We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Harriet Selina a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Harriet, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Learning to find and establish my creative voice over the past few years has been a long and (still!) evolving process – especially after years of writing in a more academic space. I think that immersing myself in others’ art has been my biggest teacher in terms of in terms of identifying and honing in on the kind of work that I want to create. Most of my background has been critical rather than creative, so perhaps I’d be further ahead in my creative journey/career if I’d moved into that space earlier, but I loved my work in academia and wouldn’t change that!

Finding a creative community has also been instrumental for me – and a key part of my craft development. But honestly, the only real way to ‘learn’ to write, in my experience, is to commit pen to paper daily. Write, write, write – even when it’s terrible! Insecurity/ fear of rejection and imposter syndrome are the biggest obstacles, and the only way to conquer those is to keep writing and sharing.

Harriet, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I graduated with a First Class Honours in English Literature from the University of Buckingham, an an MA in Modern and Contemporary Lit from Birkbeck – where I focused on fictional renderings of contemporary conflicts. After an internship in publishing I began working at a local secondary school, managing various reading and comprehension programmes for teenagers. That work allowed me to develop my coaching and instructional skills while also giving me the time (thanks to term structuring etcetera) to invest in my own creative work!

During the pandemic I launched a poetry page which now has over thirty thousand followers, and this platform’s been instrumental in networking and cementing my creative following. It’s worth noting that I’ve battled (bloodily) with trauma recovery and panic disorder over the last few years and that threads through a lot of my writing on there. I think that fusion of recovery and poetry is where I found a lot of my audience. I self-published a poetry collection, ‘What Bliss Remains’, targeted towards that audience earlier this year.

I left the school I was working at in December to invest fully in my creative pursuits and now, aside from my own personal projects, I also offer freelance editing an tutoring services. What I’m really working to build is a community space – of both readers and clients – where we can work through all that’s terrible and wonderful together!

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

Like I mentioned before, what I really want is to create, and care for, a creative community space. Connection is at the root of all of my creative pursuits. I’m currently at the editing stage of a novel that I’m hoping to find an agent for towards the end of this year – which really digs into trauma recovery – and to have that reach a large audience is a huge goal of mine. Even though I gained my social media presence through writing poetry, prose writing is my biggest passion – and I want to begin connecting with people through that. While that’s in the works, my mission is to keep expanding my reader and client base and cultivate a safe, hopeful space for anyone who’s struggling to navigate life’s messiness!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Consistency and resilience have been the key for me here. I’ve had so many periods, as most creatives on IG have, where my reach has been limited and my works’ visibility has plummeted, and it’s so easy to get disheartened and stop sharing, but you really have to keep pushing. Your best bet is to map out a posting schedule that’s sustainable for you and stick to that. You also want to keep an eye on your audience analytics to establish when your followers are most active so that you can schedule posts around those times. What I will say, though, is that the ‘business’ focus can detract from the joy, and the work, for me at least, is really nothing without the joy! So stay consistent, be smart with your choices, but don’t stop having fun! Also, find and nurture your online community – that’s what your entire social media presence hinges on.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @harrietselinapoetry