Yrsa Daley-Ward Is Laying Her Pain Bare and Turning It Into Uplifting, Unconventional Poetry
8 years ago Lily Garner
From the outside looking in, the path to success in the literary world often seems to be signposted with educational milestones and well-placed contacts. Yrsa Daley-Ward's story is different, and that's just one reason it's so inspiring.
The 20-something author of the acclaimed poetry collection Bone hasn't had the most conventional journey to becoming a literary darling. Daley-Ward was born in London to a Jamaican mother and Nigerian father, and she didn't have the easiest childhood; she was raised by her grandparents in a small town in the north of England. And she made a conscious decision not to go to college.
Her mother's response: "You're wasting your brain." But Daley-Ward knew her path was heading in a creative direction, even if she didn't know exactly what that meant. "I did well at school, but that's not how I relate," she says. Although she had been writing from an early age and even wrote a novel at age 18, she wasn't sur..