A long time ago, I suddenly fell in love with the English language, having, for many years prior to that, completely hated reading and writing. I don't know what changed in me (or around me) to make this happen, but I'm glad it did.
After that, I started reading books like they were going out of fashion. It didn't matter whether they were fact or fiction, or what genre they were. I read books about programming, maths, biographies, humour, science fiction, the list goes on. Then something sparked in me and I started writing - or, rather, trying to write. I struggled with just getting ideas onto paper, I couldn't handle the 'freedom' of prose. That's when I found that I could write poetry, with its structure, rhythm and rhyme. I wrote, and had published, a slim volume of poems.
And then it all stopped. Again, I'm not entirely sure why, but it is almost certainly because of an improvement in my mental health. Since then, and until relatively recently, I'd not written anything else.
About 5 years' ago, I dabbled with NaNoWriMo. I had an idea for a detective crime novel, and started plotting and writing scenes, but I couldn't get going with it. For the next two years I picked it back up and tried to make headway with it to no avail. Maybe I'll try again this year. 🤷♀️
But my real creative passion is for poetry. I love the structure, the constraints; they give me rules to work with and problems to solve. I love finding the exact, right word. The act of structuring lines and sentences with such precision without losing meaning makes me very satisfied.
Just over a year ago I wrote my first poem in over 20 years ("Paranoid"), and it made me feel incredible. The idea had been gestating for some time, and then I got a 'nudge' around how to frame it, and it was written in a matter of minutes.
Having shown the poem to a few people, with favourable feedback, I figured I'd put this site together to showcase my work and ways of working.
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