Even in life when I lost most of my friends or failed at things, I learned to get up again, which might not be a lot to some, but to me, it was incredible. Many people have always told me that you have to fail multiple times to get a success; I couldn’t agree more.

My friends mean the world to me.  People might not really realise, but for me to call you a friend is a very big compliment on my behalf because I love my friends like family.

I love doing art, I will always do artwork, no matter what, I’ve been drawing since I was a child and I’ve continued drawing as an adult.

Many people really don’t know what other people are a 100% going through, sometimes we can’t always compherend what they are going through either. I’m not saying my life was severely hard, I still have a family who love me, friends who love me and an audience who anticipate my proper return. I am loved. I just believe everyone’s struggles are very different to one another’s.
For this poem, I tried my best to attempt creating a terza rima. It was quite interesting and most likely one of the easier forms to learn to write in my personal opinion.

When finishing my art course, I saw some options, stay in my home town with my family and either work or take a new course or move away to pursue something else.

I realistically didn’t want to go to a big university. I feel I need someone’s guidance a little more when learning and in a room with over 500 different students all trying to do the same, it becomes difficult. So I stayed and was offered to join a Digital Film Production course. I loved the idea! I love art, music, I genuinely adored animation too, so I thought why not dust off film and give it a shot?

I didn’t actually initately like film when I considered enrolling, which leads to people to most likely scream ‘Why did you take this risk then?’, because I wanted to. I wanted to learn about it, even if I originally didn’t care. I wanted to learn something different.

When arriving at my course, I made friends with some unique characters. Some different to many others I’ve ever met before. It was a relief.

People often try too hard to either be different or fit in. It’s really not worth the time. It’s best to be who you want to be in reality and for me, it was tough to get a grip of that initately until I met these people.

They showed me that what we like, shapes us. We become what we adore, hate, fear etc. We’re all pretty unique, but in being unique itself, makes us the same. So when we define what is ‘different’ to what is ‘normal’, what do we say?

The only time someone seems different to you is because of the following:
    • They are mentally different
    • They are physically different
    • They liked things you originally would have liked, not liked or don’t know of.
...and a lot more at that!

It’s a really complicated topic to think about.
I think in reality, it’s just better to not lie about what makes you unique. Find things you like yourself, express how much you like those things or want to do those things! Imitating isn’t always bad, since imitation is what teaches us a lot of things in life but never feel afraid to add your own extra spice of individuality to what you do.

So this poem I was looking into the idea of following the structure of a Riddle, I didn’t originally intend for the numbered parts of the poem, but I thought the list structure added to it.

I had just lost someone I considered a ‘love of my life’, I lost some friends, others started genuinely picking on me. I was livid. I know it wasn’t the friend I had the conflict with in particular, but I envied someone I knew for the worst thing ever.

Not having emotion.

I wanted to limit myself, I wanted to stop feeling because I felt maybe my feelings were the reason why everything tore itself apart (when in reality, it was faults on both sides, including mine).  I discovered a new love, work. I actually adore work to this day, but I know sometimes I do have to restrict myself otherwise it becomes an unhealthy amount.

During this time, my channel started becoming viral (or more or less, it was very active) and in reality it was a lot to handle at a younger age; It’s why whenever I see younger youtubers leave, I can understand why they do.  

One thing that bothered me for years to come was the fact someone a long time ago stated I was always playing ‘Victim’ when in reality that individual barely acknowledged me as a person. So, I actually thought I was in the wrong and tried to stop feeling, everything. It nearly worked.

The saddening thing is how much people can impact insecure individual’s lives. I was severely insecure at this point of time and saying these things left me to believe I was always the problem, even when I wasn’t. So when I started limiting my emotions, it became almost easier to ‘Get over it’.

But I missed it all! I missed being happy at something I liked! Hating something I hated! I loved those emotions, but at one point it genuinely felt impossible to feel most of those emotions. Depression didn’t help either, as much as I hate to say that.

My friends was an interesting write admittedly. If there is something I love the most in life it is my friends. I treasure them so dearly.

When I came across Kennings poetry, I had never attempted it before and it was so fun to just give it a try, I tried my best to revolve the words chosen around my friends and their interests.

‘Day-appetizers’ was the most fun admittedly, I liked the concept it gave; if you had no idea what to do with your day (metaphor for dinner), you could have an appetizer and see where it leads. In other words, I would hang out with my friends and my days would unfold and I never regret a single day with them all.

I am friends with many artists, music-makers and in general, I love being around people of creative tastes. However, I’d have to admit, life would be boring if we only were around those of our interests. I do love the positive vibes this poem radiates, it feels very accurate to how much I adore my friends.

I fell in love. It was definitely love, how did I know? Everything he said I remembered, with a memory as bad as can be, everything we did together just felt in perfect harmony. We would laugh, play games and it felt really nice, to have someone to talk to through it all.

We told one another all our secrets. But, when I did fall in love, I decided not to act on that love as he was dating someone else. I genuinely never thought they’d break up, I really didn’t want them to because they seemed so happy, I even did my best to help the girlfriend when I could when she herself, wasn’t feeling too good.

Soon enough, she and him split up, but it was clear I was in love with him. I accidentally told him. You know when people fakingly say “Oh oops! I didn’t mean to send that!” I told him that what happened years later, but in reality, no. It didn’t happen like that.

I had accidentally told him I liked him because our third friend was aiming his hardest to split them both up so he could get with his girlfriend, which was admittedly disgusting in my opinion. You shouldn’t attempt to split up a couple for the benefit of your own ego; I don’t get people who do that.

If you really love someone, you’d always want the best for them.

He discovered I liked him as I was sending evidence of the plan our third friend had placed because I had jokingly stated “Haha! I’ll take _____ then!” and... well yeah. He was just honestly flattered.

Soon enough, I came to realisation that many years after my love for the colour blue most likely originated from meeting him and many others. Hence the title.

This was an attempt of a Shakespearen Sonnet layout, however I do think I could’ve done a lot better with this one as a first attempt admittedly.

One thing my family and many others hated about me when I was younger was not that I loved art and wanted to draw, but more or less how unorganised I was; I would throw paper on the floor, practically grab any paper I could find and claim it as my own and it got to a point my family hid paper from me, but it was hilarious because I would always find it.

When you start off with your talents as a child, it’s quite beautiful how they can comfort you. I was very sheltered, not one for talking but I loved drawing for myself and others who would ask. Art always gave me a sense of comfort, it almost felt like days I wouldn’t have anyone around me, I would not be bothered because... I had art.

I also mentioned I loved writing on it, when young I was often given assignments from the school to write in a theme or re-write previous literature, it was insane the types of things I could do as a child regarding stories. I suppose I always had a love for writing, I just never really realised it was there, I just did it.
This poem’s form was Triolet, this quite similar to Limerick that I used in Music Notes for its repetition, but I do think the simplicity of it, does still add to that childish nature I had as a kid.

When I was young, I was very slow as described from my tutors. I didn’t pick up on things as fast as other kids and sometimes I felt bad about that, but I learned to just accept that sometimes, I take a bit of time.

But, there was one thing I wish I did understand before I was 6 years old. When I was 6 I was taken advantage of, not majorly, but I was still taken advantage of, when I thought it would end, I sadly stumbled into another situation where another completely different individual did the same. I found it tough to talk about to my close family, because I shut them off quickly after that.

It took me 10 years to talk about what had happened to me with them and others. I was afraid, sheltered and admittedly began outcasting myself because I was manipulated to believe it was something ‘normal’ when it wasn’t.

When I had finally confessed to my family, my Mother stood at my side through it all and I was grateful to have a woman like her in my life.

I am quite open with what had happened to me solely due to all the years I was not ‘open’. So I promised myself I would work on getting better and to this day, I’ve been getting better. If anything, saying it, does get it off your chest and I think telling someone was mostly the best part for me in the recovery process.

I learned about other’s situations inside and outside of my family and I’ve come to learn and love each and everyone of them for their stories, bravey and honestly, it just melts my heart how we can just see strangers on the street walking past us with happy expressions and we would not know they’ve been through hell.

The reason for the name ‘Mr. Man’ is because it did genuinely take me years to adapt into allowing males to actually go near me, be alone with me and sometimes even just touch me due to the situations I had been through. The name is simply a nod to how most of my harrassers were male and when a genuinely sweet man comes along wanting the best for me, it becomes a pain to have to explain to them why I might not be a 100% comfortable with being alone with them.

This has, however, improved, I now can be alone with certain male individuals and feel safe, this is most likely the biggest step in my recovery since telling someone. I am very happy to have all my friends who support me along the way.

I think the thing that hurts is how I have friends who are male, who do want the best for me and sometimes when getting to know me, they misinterpretate my discomfort as something of their wrongdoing when in reality it never was their fault; It was just a few bad people in the pool of good and they sadly reached to me first.

So this poem does have a quite ‘Deer in the Headlights’ vibe towards it for how some people when they are in vulnerable positions just simply freeze or are lost in confusion to know what is really happening.

I also try to tell my story as much as I can regarding my childhood, because I hope it inspires other young people to tell others their stories of child related issues with either mental health or people being creeps on them. People don’t realise at times how damaging it really can be on someone’s life – but it’s never too late to change those negative feelings, I know so many people who have changed their lives for the better, even after bad people stumble into them.

Never cut yourself short, you are always deserving of any kind of love.

This was inspired by Ballade forms of poetry. It was interesting to try something like this with a distorting feeling towards it, so I do think I worked my way a little outside of the structure for the last paragraph as I felt it was suitable.

When I was young, I used to love having my hair in a ponytail; and it hasn’t changed until this day! When growing up, I would often be in the sun, having fun in the garden of my Grandmother’s with my cousin Rosie and our friend who I shall keep unnammed, who we stated was a cousin as well, just because she felt like family.

We were very innocent, wonderful and happy as could be! After all, we were kids, yet it always melted my heart how even though we were as different as can be, we all still loved each other.

We loved pretending, imagining, singing, dancing and often even hurting each other on purpose by placing a seesaw on the top of a hill and waiting for the first one of us to fall off of it! It was hilarious how foolish we were, devious at best.

We were just a bunch of fun-loving kids and I wanted to show our simplistic nature through being inspired by Limerick poetry. It seemed fun, silly and definitely a delight to try!

As obvious as it can be, ‘Pray for Her Girl’ is about my birth. My Father was told to leave at night, while my Mother was in labour. The next day came and they both saw little me!

I wanted to include this into the poem as it felt sentimental and sweet. I see the poem as a basic introduction to my life and the poems up ahead.

The radio is an important factor as my parents named one of my middle names after a song my Father had heard on the radio.

My Mother apparently was so worried about me being potentially hurt at my birth, she didn’t realise when the doctors had came in to discuss my birth, it wasn’t me who was in need of help, it was her.
I thought that it really showed how much my Mother loved me before I was born, anticipating me to come into the world. I know deep down, she always wanted a little girl, so I guess I was what she wanted at the time.
I did try to base this poem on a rather Epic form solely because I loved the storyline layout, it almost has a rather fairytale opening to the poetry book as a whole, I don’t think I’ve ever given Epic an attempt before, but I do think first time, I could do better, but it definitely came out sounding rather loving, which I think I still personally count as a win.

This is more or less, a written piece, for my aunt who passed away a few weeks ago, yesterday (17th of May) was her funeral. I was absolutely devastated, but I had the opportunity to stand up and talk about her.

When I did, I started crying and admittedly, my entire family felt the emotion in my voice.

Why when a group of people share one singular opinion, they refuse to acknowledge another, even when they disagree?

Named after the song 'This Is Why I Need You' a song, I desire, treasure and hits close to home for me.

This was inspired by Coco.

I started my own little poetry book where I try to write a poem everyday or at least try to on most days. This is the second one I wrote.