hello! and welcome…
It’s lovely to meet you all. My name is Mhàiri (pronounced Vah-ree) and my pronouns are they/them. Already I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Medium and so, I thought it might be time to properly introduce myself.
I am an amateur writer who mainly creates poetry, but is also working on a couple of prose pieces. I’ve enjoyed writing since I can remember — whether that be a song about wanting to be a rock star at the age of eight or angsty text posts on Tumblr at the age of fourteen. Throughout high school, I was highly praised by my English teacher for my creative writing and almost applied to study creative writing at university. However, I became somewhat wrapped up in earning money, but also became fascinated with the workings of the brain, and decided instead to apply for Psychology. After doing well in my first round of exams at fifteen, I decided to apply to university a year early.
Growing up in a rural area of Scotland, and not being quite ready to appreciate its beauty, the space felt oppressive and I was keen to leave it as soon as possible. I pulled up my bootstraps, applied to the best universities in the country, and got the grades I needed to set off to the University of Glasgow to study Psychology, three weeks after my 17th birthday. I thoroughly enjoyed the academic aspect of university, but the social aspect was incredibly daunting and the city began to feel like a new kind of oppressive. After breaking up with my first love, heartbroken and beginning to feel the tug of academia on my mental health, I began in earnest to write a lot of poetry.
The poetry I was writing as a heartbroken eighteen-year-old was certainly not great. I believe the only poetry I had ever read from a book was Rupi Kaur, and thus my own was very much in the form of the new wave of “Tumblr” poetry, consisting of very basic imagery and often no thought given to cadence, or theme for that matter. It was a great solace to me, though. I wasn’t writing for anyone but myself and, therefore, I had unknowingly created a wonderful platform to explore my grief through the creativity that I had somewhat stifled during the past year of academia. I continued to write poetry, but much more casually. I found that without the drive of heartbreak, the words didn’t come to me so easily.
In my third year of university, I finally found my people — other creative souls that continue to inspire me with their art. I finished university in the year 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, my mental health in tatters, my motivation to begin a job I didn’t love worse still, and no clue as to what it was that I actually wanted to do. I had moved between career ideas throughout university and had decided that I wanted to go on to further study — to get my masters degree, apply for a doctorate, and become a researcher. I was thoroughly intrigued by the neuroscience behind mental illness (and still am!), but my dissertation in my fourth year completely sapped me of all inclination for further study and I instead fell into applying for any job I could.
If you also had to search for a job in 2020, you might understand the misery I plunged into — I was getting rejected not just from graduate jobs, but cleaning jobs and waitressing jobs, both of which I had ample experience in. By the end of the summer of 2020, I turned 21, was still unemployed, and in a completely suffocating depressive episode. It was then that I saw a different path for my life, one which involved something I never thought I’d consider — moving back home, to my rural house amongst the hills of Scotland. Suddenly it seemed to me the only possible route. As much as I loved the people in this city, the city itself had grown stifling. I craved peace, I craved quiet, I craved space to breathe and recover. Therefore, I set off back into the hills.
Whilst the north and rural life posed its own difficulties — mainly that of isolation and loneliness — I certainly felt that I had made the right decision. The time and space rural life offered me helped me to realise what it is that I want to do with my life (aside from writing), which is, to become a primary school teacher. I had been a babysitter for two amazing children during the last two years of my undergrad and realised that I not only had the patience for it but that it brought me so much joy to work with these young and open minds. I enjoyed it so much that on their walk home, they would like to stop at a flower just to notice its beauty or feel the necessity of climbing on every wall that could be found. Truly there is much of the heart of the poet in children, and I found my own mind being opened up to new ways of thinking about the world just by spending time with them. Their parents were absolutely incredible too: not only did they show me amazing and beautiful ways to communicate with children that I know I will bring into my own parenting someday, but they helped heal parts of myself that I didn’t even know needed fixing or tending to.
With the idea of becoming a teacher, I thought about what kind of life I wanted for myself. I had graduated so early, and my twenties felt open for more than just a career and possibly a mortgage — I wanted to travel: to learn new languages, to become immersed in different cultures. Therefore, I decided to train in Teaching English as a Foreign Language so that I might get a feel for teaching before I committed to it, and to be able to work and live abroad.
However, unfortunately, clean air and beautiful woods to walk in just outside your front door don’t heal years-in-the-making mental illnesses. So, the going has been tough, and I’m still working on recovering and getting myself back out there after over a year of struggling to take care of myself. During this year, though, the healing power of writing came back to me and this time I felt so many words and images bursting out of me. I felt that I not only enjoyed writing, but that I needed to write. As Charles Bukowski wrote in so you want to be a writer?:
“if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it”
I found that it did come bursting out of me; that if I didn’t have the ability to write down the thoughts and images that poured out of me I might go crazy; that so much of my soul was calling out for the need to write, and not only write but share that writing. After completing a fair few poems that I was really proud of, I decided that I wanted to start sharing them. And here we are! In the present.
Currently, my days are mostly taken up with reading, which has fast become my favourite hobby alongside writing. I really enjoy writing reviews for the books that I read too, and do so on Goodreads. If any of you are over there and are keen to connect over books, my account can be found here. I may consider writing reviews over here if there is a book that I fall in love with and want to explore on a more intricate level. My favourite genres are classics (which I’m slowly making my way through), literary fiction, poetry, fantasy and sci-fi, and queer literature (my most recent favourite being Carol by Patricia Highsmith). My favourite authors range from fantasy writing lions like George R. R. Martin, J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin, to poetical and philosophical writers such as Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, and to classical romance novelists such as Jane Austen. My favourite books I read in 2021 were: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton; Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval; The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy; To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. My current favourites of 2022 are The Waves by Virginia Woolf and Middlemarch by George Eliot. I am definitely still in my early days of figuring out who my favourite poets are, but so far my favourite collections have been Ariel by Sylvia Plath, Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke, Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong, and Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire.
After a chilly winter, I’m also finally getting back out into the hills. I love hiking and finding new beautiful walks around where I live. I’m currently in the middle of learning how to drive and hoping to get my license by the end of summer so that I might fully enjoy the splendour of Scotland in autumn!
I also really treasure music, both listening to it and playing it. I play the bass guitar and make Spotify playlists like it’s my god damn job! If you’re interested in checking my playlists out, you can find my Spotify here — I have quite a few “reader-friendly” playlists that have been marked out if you, like me, love a bit of background music that suits the vibe of the book you’re reading.
And, I guess, that about sums everything up! Whilst my audience is still in its baby stages, it has honestly given me so much joy to see people enjoying my work, commenting on my posts, and highlighting lines that resonate with them, or that they just enjoy. My heart has been so full of nervous excitement at posting my work and I can’t wait to continue doing so.
