Lately, I’ve become more comfortable with vulnerability. I’ve always thought about poetry, and writing poetry, as a vulnerable act. But I think there has always been something else embedded deeply in my writing practice and my poetry: the act of consumption, the desire to do well in a society that values achievement, prestige, adornment, and a long, impressive CV.

I guess what I’m saying is, yes, sharing my poetry – writing it – has forever been a vulnerable act, but the onlooker, the assessment, has always, I’m embarrassed to say, meant just as much as the lyricism, the play, the love for the craft. The need for validation is a facet of vulnerability, I know, but that kind of vulnerability stems from uncomfortable hierarchical systems dictating our ways of being.

The kind of vulnerability I’m trying to become more comfortable with is honesty. It’s allowing my pain to be held by people in my community. It’s allowing myself to leak out all the emotions I’m feeling, to stand in front of an audience, or my colleagues, or my students, and tell them: I’m not okay right now. Or this piece hurts to read out loud.

I don’t want to be a construct that’s continuously contorting myself to fit into the shape of success as outlined by, often, institutions that so rarely stand up for bodies like mine. And of course, I’m working out what that means, and how much give and take, how many concessions are involved, because I am also trying to live, and write, and ultimately survive.

My thoughts here stem from an experience I had last week.

I’ve started going to drop-in life drawing sessions. This has made me feel so connected to the body in a new and invigorating way. Not only my body, but of bodies generally. I’m a total newbie (hence the quality of the sketches below), so every session is an experiment. I feel free to test out the curves of different bodies, attempt to shade them in, and I love noticing the tiny movements and gestures that I would otherwise never pay attention to.

And, not even in my poetry did I ever grasp, understand, attend to, or think about light in so many enamouring ways as I do in these sessions.

I’d been to a few sessions, but last week, for the first time, the model was invited to speak as she posed for us. This was a new experience for me. She was a brown woman, nude, sitting on cushions with her head leaning back against the wall of the Anatomy Theatre.

And as her body, in ways, reflected my own – so did her words. I was entranced by the confluence of art, and the way she, all of her, body and art, spoke directly to me. She told us two narratives about her body that traversed bodily shame and acceptance, intertwined with impressions of her time living in Sri Lanka as a child, of friendships that fell away due to political strife and religious dissonance, of a relationship that veered into toxicity ­– and there were moments, too, that alluded to the whiteness of other nations she’d lived in, including the UK.

I listened to all of this while drawing her body. Life is strange and amazing. I feel like I am always seeking out the transformative and meaningful too purposefully. When it actually finds me, it is so unexpected and so unlike the feeling I’m anticipating. It’s euphoric and it’s very, very frightening. I wanted two hours of peace without the pinging of my phone, without the pressure and anxiety of performing well, and instead, I was taken aback by the intensity of my feelings. I was cracked open and spellbound.

I can’t stop thinking about that twenty minutes. In that moment, art – and in a medium so outside my normal artmaking – became something more, something new, something differently profound.

I know that right now I’m walking around, creating, existing, and trying to figure out this version of myself, while absolutely heartbroken at the devastation and dehumanisation I’m seeing of Black and Brown bodies around the world.

Simultaneously, I think I’m starting to fully realise the extent of what art can do. I thought I knew, but my perception of artmaking is changing so rapidly. It no longer feels passive and indulgent (all the time). And this is coming from someone who thought she knew the power of art, someone who always talked about it.

But lately art feels important in an entirely new way: in a way that is truly connected to the world. In a way where I no longer feel like my wounds are content, but instead, catalysts of change-making, empowerment – and a very real intimacy that, at its unconditional best, scares me.

P.S. It’s my birthday today and if you want to give me a gift, please make a donation to a humanitarian aid organisation or campaign sending contributions to the many places worldwide that need aid: like gazafunds.com, The Khartoum Kitchen appeal, and/or donating to art auctions like Lit for Lebanon.