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Struggling to write? In a panic about sending your next project out into the world? Now that she has 'been there, done that' Natalie Ann Holborow offers up frank wit and kind advice to other writers in her new blog post:

'I haven’t posted in over a year, but I figured launching my first book is something worth noting down now, while it’s happening, because your first time will only ever happen once (ahem).'

'I suppose people will expect me to gush here about the elation, the excitement, the surging rush of ecstasy at finally seeing five years’ of work and a dream I’d nurtured since I was writing two-page ‘novels’ in felt pen in front of The Powerpuff Girls finally come to life. I’d envisioned it and doodled it into the diaries I kept stashed in my pillowcases for years – me at a table in Waterstone’s, no longer the shy, sad mousey girl in secondary school but happy and signing books in front of a line of people who didn’t think writing was ridiculous or uncool. And you know what? Yes, it feels amazing.'

[...]

I’m feeling something deeper too. A fizz in my stomach, a slight edge of fear. It suddenly doesn’t feel that long since my Dad died. I wonder —in the off way people who do not believe in the afterlife might wonder—if my Dad will hear me reading about him. If he’d be happy to fill the room with me, if our voice will carry.

I hope so. Because at the very least, I want him to be proud. The same way he was proud to see my first poem published in a school anthology. I remember him saying that he didn’t understand it but that it looked nice on the page, neat and important.

And, for those of us still alive, I hope this collection will help to start a conversation too. One about loss or addiction or fathers. I hope the poems will offer a small, collective invitation to peer into the dark things in life and talk about them.

For those interested, please do come along to one of my national launches, readings or events and say ‘hello’. Let’s get this conversation going.

'Moonlight washes across the entire, exposed landscape of this poetry collection. The ‘white eye’ orbits from the first page to the last, with a quiet, ancient glint amid the frail unfolding of melancholy lives. Swansea-born writer Natalie Ann Holborow levels the lunar gaze onto a sudden first kiss, violence at a party, memories of past love, wretchedly drunken taxi rides, and a bundle of other tender, inflamed moments. Each is conjured in imagery that aches.'

'And Suddenly You Find Yourself is somehow both meticulous and raw, as if Holborow has mulled infinitely on how best to describe the act of stripping us to our simplest selves.

[...]

'Shoot for the moon? Holborow has landed, roamed its face, dipped into the craters, and gathered an armful of stars while up there.'

Sophie Baggott reviews Natalie Ann Holborow's debut poetry collection And Suddenly You Find Yourself for Wales Arts Review.

Natalie Ann Holborow's debut poetry collection And Suddenly You Find Yourself was recently released launched at the Kolkata Book Fair in India, the biggest book fair in the world, where Holborow has been taking part in The Valley, The City, The Village project. As part of this project, Welsh and Indian writers are travelling between the two countries, engaging with newly discovered cultures through writing poetry, prose, blogs and stories. Contributions will result in an anthology featuring all writers combined, due to be published by Parthian in 2018. The poems in Holborow's new collection explore what it means to be human: where the...