Rebecca Riley – A candid exploration of crisis, recovery and creative return.
Rebecca Riley describes herself first and foremost as a performance poet, shaped by early training in dance and drama and by a creative instinct that favours collaboration. She has worked alongside musicians in recent years, developing a style in which language and rhythm are inseparable, each shaping the emotional weight of the other. Away from performance, her focus turns inward: long walks in nature, meditation, and yoga form the routines that support her mental health — a subject that informs both her life and her writing.
Riley has spoken openly about being sectioned twice, most recently in 2024. During that period she struggled to recognise her own illness and later questioned her readiness to return to everyday life. Writing, once a constant companion, fell silent. The poem she contributes to the 52 for 26 Poetry Project marks her first return to the page since that time.
The piece captures the interior landscape of a mental health crisis with clarity and restraint. Rather than dramatising the experience, Riley traces the subtler shifts — disbelief, disorientation, recovery, and the ambiguous middle ground between them. The poem acknowledges the difficulty of articulating states that often go unnamed or misunderstood, but it holds space for them without judgement. There is no neat resolution here, only the slow movement toward understanding.
What emerges is a work shaped by vulnerability rather than sentimentality. It offers a personal account, but one that carries a wider message about compassion, uncertainty, and the quiet strength required to rebuild after rupture. Within the 52 for 26 Poetry Project, Riley’s poem stands as a reminder that creative expression often returns at its own pace, and that the act of writing can itself be part of healing — a step back toward connection, clarity, and self-recognition.
Most people
What is it to heal?
It’s to sit in the feelings that’s part of the deal
When the pain is physical and the heart is dismal
When the body wants to live but the mind wants to die
And your so heart broke, all’s you do is cry
A battle of two wills
Which is stronger?
Well you’re here now so stay a little longer
Cos suffering can’t last forever
There will be moments you feel clear
The mind will settle, the confusion will stop and once on the floor, you’ll be on top, form
Fight, flight forn
Out of the hole you have clawn
A hole made of velvet, you kind of got used to
Yet things ate brighter now
You broke through
The silence is music
The tea is warm
It’s brand new socks never worn
A smile from a stranger you’d never have noticed
Making yourself a meal, you’d never have hosted
The war will finish take it one day at a time
You’ll realise its better to live instead of slowly dien
You’ll think straight again and have a little fluer about yeah
Instead of feeling meah
Comfortable in your own skin
In what you do
Presious presence
Glide through life
Gondola Venice
It won’t be all roses life’s not like that
You know what to do you’ve got the hat
Each battle has made you stronger, more compassionate give you hunger
To survive and thrive, light and dark cheese and chive
Medicated or not its your life so give it a shot
Breath instead of having a knot
The circles the minds drawn will straighten out
You’ll be on the road again out and about
Take out the bins something so simple
Yet hard to do when energys a thimble
I hope you congratulate yourself
For all your hard work
I know the battle and I know your worth
Hopefully you do
You’re not alone I’m here too
It’s spelt al one
One day you’ll relax remember were you come from
It might not have gone as planned
It’s not the last of you turn the sand
It’s going to be ok, ok
