This is not a portfolio. It is a record of a life, written down as it happened….
My name is James, and this website is my attempt to archive my writing, which, under a loose banner, is mostly poetry.
I started writing things down in 1992, at the age of seventeen, with no real plan beyond wanting to keep a record of my thoughts and feelings. Given my experiences growing up, it felt like a quiet form of self-help, a way of reflecting and making sense of things. At first, it was private and instinctive rather than creative.
Over time, I grew more confident and began sharing some of what I had written. People suggested that parts of it were actually “quite good,” and that encouragement was enough to make me keep going. I have never really stopped since.
By 1995, I was writing regularly and began using WH Smith writing pads. It started as a superstition and became a ritual. Those pads now hold decades of my life. Many of them are still with me, filled with thoughts, mistakes, crossings-out, and ideas, and this site exists partly to preserve what they contain. This is one of those pads from 1995.
I have never been interested in being a professional writer. This work exists for honesty, not polish.
That said, I have written occasionally for a local newspaper about local history, and for VW magazines about VW campers and vans. Once, a very short story of mine was published in a magazine. I also wrote a book in my twenties, though the less said about that, the better. None of that defines this site. This is about continuity, not qualifications.
This is my personal collection of thoughts and writing, capturing my life from awkward teenage years through to my slightly less awkward middle-aged ones. I have always tried to reflect not only my own life, but also the times I have lived through. I am not a technical writer, but I like to think that taken together, the work captures something honest. For me, the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.
There will be monthly updates where I reflect on poems, writing, creativity, and my relationship with poetry.
You can find those here:
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/category/updates-things-and-stuff/
This site is primarily an archive. I have written continuously since 1992 and in fairly prolific fashion. I have many writing pads that need preserving, and I want to create a permanent record of that work. This will not be a traditional blog. I will often add poetry daily, moving between different years and different pads. It may sometimes feel like a lot, but that’s only because a life is a lot.
The main site is here:
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/
My earliest surviving writing is here:
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/category/poems-1992/
More recent writing can be found here:
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/category/poems-and-writing-2020/
On the left side of the site, you will see the work organised by year and then by month. I think of this as a jigsaw-puzzle approach, slowly building a poetic timeline of my life from 1992 to now. You will also see what poems people are currently reading, along with my Bluesky feed if you would like to follow me there:
https://bsky.app/profile/the-jfg.bsky.social
Each poem is accompanied by a scanned image of the original handwritten page. This exposes my poor handwriting, spelling, crossings-out, and edits, but that is intentional. I wanted to strip the process back and show the layers. The mistakes, corrections, and revisions are part of the work. They show how each piece was made.
A typical example is these poems from 2001 called, Just One More
I have dated most of my writing, and when I upload it, I include the date and my age at the time. I think this changes how a poem is read. Likewise, I almost want the reader to form opinions based not only on the poem itself, but on how old I was when I wrote it.
I feel fortunate to have such a detailed record of my life. Sometimes I read something and wonder who it was about, or what I was feeling, but it is always me. The quality may not always shine, but it reflects the many versions of myself across time, and also the core beliefs that have stayed with me.
I do not write to impress. I write to capture moments. Across years and decades, those moments become a story. That is why I truly believe that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is not an excuse for imperfect writing; it is an explanation of what this collection really is: a life, written down.
Please don’t hesitate to comment, and please do not hesitate to engage.
Thank you,
James
The Boy Behind The Glasses. Poetry and Writing 
Your blog is a real treasure trove. It must be wonderful and scary at te same time to have your life lying in front of you… on all of those pages of all those notebooks. You captured everything – the good and the bad. I think it is very brave of you to go back and see it all unfold again. A great and courageous idea to archive your whole life.
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Thank you. I am not sure if it’s courageous or madness. It’s been delightful, see myself grow up from 17 to now. It’s amazing to see how my writing has changed. But it has been hard, points or periods in my life have been painful and I’ve had to come to terms with my own toxicity whether it was intentional or not. You can over think this stuff but it’s been a learning journey. Rally I wanted to save my writing pads for further deterioration or loss. It’s certainly been emotional and upsetting at times. Imagine actually meeting your younger self! But I have given life to lots of pieces of writing that we’re just scribbled down and forgotten.
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Oh I’d have a conversation with my younger self, for sure. Ha!
It’s a beautiful thing you’re doing. Very interesting what you have to say. Keep writing, I will definitely keep reading. 🙂
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Thank you. That does mean a lot :). I am not sure people reading my poems see the bigger picture and they don’t have to. I write a lot, so it varies in quality but for me, it’s like the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. :). Each poem really is just a piece of the complicated jigsaw which I guess is all of us.
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That is very true. Glad you still have the box where you keep all those pieces… I think I lost mine… 😉
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That’s a shame for you but it’s miracle I still have any of mine given how much I’ve moved about. That’s said, there are pads I’ve lost and some are really damaged.
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Good you’re on a mission to save what’s in them, then 🙂
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I think so. I don’t want to be pretentious about it, but it’s my life. As painful as it might be or whatever love / hate relationship I have with me, my past and then it’s still a wonderful privilege to have that record, I am really lucky to have them. It’s amazing to look at words I wrote thirty years ago and see glimpses of me then.
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I am pretty sure it is. You see yourself grow… that is a precious thing. 🙂
I’m off to work… have a good day!
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I am at work :). You have a good day too 🙂 thank you for the comments.
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I love this page.
it was wonderful to read all of that, know all of that as one of your readers and
what an adorable picture!
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That’s very kind. Thank you. I don’t know about the adorable picture part but thank you. I really appreciate you commenting. X
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Just to say that picture was taken when I was 4 – I know where it was taken, but I have no memory of it and I don’t know what I am holding. It’s strange how we have these pictures, but they are almost meaningless to us in one sense yet in other ways they are special. I look at that young boy and think about what he was and how he became me. I picked it because it seemed like a point of innocence.
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I understand, it puts us in a perspective of vulnerability we can’t really see, we are grown and don’t remember knowing ourselves that way. I think it’s perfect
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