My first exposure to medication and mental health came from a 15-minute consultation with a psychiatrist. I shared my feelings of persistent low moods and chronic anxiety and was immediately put upon Escitalopram, 10mg a day for the rest of my life. I was told to get repeat scripts from my doctor and sent on my way.

No talk therapy, no long-term planning, no contingencies, no connection. Nothing.

Very quickly I realized two things…

If you haven’t lost a loved one, it will be exceedingly hard to capture the complexities that such a loss would entail. Life is full of different emotional experiences, some of which will have happened to you. I’d advise, at least in the beginning, to focus your efforts there. This doesn’t mean you have to limit your poetry to those life events, but rather to using the emotions that you have experienced to inform and colour your work. With some introspection and imagination, you can extrapolate the emotional state that may arise from a more extreme version of a situation you have lived through…