About Me — Charly Louise Chow
Neurodivergent poet, spoken word artist & storyteller.
Hi there, my name is Charly and I’m a poet, spoken word artist and storyteller from the UK. I started writing poetry at 12 (spoiler alert, it was bad). In fact, I can still remember the first poem I ever wrote, which for some reason was published in the monthly newsletter for my local church. It went along the (cringe-inducing) lines of:
“There comes a time we all must face,
when spots appear upon your face,
and you wish you could avoid
the rest of the human race.
Growing up is hard to do,
and it happens to me and you.
People smile, people stare,
people admire your greasy hair.”
I hope I’ve come a long way since that first poem, although I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there who think I should have stopped with poem 1.
I live in the UK, with my partner Matt, my six year old son Patrick and our two yappy little Maltese dogs. We like all things art and books, as well as being out in nature and exploring the world around us. We also play a bunch of video games, including Farming Simulator, which is mostly Patrick driving tractors into lakes, and Cars 3: Driven to Win, which is mostly Patrick driving off cliffs.
I got diagnosed with ADHD and dyspraxia before I got diagnosed as a poet, but I am pretty well adjusted to being neurodivergent at this stage and actually quite enjoy ADHD hyperfocus, especially when gaming or working on a big creative project.
By day, I’m the Managing Director of a marketing services group specialising in SaaS and healthcare. By night, I write, play board games, sing, paint and videogame — pretty much anything creative, with creative people.
There have been a bunch of defining experiences in my life, some positive, some not so much. I am grateful for every experience that has humbled and shaped me.
As a writer, I love to explore themes of belonging, otherness and identity, as well as what it means to be home, to love and to be loved.
On Medium I write poems and spoken word pieces, and I’m branching out into flash fiction and short stories. When I landed here I immediately fell in love with the poetry community, and I am so grateful for their friendship and support.
One of the defining characteristics of my work is a prevailing sense of hope, and a firm belief in the intrinsic goodness of the human heart. There are so many wonderful souls on Medium from so many diverse walks of life, and I can’t wait to meet more and more of you as time goes on.
I self-published my first poetry collection, Roots/Wings, in 2023.
Since then I’ve appeared in lots of literary journals, including Londemere Lit, Epistemic Literary, Curio Cabinet Magazine, Duck Duck Mongoose Magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Micromance Magazine, among others.
If you’d like to connect with me, I’d love to hear from you:
Twitter: @whatcharlywrote
Insta/Threads: @whatcharlywrote
Medium: Charly Chow
