We recently connected with Emma-jane Barlow and have shared our conversation below.

Emma-Jane, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Over the years I have started many different projects. But the one that I have been running the longest is the First Line Poets Project, which is a collaborative poetry project on Instagram. I started it during the pandemic to create a sense of community for writers. The successful project has been running for four years now and I am immensely proud of it! There have been over five hundred writers overall and more than four thousand poems written by writers I have paired up across the world. Some writers have been in it since the beginning and I am always recruiting more writers to become part of it. FLP is a family. And it’s the most meaningful project that I have created so far.

Other projects I have done include creating and running my own magazine Zest For Life at age 22, I ran it for a couple of years and it was such a wonderful expression of creativity and I got to work with some beautiful writers too. A more recent project that I started is The Magical Muse Club, which is a newsletter for writers that I created on the platform Substack. It delves into the magic of writing and explores diverse themes such as myths, folklore and witches. I have also just started a new page on Instagram called The Neurosparkly Club, which I plan to build over the next year or so to create a safe place for neurodivergent and disabled people to come together and learn and embrace their differences.

I’ve always had a strong passion for community and it is in the heart of everything I do. I was always a solitary writer before I joined the writing community on Instagram in 2020. It was a pivotal moment for me and I’ve not looked back since. I love to create, it’s at the core of me. But I also love to inspire others and collaborate as much as I possibly can.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Emma-Jane Barlow, often known colloquially as EJ or The Poet Witch. I’m a 31-year-old neurodivergent writer from the UK. I have two bestselling poetry books, Darkness & Light (2020) and Sins & Sunflowers: Second Edition (2023). I have had some wonderful experiences as a writer, including having my work featured on BBC Radio Manchester with David Scott three times, and having my poems featured in The Raven Review, Ink Gladiator Press and Chapters From Venus. I was also recently longlisted for the Heroica Poetry Prize.

I’ve been writing poetry since the age of seven. I always say that I didn’t choose poetry, it chose me. It’s always been the way that I understand my emotions and experiences of the world. Growing up as autistic and heavily masked meant that I needed an outlet to channel all of my feelings and for me, it was always writing. I would write poems, stories, songs, and to-do lists. I love words. And they bring a lot of comfort to me.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is to see my work resonate with my readers. I love receiving feedback and comments from people. Knowing that my words have had an impact on them or evoked an emotion is a wonderful part of being a poet. Seeing pictures of my books in people’s hands and learning that my words have provided comfort for them is one of my most special feelings as a writer. I write for myself first. And then choose if I want to share it with others. And I think that will always be the same for me. The words come to me, like whispers in my mind, getting louder until I have to write them down to find some relief. I put my soul into every piece of writing, so when someone says they resonate with it or have found a line or stanza particularly beautiful, it makes my heart happy.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I’ve always been motivated and driven by a need to tell stories. I remember being as young as four or five and reading books and just loving their structure, always a beginning, a middle and an end. I’d look at the growing collection of books on my bookshelf and dream of having my name on the front cover of a book one day. I made that dream a reality in 2020 with my first poetry book Darkness & Light and then my second Sins & Sunflowers: Second Edition in 2023. Now, I am driven to publish more books and keep telling stories, inspired by my own experiences and to tell stories of characters that I can’t stop thinking about. I have been lucky to have such a successful creative journey so far, but I have a lot more stories to tell. I am just getting started.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.emmajanebarlow.co.uk
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emmajanepoetry
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emmajanepoetry
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/emmajanepoetry
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@emmajanecreative