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Imagine my surprise when, sitting in A&E on Christmas Eve, I opened my emails to find I’d been named runner-up in my first poetry competition. Moments later, a doctor drew the curtain and apologised. I had just lost my first baby.

It wasn’t cinematic. There were no violins (much to my disappointment), just a stretcher and a reminder that life always finds balance; grief and hope can belong in the same moment. That, it turns out, is exactly where my best writing lives.

As a child, I wrote poems and performed them to my grandparents like I was a one-woman show on tour. They cheered politely (as grandparents do) which, for a long time, felt like enough. But adulthood soon arrived, ‘sensible’ plans took over and writing became something I 'used to do'. But there is nothing sensible about following a path that isn’t your own.

I trained as an English Teacher, earned a BA in English Literature, and followed the well-worn path of being good with words while forgetting I had my own. Poetry slipped into the background, resurfacing only occasionally, usually when something hurt enough to need language. Like the time my first boyfriend cheated on me with a Canadian opera singer in Berlin. It only took me 18 poems to forgive him.

In 2024, my grandad was diagnosed with a brain tumour and my grandmother with dementia. After my grandad’s death 3 months later, I struggled to connect with my grandma and suddenly, the past felt too fragile to hold. Conversations grew shorter and almost instinctively, I started writing poetry again and shortly after, I started reading it to her. Dementia needs familiarity and it turns out, a familiar image to her was me performing poetry.

Just before their diagnoses, I had begun working seriously on my debut novel, Lemonade. It is now over 100,000 words long and sitting patiently on my laptop, waiting for me to stop being afraid of it. The novel explores family, control, grief and what we inherit emotionally when no one is looking. Poetry, meanwhile, has become where I test ideas, bleed a little and stitch myself back together again.

In 2025, my short story called The Last Call was named runner-up in the short story category at Wakefield Word Fest, followed a few months later by a runner-up place in the New2theScene poetry competition.These moments mattered not because they changed everything, but because they confirmed something I’d been ignoring for years: writing isn’t a hobby I’m pretending to be good at; this is the dream.

My writing is shaped by grief, family trauma, fertility loss and the strange in-between space of trying to build a creative life while everything else keeps happening. I write poems, short fiction and novels. I write because it’s the only way I know how to make sense of things but I also have this stubborn hope within me that occasionally whispers “but what if…”.

This blog, and this moment, feels like a return. To the page. A return to the girl performing poems for her grandparents not knowing who she would become. I feel like I am only just beginning and I haven’t decided the ending yet.

If you’re a reader, a writer, or someone who has ever felt like they’re starting again later than planned, you’re very welcome here. I’m sharing the journey as honestly as I can, one sentence at a time.

You can follow along, read more and support my work on Instagram @k.a.warwick