Jenni Fagan is a writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland, a place where my daughter stayed for some time and which I find wonderful to visit every year.

I learned about Jenni last year when her memoir “Ootlin” was published by Penguin.

In a short span of time, she has published five fiction books, screenplays, eight poetry collections, and a memoir. Her debut novel, The Panopticon, saw her selected as a Granta Best Young British Novelist.

Ootlin is a book that hits you hard. A haunting, reflective, and heartbreaking story draws you into a world unknown to most people, yet awe-inspiring. 

It was written initially as a suicide note when Jenni was twenty-three years old, chronicling her story of growing up in the care system with twenty-seven placements, four legal names, two failed adoptions, homelessness, and child abuse. 

Today, I was reading her interview on the website Changes With Annie Macmanus and decided to share her poem “Morning Rituals” –

Getting dressed

in the morning

is a ritual

that begins

wan as a

Midwinter sun,

cars on cobbles,

bump-bump

like a minaret drum,

the body bends . . .

like a gnarled bough

on the willow

tiredness won’t leave

on waking –

it just intensifies,

all day long.

I’m porcelain cold,

imperceptible in my sorrow,

shower steams the mirror

like a sigh,

still, got twenty-eight teeth

to shine,

hair reticent

to detangle,

a face to smooth

like each day

does not daunt

and nightmares don’t walk.

Amber and ginger lily

sweeten my surrender

to another outside world affray,

front door opens

like a yawn,

go ahead now my girl,

turn the key –

these are the morning

rituals of me.