2024 01 Spring with bleed V4 - Flipbook - Page 10
The KN kids are alright!
Some inspiring tales of what KN kids have gone on to do
after leaving the village.
Sophie Down didn't plan to become a published
poet, but with her books selling on Amazon as far
aoeld as the USA, it9s a side career that has won her
loads of friends. By her own admission, growing up
in Kingsnympton, Sophie had no idea where her
future lay. But
she remembers a warm community,
with grandparents (Norman and
Pam Down ) that were at the heart of
it. While Norman ran the farm, Pam
fed an army of farm workers that
marched on their stomachs4meals
waiting on the table, or taken out to
the oelds at harvest time. That9s
something Sophie9s tried to replicate
8Spittle, Chulmleigh, November
1987. Documentary photograph wherever she has been. `Living in
by James Ravilious for the
London4such a busy city4can feel very
Beaford Archive © Beaford
lonely, to be honest,9 she says. `So there
Arts’ www.beafordarchive.org9
is that urge to create that thing where
you bring everyone together and have that wonderful `let9s eat till we9re in
a coma9 thing!9 But through her poetry, she's found a community that9s
even more widespread. So how did that come about? `I went through a
very very difocult period in my life,9 she explains` I had suppressed a lot of
things I'd gone through for a long time 4 different types of trauma that I
wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. And I had awful insomnia after a very
nasty sexual assault a few years ago. I just wasn't sleeping. I was turning
to drink, I was turning to substances, I was I was in a really really awful
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