I read to escape but then I always get trapped in a world that closely resembles mine
Introduction
I’m Ruth (she/her) and I write a lot, mainly poems, but I am also a historian, proofreader, and tarot card reader. I don't want to spill my whole life story but I'm also dyspraxic and hypermobile. I’m currently studying dress and textile histories, and my research is focused on deliberately concealed garments in UK buildings. I’m going to list a few of my WIPs and projects so that you know what to expect from my blog!
WIPs and Projects:
Substack - I now have a newsletter for my historical research if you are interested! It is about deliberately concealed garments and concealment rituals around clothing and shoes, the stories of the people who owned these objects and their emotional dimensions.
Poetry collection - Holly House. I need to go back over some of my posts and add tags for the poems that are part of this collection. Holly House refers to the name of the house that I first started writing poems in and that has been a massive source of inspiration.
Mirror World WIP - a historical fantasy/magical realism book I have been planning for a long time
Tales and Stories of the Fairy Kind - I can't help but dabble in rewriting fairy tales, but with much more of a historical perspective. Right now, I am writing a seventeenth century take on Cinderella that focuses on domestic relationships and how romance and fantasy is used as a means of escape and freedom for many people surviving through abuse
Here are all my links:
My Substack
My Etsy
My Instagram
My Pinterest
Thank you for stopping by!
Ruth
we are that which is foreign; daisies which drift & dwell upon the air of elegance, delicately untouched by the vast twine of such sorrow, only ever shared but never held & never seen.
“Forgive me if I don’t talk much at times. It’s loud enough in my head.”
— Unknown
I dream in hurried whispers
frantically calling for settled peace
amongst troubled thoughts
and empty seats
crowded by a droning babble
forever in a constant struggle
I claim only ease
in my own troubled company
watching their restless words
clamour for attention
over nothing but an empty dream
On Existence and the Human Experience.
Joseph Campbell, “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth”, Ep. 4, “Sacrifice and Bliss” / Louise Glück, “Snowdrops” / Ellen Bass, “The Thing Is” / @obeliskandmetronome / Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” / Maggie Stiefvater, “Blue Lily, Lily Blue” / Eve L. Ewing, “Testify”
you never truly appreciate the intimacy of the expression “I'll gut you like a fish” until you actually gut a fish
And when the night falls, and darkness lays beside me, I don't want to fall in love, I want to be in your arms and forgotten as the mist touches the hills...................
everytimeyousaygoodbye ©
“I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams.”
— Virginia Woolf, from ‘The Waves’
Monday, 19th July 2021
I have scars on my knees from when I was six, hopeful of the days that I could run free from the tangled branches enclosing my mind. They wrapped me in with faces whose eyes always slipped across mine. And then they found my legs and let me slip, numb again from yesterday's wound. I would run, all limitations abandoned, chasing the friends I wasn't close to, always branches apart from the world I was already consumed by. But I was happy. And then I would fall. It happened again and again until I saw the danger in falling, now white stretching marks across the bottom of my knees. I saw the danger in everything.
Historian, writer, and poet | proofreader and tarot card lover | Virgo and INTJ | dyspraxic and hypermobile | You'll find my poetry and other creative outlets stored here. Read my Substack newsletter Hidden Within These Walls. Copyright © 2016 Ruth Karan.
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