Ash-Lee De Halevang joins us for a fiercely honest conversation about identity, transience, and finding home after a childhood stretched between London, East Lothian, Singapore, Malaysia, Cornwall, and now Glasgow. We talk about growing up dyslexic and uprooted, Warrior Cats as a gateway into reading, and the moment a single creative writing exercise catapulted Ash from bottom set to top set and set them on the path to becoming a writer.

Ash traces her journey from early filmmaking into poetry, the “real university” of open mics, and a three-year commitment to writing a poem a day. We dig into influences like Audre Lorde, Gil Scott-Heron, John Cooper Clarke, Savannah Brown, and hip hop, and what they taught Ash about voice, politics, and performance.

There’s frank discussion of mental health, dyslexia, and the feedback loop of sad poetry – as well as how community, mentorship (including Mothtales and Phil Thomson), and spaces like Loud Poets, the Lilac Collective, and Glasgow’s spoken word scene helped Ash find a more sustainable, communal way of making art. We also talk about working across poetry, scripts, and film, and how an idea finds its form.

A central thread is gender identity and trans rights: Ash shares the story of coming out as transgender to her parents last October, how that moment reshaped her relationship to their work, and what it means to create as a trans poet in the current political climate.

This episode contains personal reflections on mental health and one poem that engages with real-world politics, including corporate complicity in war. Listener discretion advised.

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