I explore white working-class identity, race, and belonging through creative writing and poetry, using it as a tool for reflection, research, and critical engagement. My writing is closely connected to my research, allowing lived experience and personal insight to inform the work I do in museums and academia.
Upcoming Project: The Space Between
I am developing a project that brings together working-class poets across racialised experiences to explore shared and divergent experiences of class and race in Britain. Through workshops, collaborative sharing, and reflection, the project aims to produce an anthology of poetry that highlights voices that are often underrepresented, while creating space for dialogue and connection.
Below are two poems Fragments of a white girl (2025), and The Gap Between us(2020).
Fragments of a white girl
Starving Ethiopian kids on the news
Bob Geldof
The song Heal the World
Do They Know It’s Christmas Time at All
The Fugees, Lauryn Hill on the radio
Linford Christie, a super star on Telly
Michale Jackson, Black or white
My mum watching cowboy and Indian films in the afternoons
She’d say “Clint Eastwood, he’s so handsome” and
“I’m rooting for the Indians”
My dad monologuing about our Irish ancestry
“The plight of migrants” he’d say
“The bloody English, the colonists”
“Blasted Tory scum”
He was a bricky, he told me stories of getting into fights with guys at work
Shouting at them for being racist
I felt proud of him, I learnt from him
My English grandad’s racism though
Forced to his house one day
A family meal
He was ranting, saying “Black people should go back to the jungle”
In another breath he turned to me and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up
With attitude and defiance, I said “I will marry a Black man and live in the jungle”
My mum scolded me
Said “he’s old, he doesn’t know any better, don’t wind him up”
There were only white people where I lived
A little Dorset village
Wealthy farmers, people with horses and stables
The red coats, the fox hunt would go out sometimes
My dad protested to stop them
We lived on the edge of the village
The poorest part
A small council estate
All red brick buildings
Burnt out cars and boy racers
We played on go-karts on the wasteland
Our bus to the high school had torn fake leather seats
The kids who lived in the rich part of the village
They had a coach with carpet seats
I took the bus for 40 minutes to the nearest town from the village
My best friend was a boy called James
He was Pakistani
The only non-white person at high school
They called me a gypo
I scavenged school uniform from lost property
Stood in line for my free school meals, pink tickets marking my poverty in the canteen
They shouted “paki lover, paki fucker” at me
They told him I was dirty
He was my best friend
When I was a kid, I asked Santa for a Black doll
She had a red dress
I named her Poppy
Why did I want her?
I used to run away all the time
I was sad and scared
Arguments and violence at home
I was scared of my dad
I shouted back at him, but I wanted him to love me
My mum staring vacant, always dieting, always depressed
I would run up into the fields around the village
Sit and look down on the river below
I dreamed of escape from that small place, dreamed of the city far away
I left home very young
At 14
Living in caravans
On site with travelers near the village
Rummaging in those big bins at the back of supermarkets
Dogs, we had twelve dogs
Police raids
Nights by candles
The police caught me once
Put me in a foster home
I escaped by morning
My nan Jean would write over the years
Different places I lived
She loved me, my Nan
No matter what I did
When I lived in London for the first time at 20
My second boyfriend (my first had been a white boy from a warehouse I worked on weekends at 17, Mike Brown – he left to join the army)
He was from Clapham
He was mixed race
He lived with his nan
His name was Ashley
A girls’ night at mine, getting ready to go out
Warehouse parties in Seven Sisters
White girls
Makeup and nails
“What’s it like being with a Black man?”
“Sleeping with a Black man was on their bucket list,” they said
“What’s it like being with a white guy?” I retorted
“What’s your problem, Erin?” they huffed
I met my eldest son’s dad
He was white
At Cambridge University studying French literature
A tourist at our parties
He liked me, said he “liked the different ones” whatever that meant
I wasn’t interested
My friends said he was a catch
So, I tried
I was trouble
Up to no good
He was sensible and stable
He was white, middle class, wealthy family, educated
His dad had a swimming pool at his house
He was who I was supposed to want to be with, wasn’t I?
Was it peer pressure? Societal pressure?
He was nice
Maybe I was just mean
Rough handling of my baby by midwives
They treated my eldest son, who is white, with more care
Or am I imagining it? Am I too sensitive?
“Black men leave their children”, white women told me
Bounce bounce my baby’s hair
“He’s light skin, maybe he will pass” someone told me
It’s all the same but different
“You’re a proper chav mum now, kids of different colours” a white friend laughed
I am confused
I am angry
The Gap Between Us
He holds me close, “people died for this”
I know, I say
“No, you don’t” (No, I don’t, not really, not in the same way)
“I couldn’t speak to white people for two weeks, even you, when I found out”
They killed George Floyd because he was Black
“How do I know you’re not racist?” he asks
He looks at me
I love him so much
I say “I probably am, I’m white” (why did I say that?)
The air is paused
I wait
“Thank you” he says (I’m confused)
His voice is serious, his face pleading that I understand him
He looks at our sleeping baby boy, so innocent, my heart swells with love
“He’s different, he is half African” he says, “people will hate him just for the colour of his skin”
I love him, I love our son
I know, I say
“No, you don’t” (No, I don’t, not really, not in the same way)