In the spirit of being honest, this isn't a new piece. It's something I wrote a few years ago when I was not okay. It was built on iambic heptameter (but I was loose with it), and it was written to try to describe the constant feeling I had where I felt like I was lying in the gutter and watching everyone else enjoy their lives, and I felt like no-one would be able to help me.
Ghost Wall is a highly acclaimed, multiple prize-winning novel that’s been described as a ‘short, sharp shock that closes around you like a vice as you read it’. It’s a story about a modern family reliving the Iron Age; about family, about abusive situations, about friendship. But for me, it fell far short of the dazzling, ‘burnished gem’ of a book that I’d been promised.
In ‘Convenience Store Woman’, we follow this unusual protagonist as she battles through what society expects from her, and fights to secure her place at her beloved store when faced with someone who could rip it all apart.
So many sounds that she couldn’t place. But they were coming from a place. Did the place come first, or the words? She sang them so they weren’t wriggling around in her throat like a fish. Like a plaice. She laughed and saw colours.
It'll change you, if you let it. Content warnings for rape, misogyny, abuse, eating disorders. A bit of backstory: I’m a writer who spends more time on YouTube than she spends reading books. T’isn’t good, my dudes, and it’s a bad habit. But I can’t be too mad, because without it I never would have discovered … Continue reading Poetry collection review: ‘If my body could speak’ by Blythe Baird
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