Lilly May
Poet from Kent, United Kingdom
I’m someone who wants to explore the human mind and expose that which wants to suppress it, I use poetry to understand and criticise what limits me.
Their story
I first started writing poetry when I was three years old, just limericks to start, because I wanted to make my dad laugh. Still too young to master jokes, I found that when I could tell an unfortunate or funny story and make it rhyme, I could connect with the adults around me for reasons other than my cuteness. I was fun, I stood taller, I could speak and make an impact.
Years later, I would turn that skill to helping me process complex adolescent emotions, and the lonely, confusing new challenges that emerged while being chewed up by mental illness - that I thought would remain permanent as features of my character. As I wrote and wrote and kept writing and kept discovering myself, kept meeting myself in new ways and seeing her in different lights and kinder perspectives, it’s temporary nature now seems as obvious as the soap bubbles in my sink.
Writing poetry saved my life. It gave me a gift even the most seasoned of therapists would’ve struggled to give me, and that is a deep understanding and respect for the woman I’ve grown up to be despite my challenges. It forced me to see myself as the inspiration that my younger self would eventually emulate. I am her.
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