Ever since I was a child I’ve been fascinated by fire, its movements and crackling sounds, by how alive it seems to be. I can and do stare at the fire for hours without getting bored, which had been one of my favourite parts of the long summer holidays as a child.

Me and my cousins would spend a part of our summers at lake Bohinj with our families when we were young and we’d always set up a camp fire in the evening, to roast hot dog sausages, cheese and bread on it late into the night. It was an exciting and neccessary part of most evenings, accompanied by debates and singing, although I was never one to sing in public. I still love doing this as an adult and naturally I’ve been wanting to try out fire spinning for years, but never got around to doing it.

Well, all things come to those who wait, as they say, and in September 2018 I started studying in Luleå, Sweden. Before coming there I’d learned of a student fire spinning group called Phire and I joined them the first chance I had. Some of them went on to become very close friends and the experience would have been worth it for that alone. My poison of choice became poi spinning, and the little balls on tethers soon occupied a significant portion of my free time. I learned a couple of tricks and (too) soon enough I got to try them with fire.

My first fire spinning experience was not the best one, as I had borrowed poi, shared among multiple people who were all staring at me while waiting for their turn, so it was rather scary and uncomfortable, but I loved it nonetheless. Also, the fire whooshing past your head is incredibly loud! The second experience was rather similar, which is why I convinced two of my friends to have a private fire session with me, where I finally got to experience the moving balls of fire on my own time. I admit to being pretty freaked out and excited at the same time, but I did try out the tricks I knew and felt much more comfortable after.

I bought my own proper gear soon after that, which made training that much easier and more fun and I even made a pair of homemade fire poi during a workshop. You can see my current gear in the photos below: a pair of LED sock poi, an untried homemade pair of fire poi and an epic pair of poi with changeable fire/contact heads from Dark Monk.

Fast forward a few months into 2019 with not much practice (I was lazy and busy after the New Year) and I had my first fire spinning photo shooting, courtesy of my photographer classmate and the Swedish juggling/spinning friends, who decided to get Instagram famous and needed promo material. It went surprisingly great and you can check out the beautiful long exposure photos here.

Such were the beginnings of my fire journey, which is not likely to end anytime soon. <3 I’ll just keep documenting my progress and see where it takes me.