Yrsa Daley-Ward on Stormzy, Beyoncé, and her new novel, The Catch

Times

a day ago

'IYA! Y'ORITE?' booms a friendly Lancashire accent when I log on to a video call with the author and 'Instagram poet' Yrsa Daley-Ward, who is sitting waiting with luminous skin, glossy lips and a smile so big and bright that it beams through the screen.Daley-Ward is talking from a hotel room in Washington, where she's promoting her debut novel, The Catch. Released on Thursday, it's a mysterious, dark tale of twin sisters Clara and Dempsey, whose familial bond is severed in childhood when their mother, Serene, vanishes into the Thames. The book already has a starry backing — in the UK it's being published by Merky Books, an imprint launched by the rapper Stormzy.'Stormzy is awesome,' Daley-Ward says, smiling. 'I haven't spoken to him for a while but he's incredible. So when Merky wanted to publish my book, I jumped at the chance.'Daley-Ward is already a publishing success — it was her 2014 poetry collection, Bone, that first grabbed Stormzy's attention and in 2018 she released The Terrible, her searingly honest memoir, which went on to win the PEN Ackerley prize the following year.
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How did Stormzy discover her? He 'just out of the blue one day' sent Daley-Ward a photo of himself holding a copy of Bone — 'the really old vintage edition that I knocked together and was selling on Etsy and Amazon', she says. 'I was like, 'Oh my God, the work is travelling!' '
At the time Daley-Ward was travelling the world performing live readings of her poetry and had begun posting snippets of her work on Instagram. Even if you're not a poetry fan, you may have scrolled past her words at some point, usually displayed in a small, subtle typewriter font, cut down to a few sentences and repurposed as a motivational quote, often shared by somebody going through a break-up or experiencing grief.
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Though poetry books have increased in popularity in recent years, with sales predominantly driven by younger readers and social media, Daley-Ward doesn't take too kindly to being called 'an Instagram poet'. 'There's an idea that I started on Instagram, but I was writing and performing at festivals for years before that,' she says. However, she does see social media as 'a wonderful tool' because 'it got the work to people who might've never picked up a poetry book. They see it on a little square and think, 'Oh, I feel this thing too.' '
Bone was a huge success. Stormzy publicly described the poems as 'honest, unflinching and unforgettable' and hailed Daley-Ward as 'one of Britain's best writers'. Her memoir caught attention too, with Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine describing it as 'like holding the truth in your hands'.
Then in 2020 Daley-Ward was asked to be a collaborator on Beyoncé's film Black Is King with two days' notice. 'I got a mysterious call and they asked if I wanted to do it,' Daley-Ward says. 'I said, sure, and then there I was. It's definitely the thing in my bio that people ask most about.'
She is tight-lipped on the details, but says that working with Beyoncé 'was such a collaborative space and an incredible experience. I don't know many people who aren't a Beyoncé fan. Just being there was an honour. It shows that when you concentrate on something, stick to it and believe in it, then it will take you to those places.'
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Daley-Ward grew up in Chorley, a market town in Lancashire, and now lives in LA. This contrast is one she explores in The Terrible, a detailed account of an unsettled childhood, spanning everything from discovering that the man who raised her wasn't her biological father to being sent, aged seven, to live with her strict grandparents for four years.
This stood her 'in good stead because the way my grandparents ran the house was regimented', she says, before adding, 'not that I'd recommend that … but it made me extremely organised.'
Aged 16, Daley-Ward ran away with an older man and later became engaged to somebody else before breaking it off. She then moved to South Africa where she worked as a model, though 'certainly not a super successful one'.
Now 36, she doesn't regret any of her past: 'I don't judge earlier versions of myself and you shouldn't allow anyone else to, either.' But there is one significant moment in her life that inspired her novel. Her mother died when Daley-Ward was 22, and questions of motherlessness and motherhood are a big theme throughout the book. 'To this day I'll see someone in the street that looks like my mum and I get such an intense longing,' she says. 'But it's also love — grief is love, so it's not necessarily a negative thing. It's all the things mixed together.'
Despite poems and a memoir coming first, fiction was always Daley-Ward's intention. 'The only reason why these other things came first is because I had a lot of personal stories in the way before I was able to dream and imagine enough to write this,' she says.
She is ready for people to assume that The Catch is autobiographical because 'the perception of women is that we always want to divulge', she says. 'Inevitably that happens to an extent, because it's what you know. But fiction gives you the opportunity to be quite wild — these characters behave in ways that I would never, so it's a fun experiment.'
Despite having the likes of Stormzy, Beyoncé and the Italian fashion house Valentino on her list of collaborators, Daley-Ward doesn't do parties these days, opting instead to 'read books and go on long walks — that's living it up for me', she says.
She visits Lancashire regularly to see her brother and his children and describes its 'nature, space and deep quiet' as being 'an excellent backdrop for dreaming and for making up stories. Going back there is really interesting and very layered, but it's lovely,' she explains. 'Lancashire is a huge part of me, you can hear it in my voice, it will never go anywhere. It's my beginning.'
The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward (Cornerstone £16.99). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members