Inception

“Learn to unlearn. Grow to outgrow.” — This is the backbone of my writing and how it all comes to be.

I never meant to write poems,

I’m just tracing my own experience 

and somehow it reads like a poem

I don’t try to be a poet 

but I accidentally sound like one—

that’s convenient!

Guess I don’t mind being a prophet 

of my own creation

Maybe she has been living in me 

long before my inception

Mark my words

I’m going to will her into existence

Not by luck, or divine magic, or witchcraft 

But by having so much sad writing the drafts

And then having so much fun honing the craft

Until I’d literally cringe at my own lines and laugh!

— Oxford, July 6th —

Writing is my therapy. That’s the only way I can keep my sanity and stay balanced in a world that’s offering too little but taking too much. For a long time, it was for my eyes only, like a sacred place I return to every now and then when I feel lost.

But I think it’s time my work sees the light of day—not because of my pride, but because I believe it has a life of its own in the psyche of the people I write as, write for, write about and write to. I hope each piece is a mirror people can see themselves in—not for vanity, but for clarity. And that reflection will linger long after they’ve closed the book.

My writing is specifically for—but not limited to—those who never imagined themselves reading poetry; those who think they’re immune to emotion, dismissing feeling as weakness. So they’d only read business, history and science fiction, merely existing inside a cocoon of logic, strategy, ambition, and the illusion of control. I want them to feel what they once believed was ‘beneath’ them—because they’d spent their whole lives learning to bury it—and begin to heal parts of themselves they didn’t even know were wounded until my words touched them.

My work leans into unfiltered emotional honesty and lyrical storytelling, often exposing the architecture of intimacy, the anatomy of grief, and the haunting residue of unhealthy silence. At times, it fuses literary cadence with echoes of my professional experience in the business world and my affinity for crime, mystery and thriller series. I believe poetry should be both potent and personal: easy to read, yet impossible not to re-read—until the layers of meaning and metaphor hidden in each line can’t be ignored—like being caught off guard and caught red-handed at the same time.

I am currently working on my life’s work “Gratus Garden: memoir of a night-blooming cactus”— which consists of four main volumes and a series of mini themed collections. I share snippets of my writing on Instagram @gratus.garden and here on Substack.

I use Quinn Holm as my pen name to preserve creative autonomy and personal privacy. I hope you understand my voice and respect my choice. Thank you for welcoming my words into your world, so now you and I are not alone anymore. That’s really something to be proud of and to stay for.