Ashryn

About Craig

The long way round to a song

Craig Clements is a songwriter and poet from the north of England. This is the short version of how Ashryn came to exist.

  1. Loud rooms, small stages
    The twenties

    Loud rooms, small stages

    Bands, borrowed amps and a van that never started first time. Craig played anywhere that would have him, and assumed the making of things would always come that easily.

  2. The case stayed shut
    The thirties

    The case stayed shut

    Then it stopped. Years passed with the guitar in the corner and the quiet certainty that the part of him that made things had packed up and left. It hadn't. It was waiting for him to be honest.

  3. Fifteen minutes and a cheap notebook
    2019

    Fifteen minutes and a cheap notebook

    What brought it back wasn't inspiration — it was a habit. Fifteen minutes a day, no requirement that any of it be good. Most pages became nothing, which turned out to be the point.

  4. Songs, verses, and Ashryn
    Now

    Songs, verses, and Ashryn

    Some of those pages became poems. Some became songs. Together they became Ashryn: what Craig built once he stopped waiting to feel better before making anything.

“A feeling you can't name will run your day from the back seat. A melody gets underneath it. A line of verse pins it down long enough to look at.”

Craig Clements

Craig Clements
Craig Clements sitting beneath an oak tree at sunset with his English bulldogCraig Clements at his desk with headphones, lost in music

In short

  • Songwriter, poet, reluctant early riser
  • Writing daily since 2019
  • Two collections, one book, a lot of notebooks
  • Believes in small, repeatable things

Why music and verse

Neither one fixes anything on its own — but together they make the unbearable describable, and describable is where recovery starts.

Songs also do something poems can't: they keep time with you. A chorus is a promise that the verse ends. On the worst days Craig has leaned on that structure more than on any advice.

A message, if today is heavy

You are not behind. There is no schedule for this, and the people who seem to be keeping to one are mostly bluffing. If all you manage today is breakfast and a walk to the end of the road, that is a day well spent.

Put something on. Read one short poem. Then do the next small thing. That's the whole method, and it is more durable than it sounds.

— Craig

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