amber can walk

If you're reading this, it means that my second poetry chapbook, MY MOTHER CALLED ME A HERMIT, is being released today. Unlike my first collection, which felt like a distillation of a depressed person soaking their brain in the internet during a moment of worldwide crises, these poems are very recent. I spent the last year of my life writing, editing and compiling them together. They are, in a sense, the most present version of my writing, which is a sentence I am typing out right now in this moment, a full 3 weeks before I intend to release it. I've thought a lot about the creative process as labour over the past couple of years. Living by myself, working full time and trying to squeeze anything artful from the few hours I have before I go to bed are all elements in this process, but more than that, they cost me time. Any time I don't spend writing something meaningful and cogent feels wasted. I feel the past on my back constantly and even doing something successfully brin...

EVERYTHING IS DAMAGE  AND I'VE NEVER FELT MORE SANE THE WALLS WISH YOU A MERRY WHATEVER DAY WHEN THE KINGDOM COMES  I'LL HAVE SO MANY IMAGES OF CONNECTING SEAMS THAT I WON'T EVEN BE UNNERVED  BY THE BURNING SMELL I'VE THOUGHT ABOUT WOMANHOOD AS  A DESCENDING BOX THAT I'M PERPETUALLY HOVERING ABOVE ALONE-NESS IS THE ANTIDOTE TO A NERVOUS SKY I'VE NEVER FELT MY SKIN BUZZ LIKE THIS I WISH I’D MADE MY FRIENDS LAUGH MORE  BEFORE SEALING MYSELF IN THE CONTAINER BUT IT'S DONE NOW I'LL MAKE USE OF THE ROTATING CEILING  IT'S SPACE TO TUCK MYSELF INTO I'VE NEVER FELT GODLIER THAN THIS

This is not a review. About a month ago, I saw The Shrouds (2024) in the cinema for the first time. After ruminating on it, posting a quick review to Letterboxd and eating some very mediocre sushi, I found myself, periodically crying throughout the rest of the evening and well into the early hours of the morning. This, unfortunately, ruined the unintentional double feature I did with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (2024), a film I remember very little about, but have the vague sense that I did, in fact, like it. It wasn't for the lack of quality that the details of this fluffy little movie slipped away, but rather due to me having what I will euphemistically call a 'bad turn'. I do spiral. I've been known to dwell. I've sunk to depths of depression that I didn't think I was capabale of. I've been triggered by the innocuous and I've been triggered by the terrifying. I've spaced out for days and been knocked back to reality by something as mundane as a ...

Note: This post was originally published on 8th December 2021 but I'm reposting it here because the site it was originally posted to has disappeared. I haven't edited it from the original document so everything should be exactly as it was when it was written, except there are two links in the original post that I can't seem to recover. I didn't keep the source document for whatever reason and it hasn't saved in Google Docs so whatever I referenced at the time has been lost to history. * Jumbo (2020) is, by all accounts, a classic love story, with its meet cute, its honeymoon period, its 'meeting the parents scene', its breakup, reconciliation and typical marriage ending. The film follows the shy and awkward Jeanne as she starts her job at a fairground and eventually falls in love with one of the rides, who she affectionately calls Jumbo. Where her life was previously grey and drab, she suddenly finds happiness in the bright neon glow of her lover. The story’...