Natalie Ann Holborow

There’s a poem in the way you feel too much, the way your breath catches in your throat when you dare to speak the truth. It’s called vulnerability, but it can often feel like standing barefoot on gravel or like the breeze is pushing too hard against your back. And yet, isn’t that what poetry is for? To let the weight of it crush us just enough so that something beautiful spills out?

This isn’t about weakness. Vulnerability is how we build. It’s brick and mortar, sweat and blood. It’s how we grow into something bigger than the feelings we’re afraid of, how we press our thumb to the bruise and observe the colours that shift.

What does vulnerability do to your writing?

Think about the moments that make you. Not the most mundane ones, but the raw, sharp-edged truths that stir something in you when you think about them. I don’t mean the ones that are too painful to bear right now (I don’t want you to try and drag up unprocessed trauma), but the ones that left their mark and made you feel something deeply. That time your voice cracked on the phone with your mother. The rush you felt when you first held a friend’s new baby. The way your breath caught when you realised love doesn’t always want to stay. These are the places where the best poems often live – not in the polished, Instagram-ready parts of your life, but the places in between.

When you let yourself really feel those moments, your writing stops being so polite. It stops asking for permission. It wants you to listen. Imagine this: you’ve just finished a poem about a past heartbreak so profound it felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to your chest. You sit there, detecting a brief rush of adrenaline. Then the doubt creeps in: “Is this too much? Will people think I’m weak? Am I oversharing?”

I do this all the time. Even now, if a reader finds a poem particularly emotional, I’ll wonder if I said too much and wonder if they think less of me. This is because vulnerability triggers our primal fear of judgement. However, the poems that stay with us aren’t the ones that play it safe (take a look at these cliche-avoiding examples to see what I mean). Great poetry isn’t born from tepid emotional waters.

It comes from diving headfirst into the deep end, whether or not you know how to swim.

Writing with vulnerability means being human

Vulnerability isn’t always about heartbreak and isn’t always about the marrow-deep ache of what we’ve lost. It’s also about the quiet awe of finding something whole and intact: a dandelion stubbornly emerging from a cracked pavement, or the way a dog curls against your leg like you’re the centre of his universe (thanks, Ted). Being vulnerable in writing doesn’t always mean wrapping yourself in grief or forcing yourself to write about your own sadness; it means opening the door wide to everything – joy, wonder, tenderness and the whole complex spectrum of human emotion – without flinching.

To be vulnerable is to say: This made me feel something. Whether it’s sadness, delight, or the strange sweetness of both, vulnerability is what lets your reader feel it, too.

Consider the difference between these two lines:

• I can’t believe you’ve gone.
• The body stands up with a mouthful of dark, puts one foot in front of the other, and is gone.

The first line is safe. It’s straightforward and sanitised, but it leaves the reader cold. The second line, however, dares to go deeper. It invites the reader to step inside the poet’s world and feel. Vulnerability isn’t about stating facts; it’s about creating a connection so raw that your reader almost flinches. There’s something there to hold on to and relate to.

Vulnerability allows you to strip away the fluff and expose the emotional core of your experiences. It’s not just about saying, I feel this. It’s about showing how that feeling manifests – physically, mentally, and spiritually – so that your audience feels it in their bones.

How to tap into your vulnerability as a writer

We live in a world that tells us to keep our emotions in check, to smile and nod and carry on.  But as a poet, it’s your superpower. It’s what sets you apart from the endless sea of safe, forgettable writing. Vulnerability demands courage. It requires you to stand naked before the world and say: This is who I am and this is how I feel. Take it or leave it.

You’ll often find that your readers won’t leave it. They’ll stay. They’ll listen. Because deep down, we’re all craving connection in an increasingly disconnected world. Your vulnerability is the bridge that makes that connection possible. And here’s how to embrace it.

1. Write like no one’s watching

The biggest hurdle to vulnerability? That imagined audience that’s lurking in your mind.  . Before you even put pen to paper, you start censoring yourself. “What will people think?” is the death knell of authenticity. So, for now, write as though no one will ever read your work. Be unapologetically honest. You can always edit later.

2. Find strength in specificity

Vulnerability isn’t about being vague or abstract. It’s about zooming in, finding the sharpest detail, and letting it do the heavy lifting. I played with this a lot when writing Little Universe. My love for my nephew felt watered-down and too general if I wrote about it without zooming in really close on a routine moment that made an impact on me: watching him soothe himself by putting planets in order on his bedroom rug (something he does most days):

Clasping Earth in his pudgy hands he lifts it up, 

taps at the green, inspects its brilliance. For hours he sits 

tight-lipped on his knees, patting each planet as he goes, 

putting order back into his bright little universe.

When you ground your vulnerability in specifics, it becomes universal. Readers don’t need to have lived your exact story to feel it. They’ll see themselves in the way you pick at the edges of your grief or marvel at the softness of a new beginning.

3. Let your reader in

A word of caution: vulnerability isn’t a license for self-indulgence (keep that for your journals and by all means, please scribble all the messy, wild truths there, unfiltered and unapologetic). But when it comes to the poem you want to share with the world, remember, it’s not just about you anymore. There’s a fine line between offering your emotions and sinking into them so deeply the reader can’t find a way in. The goal isn’t to say, “Here, hold this pain for me,” but to say, “Look, I’ve carried this too.”

To help, sit with the poems that have broken you open, the ones that made you stop, breathe, and reread a line because it felt like the writer had reached into your chest and found the thing you couldn’t quite name. Make a list. Trace the shape of their impact. What was it that made you feel understood? What images stood out? 

Remember, a journal is a place for everything you need to say, just for you. No rules, no boundaries. But when you’re ready to take your work into the world, it has to do more than hold your feelings; it has to let the reader in.

4. Experiment with perspective

Sometimes, writing about your own emotions can feel too daunting, like being asked to deliver a toast at a wedding where you know no one, save for the bride’s second cousin who once mistook you for someone else. Try slipping into the third person or adopting a fictional persona. It’s still your truth, but it’s like wearing a fancy suit instead of standing there in your pyjamas.

Think of it as creating a character who can shoulder the weight of what you’re trying to say. It’s the same vulnerability, but at a distance that feels manageable, like peeking through a curtain rather than flinging open the door. The mask isn’t a lie; it’s a gift. It lets you hold your vulnerability up to the light, turn it this way and that, without burning your hands on it.

There’s a freedom in stepping outside yourself, in letting your emotions take on a shape that isn’t your face, your name, your story. And yet, somehow, it remains true. Because even when filtered through another voice, what you’re sharing is still deeply, undeniably yours. 

One final writing challenge for you

I’m daring you to write something that makes you squirm. Write about the thing you’re scared to say out loud. The thing that feels too big, too messy, too much. Don’t hold back. Write it all down.

Because that’s the stuff that will resonate the most. It’s the stuff that will make your readers sit up and say: Yes. This. This is exactly how I feel.