I never thought I’d publish a poetry book. I’ve loved reading and writing from a young age but poetry was never something I was super passionate about until I turned 16. Before that, I wrote songs, and still do write. My single ‘Blue Summer’ just released and I have more songs ready, and I don’t think my songs would be what they are today without the poetry.
I consider myself a lyricist more than a songwriter which is probably where poetry started to come in, I’d write down lyrics that I liked and one day I just kept writing until it turned into a full poem. I liked it so much, I decided to leave it like that. Soon poetry became my escape, and all the things that I didn’t want to talk about, I would write down. I filled up an entire notebook in a month and kept buying more poetry books, absolutely baffled at how they could turn exactly what I was feeling into words. I wanted to do that too, so I kept writing. I never thought I was going to publish any of it, I just thought my poems would be great to look back to when I was writing a song, and take inspiration from.
It then came to the point where I had so many notebooks full of poems that I thought, I really want the world to see this. I really want to be published. So I googled how to go about it.
It was hard at first. I had to type up all my poems and compile them into a manuscript and find publishers to send them to. This was all very new to me and I had no idea where to even begin, it was just trial and error. The first manuscript of Aches and Epiphanies was actually called ‘thoughts’, and after sending it to a few publishers, I knew it needed to be revamped. That’s when I decided to have two sections to my book and rename it, and from there I was much happier with it and knew I was ready to start sending out manuscripts again. I probably sent them to 25 publishers, at least. Maybe even more, but I wanted to be published and knew I couldn’t stop until I was.
That’s when Olympia sent me an email that changed everything. I no longer needed to send out manuscripts because I found the publisher for me! It was an incredible moment that I will never forget.
About a year later I finally got to open a box of my books and it was completely surreal. To be honest with you, I still can’t believe it’s real. Every time I hold my book I get more and more proud that I got to put all my feelings somewhere, and that I can share my vulnerability with people. I think it’s so important to express yourself through whatever medium you can, and I’m really glad I started to write poetry.
I hope my book inspires other poets to keep writing, and that it shows readers that it’s okay to feel absolutely everything and that even the pain can be turned into art.
Get yourself a copy of Aries book, here!
