David Rollins
Repawter: Lisa Greener
Tell me a bit about yourself:
Good morning my name is David Rollins and I'm a poet and author published with green Cat books. I've been writing most of my life. I took English a level well O Level then a level and I've been writing since then. I've mostly been writing poems they're easy to write you can pick up a pen just write a poem edit it edit it again edit it another 10 times till you like it and that's how most writers get started.
How long did it take you to write your first book what made you decide writing your first poetry book and what was your inspiration for writing your own poetry book?
I first wrote the book that was published when I was in a mental health hospital for three and a half months. Some 13 years ago I was in a writing class within the mental health hospital in question and I started to write Haiku which I'd come across before. Haiku is a 17 syllable poem on three lines five syllables seven syllables and then a final five syllables it's mostly a Japanese style poetry aimed at nature and the environment but it can be used for urban observations. I went back to my Ward and I started writing Haiku and by the end of the three and a half months that I was in the hospital and for a short time afterwards, I wrote down my observations of people, patients, nurses, smells, things that I saw. Just very simple things and writing them in a short Haiku one after another after another helps me to purpose my time in there. Once I came out I realized I'd written 350 poems roughly.
I found a publisher by accident. Lisa of green Cat books was a friend and in conversation she mentioned that she was a publisher. Shortly afterwards she published those 350 Haiku in a book which was called Haiku from the Asylum and each of the pages has some of the poems on. Each poem can be taken in its own stand alone setting just as a reflection, a small picture of what life was like in that mental health hospital and what I was like as a mental health person. I guess that was my first actual book and as I say that took about three and a half months to write. I edited it a few times. There was some Haiku I wasn't happy with, but on the whole it was as it stands. So that's quite a good thing that's come out of something that started off quite bad I suppose.
Do you write in any other genres?
Having published my first book which was amazing just to see it in print I then started to look through my other files and there were other books that I’d written in different genres that just needed a bit of completion here and there. One book that I wrote was horsey. It's a children's book aimed at about 7 to 10 year olds and I'd written it some 20 25 years ago, never happy with the ending. This is an important thing, you don't have to write the whole book at once you can put it down, leave it, come back to it. This is what I did with horsey and when I finally wrote the ending and sent it to Lisa, she was happy enough with it to get it published. So horsey became my second book that was a children's book.
Are you writing or have you written any other books?
Since I followed on from that by writing a picture book called monster in the fridge, again just a simple idea and in picture books. Just one or two lines per page. I found somebody who was willing to do the illustrations and that was my third book. My fourth book came as a collaboration of ordinary poetry. Although I wrote Haiku in Haiku from the Asylum prior to that, I've been writing ordinary poems I.E. non Haiku poems for decades and colleting all of those. I collaborated with two other people with various, well different mental health situations to myself and as a collaboration, we wrote three insane poets. Which again I was very pleased with.
What is your favourite book of all time?
I read a lot and I think if you're a writer reading comes naturally as well. My favourite book of all time is Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard bark. I've read it time and time again and each time it amazes me.
What one piece of advice would you give to other people wanting to write?
One piece of advice I would give to anybody who is writing their own book is take your time. Whether it's days, weeks, months, decades. Just write.
Sometimes you'll write an extra chapter sometimes you'll look at it and not be able to do anything more to it. You can always move chapters around, but get it down on paper or on computer.
What is your greatest accomplishment so far?
Besides writing, one of the things that I do is I help disabled people with benefit claims, and one of my greatest accomplishments was receiving the hero of Leicester award for my voluntary work with claimants with disabilities. That was recognized by Leicester University and the Lord mayor of Leicester.
What is your favourite food?
One of my favourite foods is curried goat with rice and peas, a Caribbean dish. Although I've eaten loads of different things over the years, curried goat remains my favourite food of all time.
What's your favourite type of music?
My favourite music of all time is classical. I always come back to classical it calms me. It has a wave of emotion which I can feel and it's not subjugated by words or ideas. It's just music and I find that very relaxing.
I think classical can be very therapeutic at times as well. It can be quite upbeat as well as relaxing depending on how you want to be.
Finally, and most importantly, what was your most embarrassing moment?
Being 60 years old, nearly 60 anyway. My body as it should is starting to fail. It's starting to get old, muscles are relaxing and having fibromyalgia and a few other physical illnesses. One of the things that I find is starting to fail now is my bladder and bowel, and my most embarrassing moment which I'm guessing you can guess by now, massive bowel movement in the middle of Home Bargains. Not fun, sudden, spontaneous, unavoidable, but highly embarrassing.
So that's my story, those are a few things about me and I hope you enjoy reading it.
