I will say that I started poetry this year because 2025 is the year I started it properly and knew what I was doing. My journey into poetry can be described with the saying “Third time’s a charm.”

There have been two attempts in my life where I tried my hand at poetry, and both times ended with me saying it was too hard. To be honest, I said the same about screenwriting and filmmaking in general, and look where I am now.

2011, I was 14, going on 15. It was a rough time for me. My dad passed away from lung cancer in February, and my 15th birthday in July was a depressing one spent at home drinking beer on a school night. Some time in March in English class we started learning about poetry. From the moment I opened up the book and read my first poem, I felt the connection. I couldn’t wait for the next lesson to learn more and read more.

One day, I decided to take a crack at one. The subject being something I had learnt about the previous year. The face of a man that can be seen on the moon. It’s a case of pareidolia, but I found it interesting was was always looking up to spot it.

The poem was called The Man on the Moon, and I wish I could find it and read it again.

I remember feeling very artistic when completing it. Using emotions and ending with how, when I die, I will join him so he’s not lonely anymore.

In this period I wrote two more poems; I can’t remember much about the second one, but the third one was about someone smiling at you and how it can cheer you up instantly. I very much had depression during this time, which was where I drew from, and still do.

That was where my first go at poetry ended.

My sophomore attempt came from a terrorist attack and feeling inspired by Facebook. Yes, I know, the first attempts were created by tragedy. But what poet isn’t? Poetry is about emotions, after all, and putting your soul onto the paper. Making your heart an open book and being vulnerable.

I wrote a poem about the terrorist attacks which happened in 2017. I was 20, about to turn 21, when the Manchester Arena bombing took place and after the UK had already faced numerous attacks and tragedies that year. It was an awful poem, but it’s what made me try again.

I wrote 5 poems in 2017, if I remember, but only 3 survive. I enquired about publication for 2 of them, unsuccessfully, and entered another 2 into the National Poetry Competition, which I didn’t win, of course; I remember the terrible poems. It was a good learning experience, and at least one of the poems, which is dated November 2017, is a good insight into depression and alcohol to numb the pain.

Poetry never came to my mind again, until I started to look poems up again in 2024, aged 28, when my friend Charlotte Faulconbridge released her first poetry collection.
I never would have gotten into poetry if not for Charlotte. Charlotte messaged me in January letting me know that her friend’s publishing company is looking for short stories and poems for an anthology, so I applied with two short stories. Then, not long after, Charlotte told me about the online open mic that her friend, Ashley Edge, runs with another friend, Kate Jenkinson, and told me to join the event which she was co-headlining.

I was the only person who didn’t do poetry at that event. So, I decided to write some poems for the next.

I went away and found a book I used last time; this time I changed. I read Charlotte’s collection and looked at her poems and wrote my own and have been ever since.
I have plans for a poetry collection of my own and have a first draft almost done on a chapbook.