Tees Valley Writers

Natalie Boxall

Natalie Boxall is a journalist and aspiring novelist from Middlesbrough. She’s been obsessed with writing since getting her first typewriter in her teens on which she wrote a cringeworthy teen novel and poems; the latter which won a Young Writer of the Year award from Writearound. Her prize was being taught by Julia Darling and Bob Beagrie, and since then, she’s tried to write every day.

After 5 years away from Teesside, she moved back and took a creative writing course at Teesside Uni, performed short stories at mima, The Writer’s Café, The Polite Station and Kenaz Live, had columns and prose published in Kenaz magazine, and has poems and short stories in Ek Zuban’s ‘Fresh’, Mudfog/MIMA’s ‘Ink on Paper’, and an upcoming Mudfog anthology.

She now runs the Middlesbrough Book group for New Writing North and has finally finished her first ‘proper’ novel after taking part in a Mudfog mentoring scheme with Pat Borthwick.

She is also a regular contributor to The Guardian and Plan B magazine, plays roller derby for the Middlesbrough Milk Rollers, and enjoys walking her greyhound, and hanging around Central Library and Albert Park.

The De-generation game

Making shapes out of rubber bands,
What a way to make a living.
You stretched them wide,
As your body grew too big for its bed.
Most people leave a will,
You had to be different,
But, you were always the same.
Running off to London, whilst your friends stayed here,
I always hoped you’d come back,
But not like this.
I often wonder what I would do,
If I was given a year to live.
Would I shave my head, plant a tree,
Make sure your Dad found someone else?
When you get old, your nose and ears keep growing,
Whilst the rest shrinks into dust.
At 33 you just kept growing,
And mummified things you didn’t think I’d miss.
I want to feel the soft rubber,
To stroke the white dust,
That looks like cradle cap,
To see if I can smell you,
Amongst the rubbery tang.
My carriage clock is somewhere here,
Ticking away, going on without me,
As I go on without you.

© Natalie Boxall