So, last week, for the first time, someone asked me about the title. The book is 5 years old now and never had the question be posed to me. So, if you have ever wandered, here it is...
Way back when I was a little snot-nosed shawty... (can't believe I just wrote that... anyway, 2009 or so) I used to set myself various difficult writing challenges to force unusual poem. I took this to nth degree last year when working on the #Afterhours project, but in 2009, I'd sit with a pen and a pad and look around for images that seemed conflicting or opposite to one another. On finding a suitably opposing pair one, I'd try and figure out if they related to each other in any way and write a poem with that relationship at it's core.
Late one night, this old song from Soul for Real came on the radio.
After vibing out to it, embarrassingly missing the dance steps, the line 'Candy coated raindrops' stuck out to me. I wondered if candy coated raindrops could actually be created and how improbable it is for them to form naturally. I upped the ante a tad to a 'Candy Coated Unicorn' which seemed, given that unicorns do no exist, even more improbable and magical. That sorted, I looked around for something opposite. Something very ubiquitous, every-day, down to earth, ordinary and shit stained... and my eyes came to rest on my old pair of Converse All Stars.
Candy Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars became the title of whatever it is I would write, but I had no idea where I was going. I just started. The result was the poem below which became the title poem of my second pamphlet of poems.
That's it. Puzzle unpuzzled.
xx