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.

‘In poems of great skill, daring and beauty, Hesketh somehow contains the leaky mess of new parenthood. This is for all the mothers - mother of stone, mother of ice, mother of fire, mother of dark. A stunning debut: intelligent, tender and unwaveringly true.’

‘Erica Hesketh asks “What if all the world’s mothers / rose up at once…” Perhaps if we did, our conversations would sound like these poems, which look head-on at the frightening, transformative, love-filled days of early motherhood. Medical misogyny, birth trauma, post-natal depression, joy and boredom - all of this and more are held in place in these lyrical, image-drenched poems as Hesketh expands our ideas and perceptions around what it means to be a mother.’

'In the Lily Room is full of poems of wonder, grief and awe, poems of endless unfurling, rich with the knowledge of secret things. It feels, so often, an insurmountable task to articulate the experience of one's entry into motherhood. Erica Hesketh has done so in a way that feels seamless.’

‘A debut collection of meticulous detail, emotional depth and intellectual bravery. Hesketh brings a self-questioning generosity and scrupulousness of empathy to the way she writes into early motherhood – the contrasting advice, the anxiety, the lives of other mothers – as well as the way she interrogates language.’

Erica Hesketh is a poet and editor, originally from Japan and Denmark, now based in London. Widely published in magazines and journals, she placed second in the 2022 Winchester Poetry Prize, and was commended in the 2023 Magma Poetry Competition and the 2023 Stanza Competition. She was longlisted for the 2023 National Poetry Competition. Her poetry has been commissioned by the Royal Festival Hall, Spread the Word and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. From 2016 to 2024 she was Director of the Poetry Translation Centre. She is the editor of Living in Language: International reflections for the practising poet.