Glass Beads Newsletter Jun ‘25: The Beginning

I sit here in my best friend Grace’s living room in Angel, with her on her phone by my side. On the walls in her living room are Poems on the Underground she bought with her flatmates at the Transport Museum— £3 each. One is about a boy, another on children at play. I’ve known Grace since we were eleven at the same school, little girls in retrospect, working out how grow up and be alive in these times. She’s the one who does the cover art for the issues, who I’ve seen morph and change as an artist, who I’m so proud of and think is so brave.

The past year for me has been painted in shades of envy. I felt it so hotly when Grace told me she was moving to London that I cried all the way to the Toby Carvery. Other friends in bands and forming zines and getting big jobs and moving into flats would knock me back again and again. I was happy for them— of course I was happy for them. But I felt stuck because while I was surrounded by examples of what I should be doing, I didn’t know what it was that I wanted to do. I was content with my situation— I lived at home, worked in the same place with my mum, see my little brother every day and my boyfriend on the weekends.

It wasn’t until last year, sat on the red cushions tucked away in a corner at the BFI, early for the screening of Don’t Look Now that I got the first glimmerings of Glass Beads. I had made a Substack with the same name a few months earlier, posted a personal essay or two before deleting it entirely, writing it off out of embarrassment. I’m a writer, always have been, but I’ve never felt right in that label. I like to write, I like what I write, but hate talking about what it is that I write. This was alleviated slightly over the course of my Master’s in Creative Writing (thank you Barbara Raw for my scholarship!!) There I got to spend every Wednesday in Bloomsbury in workshops and discussions with teachers and agents who told us our prose was strong and our concepts were interesting, but that writers only made on average £6k a year from their books and that rejection rates were sky high. I love writing, but do I love it that much? I scrolled through calls for Editorial Assistants, the ones so sought after they disappear after 48 hours. I love books, could see myself in publishing, but did I want it that much?

“I think I’d like to curate something,” I’d said to my boyfriend in the BFI, “a journal or a collective type thing.” This was the glimmering, before I got caught up with coursework and put the thought from my mind, again writing it off out of embarrassment. Months and months passed until I didn’t get a job I wanted, was sure I would get. Well paid, based in Hampstead, my friend working at the company. They never replied so I went missing for the afternoon, walking and crying and running on and off in the winding back lanes of my dad’s tiny village in Norfolk. It felt like my life was over. I couldn’t seem to do the one thing you’re supposed to as a big girl— the big girl job. A few mornings later on the floor of my room, tears falling onto my yoga mat, I stopped and thought I’m going to start that collective. The thought hit quickly, but hasn’t left me in the week-and-a-half since. It was bliss to realise that I can do what I want with my life, my time. I don’t have to live in London right now. I don’t have to have a proper job. As long as I’m fulfilled creatively, I think I’ll be fine. I’m nervous, I’m excited, I don’t know what’ll happen. I still live at home, still work where I work, except now I’ll be doing what I want to be doing.

I want Glass Beads to be a vessel for all sorts, people making what they want to make, not what they think they should make. I want to read fiction, poetry, scripts, film writing, music writing, all and any writing and all and any art. I don’t want to be a mysterious internet persona— I’m a real person!!! I want to talk to people about what they’re making, what they’re into, ask them questions, answer their questions. I want to post things I’m interested in, not what I think the endless algorithms want.

So if you’re here at the beginning, like Grace, or here somewhere in the future, hello! I’m Poppy! I love to write, will be posting some of my writing here but film is my first love. I’ve been on a Jane Campion kick recently, with In the Cut and Holy Smoke as my favourites— I’m halfway through Two Friends. My favourite film is Two Lane Blacktop, could watch it any day, any time. I had extended brainrots of Reservoir Dogs, The Social Network and Saw in which they took over me completely and I emerged weeks later dazed and changed. I’m reading The Bonfire of the Vanities at the minute- THE eighties book. I devoured Bright Lights, Big City and wanted something similar. My favourite memoir is Baby Driver by Jan Kerouac, seconded closely by Love Lessons by Joan Wyndham. My favourite poem is Neutral Tones by Thomas Hardy. I need to read The Sound and the Fury, re-read East of Eden. I’m re-listening to music I used to love, can finally listen to Jeff Buckley again without the futile rage that used to bubble up when I hear Lover, You Should’ve Come Over over an Instagram reel, thinking I had got there before everyone else even though he died five years before I was born. It’s a good thing people are listening. I’m going to the Royal Drawing School in Shoreditch later— I’ll wander round with Grace and get my dad a Father’s Day card at the gift shop if they have one. I went to the dentist earlier, got a filling. He said I had rare grooves on the back of my teeth that make them harder to clean, so that lessened the shame.

Now you know a bit about me, where I am at the minute. Please bear with. I have Squarespace and a dream, and am very much learning as I go, so lets see how this goes <3