I published Ringlets of Red on this website on 5 June 2020. I had actually written it much earlier.

That poem came from my own childhood experience of being identified as Gypsy in a classroom, and the shame, isolation and racism that followed. Six years after publishing it, another little girl with ringlets of red brought me straight back to it.

Six years on, and six years old,
another child, the same tale told.

A brand new book, signed just for her,
Rainey the Romany — she loved every word.

New books normally go straight into school,
to show all her friends, because that is her rule.

But this one was different, she quietly said,
“I don’t think I’ll take it, maybe ill take, this one in instead.”

Not shame in the story, not shame in the name,
but fear that her friends might not see her the same.

No teacher had told her. No friend had been cruel.
This wasn’t a story that started at school.

And somehow that frightened me even more —
because she already knew what “Gypsy” might score.

Almost subliminal, never once said:
“Hide who you are” — yet it lived in her head.

And there it was, that familiar old fear,
I knew it at once, because I’d met it back here.

Six hundred years and the lies survive,
reshaped and repackaged and kept alive.

Rumours and headlines, TV and screens,
people making money from what “Gypsy” means.

Different delivery, but much the same game,
make Gypsy a warning, a problem, a shame.

Until somehow it reaches a six-year-old child,
who has done nothing wrong, who is innocent and wild.

And asks her to calculate, before she can be,
what might happen if others know her ethnicity.

At first it hurt me. I won’t pretend.
Then hurt turned to anger, again and again.

Because how many children must quietly learn,
there are parts of themselves that could make people turn?

But today she decided to take Rainey in,
book in her bag, with a beautiful grin.

No grand protest, no banner held high,
just a six-year-old child deciding not to hide.

And I’m proud of her, of course I am,
but angry she ever had to make that stand.

A child should not have to measure the cost,
of being herself, or what might be lost.

So tell our stories. Let them be seen.
Because someone else will tell them, what Gypsy should mean.

Let them see Gypsy in books, on a page,
not just as a headline designed to enrage.

Let them see ordinary. Clever. Loved. Free.
Let them see people who look like you and me.

Because perhaps if we tell enough stories instead,
we can finally silence those old words in their heads.

And one day a child will pick up that book,
carry it proudly, without a second look.

No fear of the question, “What will they see?”
Just—

“This is my book.
And this is me.”

A note about the original poem

Ringlets of Red was published on this site on 5 June 2020, although I had written it years earlier. This new poem sits beside it rather than replacing it.