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I began to write at three years old; I would make up these little limericks and rhymes and saunter around the kitchen belting them with gusto. One was a ballad that was bound to make Bob Dylan quake in his boots – a drawling, screeching lament about wanting to “go out on my oooown / without mummy and daddy.”
Soon enough, I had started writing short stories. I wielded this lined notepad with homemade embellishments (read: glitter clumsily spilt down the margins, resting on a thin and unsubstantial bed of Pritt Stick) and used to write rambling tales in multicoloured gel pens. Sometimes, when I was feeling extra fancy, I’d double-up and use my Cinderella letter-writing kit to rewrite the original fairy-tales. I’d rediscovered these when I was thirteen and surly, when I thought that writing was too uncool for me (can you believe?) and so I shredded them. I still managed to preserve my bound folder of lyrical drafts from my spell as chief songwriter in two primary school bands: The Pink Freakos and The Pink Marshmallows. Syrupy enough to make Sandy Olsson want to vomit, I know.
I continued to write short stories around the same time as my tenure in said musical juggernauts. One was called the Night Stalker (no, I didn’t realise Richard Ramirez was a thing when I was ten) and featured this green creature named Greep who would go out on all these night-time adventures that I don’t really care to recall. I gave a copy to my year six teacher who had always supported my creative endeavours (even The Pink Marshmallows!) and she used to read it to the class at the end of each day.
During secondary school, I found that my interest wavered. I didn’t even read for fun anymore, let alone write; literature, to me, was A View from the Bridge and Of Mice and Men. It was assessments. It was clinical paperwork, guidelines and rules. I was a talented student in English Literature and Language and recognised as such but, in my spare time, it reminded me too much of school. And too much of the pressure to constantly succeed. One time, I got an A Minus and my teacher told me he was disappointed. But I know it’s because he knew I could do better.
English was my greatest knack and so I continued Language and Literature into Sixth Form. I achieved well here too but, the difference was, the passion had reignited. English wasn’t a chore anymore, or a dark cloud, or a weighted expectation. It became a genuine interest again outside of the academic sphere; I began reading more Plath, more Carter, more Orwell, more Angelou. Social media had started to work in conjunction with the literary world; what I had considered a dead, unrealistic, and unattainable ideal to work towards and express my craft became something tangible, something unpretentious, even something trendy. Spurred by Nayirrah Waheed, Rupi Kaur, and R. H. Sin, I realised that poetry did not have to be something elaborate and flowery, something overcomplicated and regal; it just had to make you feel. And so it became my art.
I sit writing this knowing that the aforementioned have influenced and galvanised me into action but also knowing that I am, in any case, assured and confident in my own abilities. I want this to be a career and still it is dismissed as a pastime or a throwaway that I cannot possibly succeed in. But it’s all I want to do. It has saved me. I have taken it upon myself – aged twenty - to write, curate, organise, format, illustrate, market, and publish my own poetry collection. The second one is already under construction. Because life slows down for nobody. And neither does art.
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