Matthew Little

Matthew Little
Born	July 23, 1991(1991-Template:MONTHNUMBER-23) New Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.
Nationality	American
Genres	confessional poetry, prose, short story
Influences Sylvia Plath, Shirley Jackson, Truman Capote

Matthew Little (born July 23, 1991) is an American poet, fiction writer, and digital content creator. He is also an outsider musician who releases under the name Ann Xiety, and he is one-half of the experimental hip hop duo Plot Holes along side his friend Eli Burkley.

Life

Youth

Little was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to parents Lynda Little and Kenneth Rapoza. He is of Portuguese and Italian descent. They split while he was in elementary school in 1999.

As a child, Little never really cared for reading or writing but did show signs of creativity. He recalled in elementary school he wrote a "children's book" about a painter cat, and even drew the pictures that went along with it. Actual writing didn't come until later; it wouldn't be until middle school where he discovered lyric writing. Also while in middle school he found joy in drawing crude comics after reading "Johnny The Homicidal Manic", a comic series by Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of the Nickelodeon show "Invader Zim". From there it developed, and one of his pursuits in life became to be a published author. After many unsuccessful tries in writing a novel, he discovered poetry after meeting his ex-boyfriend in 2012, who wrote poems of his own. At the time, Little had almost no experience in reading or writing poetry until he was shown the works of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. He never had any proper training in the medium, and claims he taught himself how to write. He has said that early in his career he thought to take writing courses to help him improve his structuring and wording, but decided against it as he believes writing is a skill that can be taught if the person has it in them to push through the medium, and also he didn't want anyone clouding his judgement on how someone should write.

Writing career

Little holding his collection, September 2013.

Little, as of June 2020, has authored three short collections of poetry and a novella. He wrote Hell in a Basket: A small collection of personal poems, a chapbook which was published on August 24, 2013, independently through CreateSpace, an Amazon.com based self-publishing platform. Written between the months of January and July 2013, Little wrote extensively about the home-life he was living, which included his daily struggle dealing with an alcoholic mother and the subsequent depression and anxiety that came along with it. As his first piece published, Little originally feared readers would find it "mediocre", as he admitted to rushing writing most of the collection, but since its publication Hell in a Basket received acclaim from readers who either have identified with his words or appreciate the style which it was written. However, Little has since disowned the collection; he confessed to publishing it in hope to make a little money, and also considers the poetry to be too juvenile to be taken seriously.

He also published Ribbons in October 2014 which, like Hell in a Basket, is a small collection of confessional poetry. Unlike his first publication, Ribbons was published online for free after what Little says "a year [of sitting]" and accumulating poems. He wrote that he couldn't imagine coming up with other poems for the collection, and decided to release it as a way of closure, to close a chapter of his life of writing poems about his stress, anxieties, heartbreak, etc. Since being published on Wattpad, Ribbons has been viewed over 300 times and "liked" 17 times.

In 2014 Little completed his first ever short story, Breaking Water which was published on Wattpad. The gruesome story details a group of sadistic men a part of a crime syndicate who kidnap pregnant women so they can steal their babies and sell them for profit, and the story centers around Lisa, one of their captures who tries to escape their clutches. The story is based on an idea he thought up while in middle school. It was published October 23, 2014 after being written in only just five days.

In 2016, Little released a small chapbook of poetry titled At The Table With Your Mother during a cool-down period between his novel projects. The book is seven poems long, and were all written spontaneously during a brief burst of creativity. Little has also written several other loose poems that he doesn't plan to include in any collection, and has on and off worked on a new collection titled Unbalance, formerly called Breaking Through.

Little published a short story he had wrote during the summer of 2013 titled The Last Web Chat in February 2017. He released it through Wattpad entirely for free. The story concerns a teen named Michael and his brief relationship with a broken-down girl he meets online named Jessica. The story wasn't finished as Little couldn't complete it due to his Microsoft Word failing to work; he decided to release it exactly as he had written it, mistakes and all, because to him the story ended at a point that made it raw in itself.

His third collection was to be titled Breaking Through, and he planned on it being published physically. After writing a number of poems between 2015 and 2017, Little decided instead to release what he had online as his last free publication, and retitled it Unbalance. It was published as a picture post on Facebook.

In 2019, Little published his first poem in an online literary magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic. The poem, "I Carved Your Name In My Heart", appeared in the magazine's farewell issue in May. In February 2020, he published through Amazon a novella titled Florida, which is his first serious prose release.

Music

Ann Xiety and Plot Holes

Besides writing, Little has taken an interest in creating music. Much before he began to write he had hoped to start a band and play psychedelic music akin to Pink Floyd, The Doors, and Jefferson Airplane. However, it never happened.

In 2012, while at his ex's home, Little began to listen to different music, taking a liking to artists such as Lana Del Rey, Sonic Youth, Daniel Johnston and more, really enjoying the energy that came from lo-fi and underground music. When he was alone, he would pick up his ex's guitar and strum it, recording some of the sounds he made.

In 2015, Little had decided to take what he recorded years prior and sing over the instrumentals and then further edit the tracks on his laptop. With confidence given from his cousin Eric, who himself is a musician that plays for the Virginia indie band Ella Vader, Little shaped what he had and released a free album online in November 2016 titled Death and Doubt as Ann Xiety. A few months later in April, Little released a 2nd album titled Dry Hit. Not long after that he released an EP of cover songs, and at the beginning of 2018 released a 3rd album, Cult Music. His 4th album, The Hill of Tomorrow, was released through YouTube on May 20, 2022, but in mid-2023 he privated the video for unknown reasons. His fifth album, Sagittarius Moon, is scheduled to be released May 23, 2024, at 9:53am, to coincide with the full moon that will be in the sign of Sagittarius.

Little's original project name was Matty, but ultimately changed it to Ann Xiety, his proposed drag name had he ever done drag.

Little and Burkley appearing in the cover art for their 2017 song "Looking 4 Change (I'm A Failure)".

In December 2016, Little and his good friend Eli Burkley started an experimental hip hop together called Plot Holes. Their music has been described as "lofi", and "surreal", which borders on the other pieces of music Little has released. Together they've so far released two mixtapes, Basement Fire and Smoking wit Sylvia Plath and were in the process of recording an album titled Foodstamps, but production has halted indefinitely as both Little and Burkley have different schedules.

A X Productions

In September 2023, Little created a TikTok account where he makes videos using Barbie dolls and action figures and has since expanded to Instagram and YouTube. When he was in middle school and high school, Little would make movies with his camcorder and have Barbies and GI Joe's as his actors (one of the movies he made had a character named Florida, which later on inspired the name for his novella). Originally, he wanted to make a full-length film using Barbies, but then signed up for TikTok after watching a video of a group of dolls in a stop-motion fight. His videos range from comical and relatable to horrific and disturbing. Little has said that making Barbie videos "nurtures" his inner child, and that it's a fun hobby that he can also use as a serious artistic outlet.

As of April 2024, his TikTok has passed 20,000 followers. His Instagram has 17,000 followers, whereas his YouTube has only 195 subscribers.

Influences and style

Self portrait of Little taken in 2011.

Little has said the poetry of Sylvia Plath inspired him to write poetry seriously, as her poetry was the first of any major poet he ever read. He also cites Anne Sexton as an influence.

Regarding his prose and storytelling technique, Little has said Truman Capote and Shirley Jackson have influenced his writing.

Style

Originally Little wrote mostly poems with themes of fear and anxiety. As a suffer of anxiety and paranoia, Little had said in private that he hoped his poetry will be for people with anxiety what the poetry of Sylvia Plath's is to sufferers of depression. Candidly, Little had written about how he fears the little things of everyday life, such as hearing bangs, being around other people, and he has conveyed images of anxiety by showing his fears about who he is as a person. Little has also dived into his own bouts of depression, mostly stemming from relationships or personal inward troubles. The way in which he writes was taught by how he read and viewed older poetry; he considered himself a traditionalist when it came to his lines and delivery, but he kept his subjects and how he wrote about them very modern, albeit juvenile. One reviewer of Hell in a Basket noted that Little "writes with an old soul".

"Little ties these bits of grey matter together with the finesse of an accomplished poet beyond his years." - A reviewer on Amazon

As he matured his voice, Little's poetry has grown more visceral and experimental, as evident in the poetry he has shared on his personal Twitter. He somewhat detached from the traditionalist style he originally favored but kept his style of wording.

With his prose, Little favors enveloping the story with realism. He enjoys shaping stories with very plausible situations and outcomes, and he loves to bring the reader up close and engulf them with details. His short story "The Last Web Chat" is an early example of this framework; Little incorporates a fly on the wall perspective and likens it to a documentary where the viewer is being forced to witness what the characters are going through. When he was writing his novella Florida, he wanted to convey a story about a random act of violence as realistic as possible and spare no detail that could occur in that kind of incident.

Publications

Poetry

• Hell in a Basket: A small collection of personal poems. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.
• Ribbons, Wattpad, 2014
• Unbalance, 2017

Novels:

• Teddy Bears, TBA
• Boss, TBA

Novellas:

• Florida, Kindle Direct Publishing, 2020

Short stories:

• Breaking Water, Wattpad, 2014
• The Last Web Chat, Wattpad, 2017

Chapbooks

• At The Table With Your Mother, Tumblr, 2016

Audio / video

Ann Xiety - I'm Happy I'm Alive

Discography

(as Ann Xiety)

Albums

• Death and Doubt, album, YouTube, 2016
• Dry Hit, album, YouTube, 2017
• Cult Music, album, YouTube, 2018
• The Essentials (the v best of), YouTube, compilation album, 2018
• The Hill of Tomorrow, album, YouTube, 2022
• AX, YouTube, 2023
• Sagittarius Moon, TBA

EPs

• Ann Xiety, EP, 2016
• Sitting in Someone Else's Chair, EP, 2017

(as Plot Holes)

Mixtapes

• Basement Fire, mixtape, 2017
• Smoking wit Sylvia Plath, mixtape, 2017

See also

• LGBT poets
• List of U.S. poets
• A Father to my Mother (poem)
• Home (poem)
• Anti Anxiety Medication Thoughts (poem)

External links

Poems

• "A Writer's Words"

About

• "Matt's personal Tumblr
• Hell in a Basket at Amazon.
• Matthew Little on Goodreads
• Matthew on Facebook