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.
Another J Name I Now Resent by Alice Foxall
I never liked your Spotify playlists
or your unkept hair
never liked the melody of your words
as you tried to lie politely.
I never liked the movies
or the late-night calls
never liked how clammy your hands made mine as
you clasped them in the dark.
Like electrons repulsed by the charge of each other
we are parallel lines
glancing in each other’s direction
destined never to coincide and
I’m completely content.
But since you ask,
I still smell it.
The stench of selfishness and solitude
follows you like the flu.
People call you brother, son, friend
but your soul is used and tarnished
like the car you crashed last year
trying to find yourself.
Do they know?
You stick to my memory like spider webs tangled
between my tendons.
I tell myself
that you will be the one to cave in
Becoming nothing but dust and aching
You will.
youwillyouwillyouwillwillyou
Look to me with eyes ice blue
as they all leave you the way you left me.
Reach for me one final time
and I will come running.
About Alice Foxall
Alice (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist based in London. Having studied biomedical science at university her work is often sci-fi inspired. Her dystopian short stories and poetry podcast, The Project, was released in collaboration with Roundhouse this year. Her short film on being mixed-race and cultural dysphoria is currently being shown at the Migration Museum until Spring 2025. These themes are becoming more apparent in her work.