Erica Hesketh’s debut collection In the Lily Room tells a story of early motherhood. It examines a new mother’s journey through mental illness, her relationships with her body, her baby and other people, and the often surreal landscape of mothering, against a backdrop of a changing and uncertain world.
A dreamlike birth sequence full of eels, foxes and floodwater empties onto a London postnatal ward, where reality sets in. Rudderless and anxious, the new mother writes notes to herself, joins support groups and tries medication. She climbs into myth and prayer, nightmare and song, criss-crossing her neighbourhood with a pram, until she starts to feel better. Hesketh's poems speak of the many things motherhood can mean, the structures it is made to fit inside. Clear-eyed and full of hard-won love, this a story of one of the most common experiences there is, told in a dazzlingly original way.