Welcome to my Inspiration Board

I am very dyslexic. Sally's work has hugely shifted my outlook on life and on myself. It's reminded me there is no one way of doing anything, we will all have our own approach, strengths and weaknesses. Find your way of working, your way of learning, even if it's the road less travelled.  Embrace who you are and own it. 

Disobey Me, a poem by Sally Gardner 

They told me I was dyslexic

it didn’t describe me 

belonged in the library

of words I can’t spell 

no matter how many times

they tell you just try harder

sound it out simple when you think about

it. Stop giving me the third degree 

don’t put me down 

don’t make me fret 

I can’t learn my alphabet 

it doesn’t go in any logical order

the stress gives me attention deficit disorder 

at school I wanted to go it alone

they told me that’s unwise 

they called me unteacheable

I was unreachable

stuck in the classroom, broken by rules, by buttons and ties. 

But I don’t like the little words they always disobey me 

the does doses up and is higher than a dude should be 

So they tested me

they corrected me 

and found my results poor 

and told me I wasn’t concentrating

they expected more. 

I tried to get along

never made the score 

And I think about Chaucer in those freedom days 

when no one found your spelling faulty for the extra Es and As 

Mr Shakespeare I wonder would they let him write his plays? 

Oh woe is me might just be graffti in a bog 

And Hamlet the name he called his prize-fighter dog 

But I don’t like the little words they always disobey me

the doe doses dope and is higher than a do should be 

You say that you’re a writer but that’s absurd

how do you write if you cannot spell the words? 

listen, it’s not the way I spell that makes me want to write 

It’s the way I see the world 

That makes me want to fight 

I challenge you – see the words as I do 

feel them sting your skin

the meaning often shocking the way the nib goes in 

to relish discombobulate not to moderate your passion 

not to murder language in an artificial fashion 

words are our servants we are not their slaves 

it matters not if we spell them wrong 

it matters what they say 

But I don’t like the little words they always disobey me

the does doses dope and is higher than a dough should be