This work was first published in Spread the Word’s Young Writers Collective Anthology, 2025. This anthology stands as a testament to the courage, creativity, and growth of a remarkable group of young poets who have spent seven months exploring the power of language and self-expression. The anthology is more than a collection of poems—it is a celebration of emerging voices, of stories told with boldness and vulnerability.
All of the poems can be read here on our website, or you can download the Young Writer’s Collective Anthology to read as a PDF.
And the Pen Goes Down Like I Do by Maisie Faul
My hair, it grows in sentences
A sensation
In Its
Arrogance
Inherited from others ink
whose pens go down like I do
They Jut Out
wonky
and piss
poor, but can point
and smash
and walk where the gray curb keeps them
long
enough to lead us home
About Maisie Faul
Maisie Faul has recently graduated from London Contemporary Dance School where she developed a practice that integrates writing and text for performance into movement. Her writing tackles themes of home, and time. While studying she questioned the performative element of composing a text culminating in a part written, part performed dissertation piece. She worked on a team of intern editors for a Dance Art Journal publication of these works.