Why I Write

For as long as I can remember, I have sought solace in writing. I always found that writing things down therapeutic, and as a shy child it meant that I could offload my troubles without problematic human interaction.

I began writing a diary when I was a child, wrote song lyrics between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, and then began writing poetry when I began my A Level in English Literature. I was fascinated by the raw emotions that went into poetry. From World War One poets to the Romantics, I loved the way that they created something hauntingly beautiful out of the devastation going on both around them and within their own minds. 

I then knew that poetry was my passion, both reading it and writing it. It has a unique way of expressing things that you would never be able to say and spent hours flicking through anthologies, attempting to interpret other poets’ works. Poetry is shrouded in secrecy and metaphor, it is transformative, or it is unapologetically straight forward. It is whatever you need it to be. 

I like the deniability of poetry. For example, someone could read my poem Hole and simply see a poem about a hole in someone’s shoe, totally missing the connotations of sexual assault. It is this that makes poetry powerful. You can both tell and not tell, and that is why it is such a useful therapeutic tool.  

I am a very chaotic person, and I liked the idea of taking all these racing thoughts and putting them into a rhyme and meter, making them beautiful and then filing them away under a neat title. It felt like I was organising my brain and my poems, although chaotic in nature, serve as a concise diary of my mental state over the past four years.

They chronicle bad relationships, melancholy, anxiousness, lust, fear, abandonment, and just sometimes, happiness. This is not because I am never happy, merely because I always seem to reach for the pen- or keyboard- in times of strife. I believe that this is true for many writers, we write because we have something to get off our chest, a feeling that needs to be expressed.

I have since completed a degree in English Literature with Creative Writing and am studying an MA in Creative Writing, specialising in poetry. My research theme is Awakening the Divine Feminine, which links to my witchcraft and spiritual beliefs that I cultivated during my degree when I became involved in the pagan community. Witchcraft always fascinated me, and I was a solitary practitioner for a while before I found a local pagan group that met on the second Tuesday of every month. They gave me a support network and I made many lifelong friends. I have noticed recently that the pagan community is getting stronger, with large amounts of young people being drawn to it every day. 

For more detailed and specific information on how I marry my craft with my poetry, please see my YouTube Channel, and if this interests you, you can enrol on one of my online courses to see how you can harness the power of words, too.