own language to describe yourself and share that with others. Like a lot of us, I started doing this before I fully realised who I was – this depressed, awkward teenager making sculptures from mannequins, painting picture of boys in his class and scribbling heartfelt lyrics for a band that never existed. These were the safest ways of starting to feel my softness, to see myself as queer and beautiful.
“Then when you see more of the world, you start to recognise other people like you, in the present and through history. I think my brain started leaking out of my ears when I first found a book about Leigh Bowery and the Club Kids. The teenage me, growing up on the edge of a council estate in a small seaside town, would never have dreamed that anyone in history had ever looked like that. And then you get welcomed into this secret community, this trail of outrageous, frustrated, tender souls like you. And you see their art, or read their words, and they hit you: you feel seen. That still happens to me now – getting quietly devastated by Aish Humphreys’ poems, or the tender filth of Bristol Pride Poet Laureate Tom Denbigh.”
Finally, where do you hope to take your work in 2025?
“I’m being much gentler with myself these days, but still a chronic multi-tasker. I’ve had a break for a few months, to store up the energy I need to give birth to this book and keep the momentum going. Sadly, most artists’ lives are nowhere near as exciting as they look on Instagram – I spend 70 per cent of my time replying to emails. I need a t-shirt that says ‘I DO ALL MY OWN ADMIN’. But I’ll be taking the poems from Back to the Fuchsia out and about for most of 2025 – working with various musicians and sound artists, experimenting with collaborative performances and improvisation.
“Louie Newlands (currently playing with Bristol acts Double Pelican and Eva May) is one of my longest-suffering collaborators, we’ve been making things together on and off since 2014. I’ve been getting involved with SSTRAPP too, a collective exploring sound in all kinds of ways. In the background I’ll be doing some gorgeous projects with LGBTQ+ young people, who are constantly inspiring me as a person and an artist. And I’ll definitely be visiting Bristol – maybe we can work out how to be friends with benefits.”
Photo: Annie Wire
Find out more about Tom Stockley at https://tsidiot.square.site or follow @tstheidiot.
You can purchase the poetry collection Back to the Fuchsia here (published by Arkbound), and a mixtape of the same name here.
Main photo: Chris Russell
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