Karly

It’s been almost a year since Nonsense & Lit came into the world, and lately I’ve found myself reflecting on how much can shift quietly over the course of twelve months. I haven’t reinvented myself, and I haven’t undergone a cinematic transformation, but I have changed. Not loudly or dramatically, but noticeably, especially to myself. There is a sense now that I have grown into the shape of something I once only imagined, or at least something I hoped I might become.

In January of last year, I wrote a post titled How Allie Esiri Made Me Love Poetry. It was personal in a way that made me nervous, and I remember sitting with the draft for far too long, wondering if it said too much or perhaps not enough. At the time, it felt like something I needed to write but wasn’t quite sure I could share. Ten months later, I sat next to Allie conducting an interview I had dreamt about long before it became real. I took notes, asked questions, and listened to someone I admire speak about her work, her process, and the quiet power of poetry in people’s lives. It wasn’t part of a plan, not the result of a perfectly calculated strategy, but simply the kind of moment that happens when you keep showing up for your ideas, even when you are not sure anyone else will understand them.

When we launched Nonsense & Lit, I was still recovering from the quiet ache of an academic experience that had left me drained and uncertain. I loved language. I loved literature. I was good at writing. I knew these things, but I didn’t yet know what they were supposed to amount to. I had no proof that I could build anything meaningful from those loves, only the gut feeling that there had to be a place, somewhere, where it all belonged together. I wasn’t trying to become anything in particular. I just wanted to create something honest and interesting and unapologetically layered. I wanted to think deeply and write freely and explore the space between intellect and instinct, where my real voice tends to live.

And then something shifted. Quietly. Gradually. Repeatedly. I started writing consistently. I began reaching out to people I admired. I started taking myself a little more seriously, not in a rigid or careerist way, but in the sense that I began to honour the things I was making. I was no longer waiting to be told it counted. I had already decided that it did.

I suppose this is the part where I reintroduce myself, not because anything has changed externally, but because I’m standing a little differently now.

My name is Karly, and I am a linguist, a writer, and, apparently, a journalist. I never meant to become one, but somewhere between the interviews and the transcripts and the stories that would not leave me alone, the title began to fit. I do not say it with bravado. I say it with surprise, and maybe a little softness, because I’m still getting used to it. I write about language and longing, about pop lyrics and poetic memory, about what it means to live in a world full of noise and still try to speak carefully. I collect phrases. I annotate my own thoughts. I spiral. I overanalyse. I build my life one sentence at a time, and when I look back, I realise that is exactly what I have always done.

If you’ve been here from the beginning, thank you. You have seen it all unfold, post by post, moment by moment. You have witnessed the stationery obsessions, the literary fixations, the blog drafts, and the jokes about me getting scammed on Instagram. If you are just arriving, you are not late. This isn’t a platform that requires catching up. It’s more of a long conversation. You can start wherever you like.

There is no major announcement. No pivot. No dramatic reset. Just the gentle, somewhat shocking realisation that the person I used to dream about becoming has started to show up more often. She is still figuring things out. She is still a little tired. She still writes too much and worries she is being too earnest. But she is here, and she is still writing.

So yes, this is me, reintroducing myself.
Thank you for reading. I hope you’ll stay a while.