Mary Dickins spent time in care as a teenager and always felt like an outsider. She suffered intense shyness, but taking to the stage has helped her find her voice
Mary Dickins had been a spectator at poetry nights before and knew “the poetry clap”. She mimes a polite tapping of fingers. But when she made her debut as a performer at the age of 62 at the legendary Bang Said the Gun night in south London, “it was so anarchic and wild – like nothing I had seen before”. The audience stamped feet, shook shakers. “It felt transformative. I thought: ‘I’ve got to have more of this.’”
Even though Dickins says she “constantly has impostor syndrome – I always feel that I’m going to be found out”, becoming a performance poet has given her a place on a stage of her own making.
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