Poetry, breastfeeding and sex

The Guardian - Poet Hollie McNish felt she wasn't ready to be a mother when she got pregnant at 26, six years ago. She is also a poet who has channelled her feelings about parenthood into verse Breastfeeding and sex after birth aren't subjects you'll find in many modern poetry anthologies. Life, love and death, yes ? but the grim realities of, say, throwing up each morning in early pregnancy, less so. "It just shocked me how hard certain things are as soon as you become pregnant and yet no one talks about it. Although I'm not sure if it's the ideal thing to read if you've just got pregnant," laughs Holly McNish, sitting in a small cafe in Cambridge, a cycle ride from where she lives in a small village with her partner and six-year-old daughter. She is here to talk about her new book, Nobody Told Me, a collection of poetry and diary entries that she kept from the moment she discovered she was pregnant six years ago until her daughter was three. She's referring to one of her first poems in the book,