The choppy waters of New York harbor are a fitting location for a poet to recite their verse—after all, the same orange-bellied ferries that cross the bay have served the likes of Alice Notley and Eileen Myles; other poets who have called this Atlantic-facing city their home. But for British model and writer Yrsa Daley-Ward, New York isn't her only home. "The one place where I feel super comfortable" is writing, as the poet explains in this—the latest episode of our literary series, Rambling.
Shot by Clara Cullen—who is celebrated for her work directing for the likes of Chanel and Levi's—the film paints a poetic portrait of Daley-Ward in her now adoptive city, while launching into an exploration of the other places that words can carry us.
Daley-Ward's literary career is also marked by its globalism; not only did she rise to prominence on Instagram (her posts carried to readers across the world), but her own background is storied; daughter to a Jamaican mother and a Nigerian father, and growing up in the north of England. And within her writing resides a confrontation with her own historically; specifically her history of pain and confusion growing up within an unforgiving world, while struggling to make her way as a model and actress, and working in the sex industry to pay her bills. Drugs, depression, sex work, modelling, and love both gloom and glorify the pages of her works, including 2017's Bone and this year's The Terrible.