
VICTA Changemakers
Blindness Awareness Month
By Ellie Wallwork
In mid September, I stood on a stage with a band arrayed behind me, four pages of braille paper clutched in my hand. I’m an actor but I felt the most acute stage fright of my life, voice caught in my throat and knees shaking as if I had run a marathon. I didn’t think the words would come – until I started to speak.
I hadn’t thought of myself as a poet. I used to tap words out on a keyboard when I was younger but they were just lines to me, floating away, meaningless – it aligned with how I felt about myself. Perhaps I felt as if I were an unfinished stanza, when really it was just that I had verses yet to be written. So, what changed?
Part of growing up and finding your place in the world is figuring out what you want to do. When you’re disabled, it can be much more difficult – we exert pressure on ourselves and other people can put pressure on us to be the most successful, the most accomplished, to get ahead and prove something, anything. I bought into that when I was finding my feet: I thought that I had to go to university, have a traditional job, fit into the mould I thought had been pre-made for me. I pushed myself until I broke because that felt like the only way to succeed. It took me years to realise that there are other ways to live, too.
When I figured out that nothing seemed to fit, I tried something new. I left university because I didn’t enjoy it; I moved to where I knew I would be comfortable; I pursued acting because it’s where I feel most at home. I started to look at every facet of myself and ask – am I happy? And if I’m not, what can I do to make sure I am?
Once I started to settle into myself, poetry crept out of the woodwork and fell into my hands. I attended open mics in Brighton – not to perform, not yet – as the very idea of it filled me with terror – but just to listen. I wanted to return to a part of my creativity that I felt like I had left behind and listening, ears open to whatever words spilled out of pubs and rooms in fishing museums, made that little seed grow.
The queer poets’ community around where I live feels like a warm hug. When I was humming along to an improvised song and feeling purpose take hold in my chest, I was surrounded by people who never expected me to be a prodigy: they expected me to be myself, the same way we accept each other for our disabled and unapologetic glory. When I would frantically type lines on a train, hair smelling slightly of wood smoke, I felt like maybe, just maybe, I could throw them into the world and it would grab on to them.
From a slow unfurling of possibility, I snowballed. Once I gave myself permission to write, to think and dream, I felt like I had unlocked something. When one of my friends asked me to perform a poem at their EP launch, I barely even hesitated. I knew that if I didn’t take this opportunity, all that momentum and love for my community would just keep circling around, never going anywhere.
When I stood on that stage, contributing to the most wonderful night I’ve had in a long time with the most important people in my life in the audience, I felt powerful. I felt grateful that I had realised in time what makes me tick and that people had accepted me for who I was. In short, I felt like the changes I’d seen in myself had started to create someone I loved to be.
Change, especially in yourself, can be scary. It doesn’t happen overnight but in waves, tides washing in and out as you grow. This isn’t a race: I like to think of personal change as a waterfall. It can rush or trickle or roar but it’s always there. You just take it at your own pace.
Perhaps I’ll write a poem about it.
By Ellie Wallwork
Early Bird – A poem by Ellie Wallwork
Click here to read Ellie’s poem on the Feral Poetry website >
Follow Ellie…
On TikTok: @SomewhatEllie
On Instagram: @SomewhatEllie