Where are you from? What have you read?

"I feel at home whenever 

the unknown surrounds me, 

I receive its embrace 

aboard my floating house" -- Björk - Wanderlust (Volta, 2007) 

Being asked 'Where are you from?' can, from me, provide a plethora of different responses. I was born in Salisbury, I grew up in Wiltshire and I live in Northern Ireland. And now I'm studying in Winchester.
"So your English, you're from England?" is a common response. I guess I am. Well, British. Maybe. I'm not so sure. There are many places that I am from that trying to say one or the other leaves somebody unhappy with my reply. But since I moved around England a lot, I guess that is where I am from.

The one thing that has managed to remain consistent throughout the sporadic moves is my reading. I've read lots. I've failed to read, maybe a few books (I vaguely remember as a child trying to read 'Mrs. Dalloway' by Virginia Woolf. What a failure). Looking across at my bookshelf there is Lovecraft, King, Plath, Hans Christian Anderson, Carter... But I think my answer to the question is 'good books'. Actually, scratch that, 'books I enjoyed'. I don't think I can ever really pigeon hole myself into only reading books from a particular genre, time period etc. without feeling too familiar.

When we become familiar with things we become comfortable and when we become comfortable, we can often become lazy. So even though I have favourites I usually read multiple books at a time. Its just like phoning a friend back and continuing a conversation from earlier; it keeps the furnace in my mind blazing, no matter what the fuel.

The constant change of environment in my childhood and the multiple narratives I was often engrossed in have had a massive impact on my writing life. Unlike Emily Dickinson who confined herself to her house and let her writing take influence from her introversion ("What she saw from her window, what she read in her books, were her only external stimuli." - Amy Lowell), I want my work to embody the journey that my life has taken me on; the impulsive wanderlust that keeps my heart beating and my pen on the page.