✨29th Birthday✨

‘My heart is a stopped geranium.’

—Poem for a Birthday, Sylvia Plath

I’ve been chronically unwell for three years now and my birthday passes by with the same quiet contemplation. I have learned to appreciate the little things while sick: watching TV with mum, a second-hand book, dreaming, etc.

It can be quite difficult for me to see all the writers I know going out there and making their careers. Right now I can only do what I can from the sofa. And I’ve managed to do a lot while housebound! I had my first play professionally staged at @salfordartstheatre in 2024! Poems I’ve written have been shared with interest and my stories are just the same. All I can do is build up my published work in journals to ensure my name stays in the hearts of the public.

I’ve been publishing professionally for eight years but have written for much longer. There is an awful lot of comparison in this industry; it bites all of us in the end. There are so many things I desire but to be a famous writer has been the ultimate goal since I was a child. Though I never expected to be chronically unwell and unable to leave the house.

I think what is most painful for me is knowing that I cannot put together any semblance of a poetry manuscript because that requires potentially going to readings, bookshops, and other things I physically cannot do.

So I whittle away like Emily Dickinson on my stories, poems, and essays.

‘Fame is a fickle food

Upon a shifting plate

Whose table once a

Guest but not

The second time is set

Whose crumbs the crows inspect

And with ironic caw

Flap past it to the

Farmer’s corn

Men eat of it and die.’

—Emily Dickinson