J. Daniel West, a Guy Who Likes to Write
This all started when six-year-old Joe took an Action Man exercise book and filled it cover to cover with his own retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk, written in a majestic red ballpoint pen.
From there, his obsession only deepened. From a surprisingly graphic (for en eight-year-old) version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears as a piece of English homework to many, many... many... different ideas ranging from novels to poetry to film and stage plays. And, now that he's on medication for ADHD, he plans to actually finish these ideas.
The first of these to come to fruition was the poetry pamphlet The Words of Others are All We Have, a conversational piece co-written with Mancunian poet Louise Machen and published by Hedgehog Press.
It's an unflinching look at life under a system built for someone else; be it class, gender, sexuality, etc, and was performed at the 2024 Greater Manchester Fringe to rave review.
West was born and raised in Hull, East Yorkshire, where he lived until university pulled him down to the south coast. After graduating he had a tenure in London, where he met his partner, but as it became harder to build a concrete life there they moved up to Manchester where they now live.
Poetry became a serious pursuit in 2020. He was diagnosed and medicated for severe anxiety disorder and agoraphobia, and a few short weeks into starting therapy a little thing called the global pandemic happened. Therapy would take its toll each week, especially with the closure of all public spaces bringing a halt to any sort of exposure therapy. Processing each week's session was something that came in the form of poetry - a short-form, bite-sized medium that was easy to complete compared to anything longer form (the ADHD was yet to be diagnosed).
And soon after the Greater Manchester poetry scene opened its arms to him, bringing with it a whole host of friends and inspirational talent that spurs him on.