Lucy Cameron from the SMHAF Volunteer Collective spoke to writer Kirsty Crawford after she won the Jury Prize at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival’s 2025 writing awards.

I had the honour of attending this year’s SMHAF writing awards in Aberdeen’s Cowdray Hall as a volunteer, having attended last year as a shortlisted writer and winner of the Creative Non-Fiction prize with my piece Invertebrate.

It felt good to be able to absorb the other writer’s work, and not worry about when I was reading my own aloud. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Kirsty Crawford, winner of the Poetry and Jury prize, reading aloud both ‘Death Disco’ and ‘DSM-5’. Both pieces are full of technique, rhythm, powerful imagery, and emotion. 

‘Death Disco’ is a short story that details how life changes when you become a mother. The nostalgic setting (the gone but not forgotten Glasgow Arches) and references towards a past youth make this story relatable at its core. The vision of the narrator comforting their past self got me good.  But this short story has meaning on a deeper level, highlighting both mental health disturbances in the narrator’s younger years and post-partum life. 

‘DSM-5’ is a poem highlighting the speaker’s difficulty with post-partum mental health, and trauma post and prior to birth. I adored this poem due to its rhythm and use of repetition: ‘loops’ were effective when read aloud, showing how the speaker’s mind seemed caught in a never-ending cycle of suffering. 

The latter half of the poem shows the speaker connecting to nature, finding inner peace and hope. When read aloud by Kirsty, this poem both moved something within me and soothed me. The last line ‘under a perfect primary blue sky’ left me with a lingering feeling of hope.

With Kirsty’s success, I wanted to ask her a few questions about her SMHAF writing awards experience, and about her other projects.

I’ve had the opportunity of reading and listening to performances of Kirsty’s work before, and most of it centres around motherhood and matrescence. Writing about these difficult subjects is challenging but can also be therapeutic, as it allows mothers to be honest and reflect their true emotions which can still feel taboo. “Since giving birth to my son nearly two years ago writing has been such a source of therapy and healing for me,” Kirsty says. “It creates both distance from difficult subjects and allows me to get forensically close to them, but from the place of an observer. The chance to select imagery and the right words and phrases, then to edit the work down creates a process in which I can begin to understand or accept the difficulties of birth and postpartum.”

Writing has changed Kirsty’s perspective on motherhood, which initially at times felt “suffocating”: “I found the transition to motherhood very difficult, hormonally and with a great loss of self,” Kirsty says. “Writing was one way to connect with my ‘old’ self but also process and make peace with the fact that a new self was emerging.” Writing, particularly with a focus on the changing seasons, created space for hope and self-understanding. “Over time,” Kirsty says, “the collection of writing I was producing gave a sense of how I was developing and growing as a mother.”

Kirsty writes in various forms, her poetry ‘DSM-5’ and non-fiction ‘Death Disco’ were shortlisted for the SMHAF 2025 award. Working in different forms allows Kirsty a chance to explore her voice as a writer, each form giving her a different perspective on writing. “I find creative non-fiction a more urgent form of writing. Poems don’t always allow the space for storytelling that I want to express,” Kirsty says. It is unsurprising that writing poetry, for Kirsty, feels more restrictive and precise in comparison to creative nonfiction, a longer form that allows more rawness. With that being said, Kirsty finds writing poetry can be “quite soothing as it takes me time to go back and edit each piece” and finds comfort in the process of different forms. 

Writing is something we often neglect or struggle to find time for. Especially if another little human is relying on us to stay alive. Kirsty finds the time to write mostly during “nap times or once my son goes to bed.” Using her phone to leave herself voice notes or using the notes app is a big part of her process, as it is more convenient and quicker than writing by hand. 

Kirsty’s ideas start as “a strong feeling or opinion, an image in nature, something that stands out or where I recognise conflict or juxtaposition in emotions or events.” Nature is a source of inspiration; she has a MSc in Wildlife Biology and currently as a Learning & Community Engagement Manager for Marine Conservation Society. Writing allows her to bring it to life on the page. 

Another poem of Kirsty’s I particularly enjoy is ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’, this poem perfectly incorporates science, emotion, matrescence, and seasonal changes. Similar to ‘DSM-5’, it observes the world beautifully as it explores the connection between the self and nature. 

Kirsty runs Postpartum Poems events; these are open mic fundraising events that give back to selected charities, previously PANDAS and the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, which she has personal experience with. The events provide an open space for women to come together and bond over their postpartum experiences. They give women a space to openly and honestly share offering a real sense of liberation. The first event was a triumph. Kirsty says, “Women shared incredibly personal words, some speaking for the first time in a room full of other people. I realised I was creating a sense of community, and I was creating the thing that I needed most of all.”

Kirsty tries to do two postpartum events each year, selecting different charities each time too. Her next event is in Glasgow on 14 January – you can find out more about this event here and on her Instagram @kcrawfordcreative.

Kirsty was also shortlisted for the Uncensored Motherhood Stories (2024) competition, which was seeking work about motherhood. Whether this be your own motherhood experiences, or how you truly feel about motherhood. The 35 shortlisted authors of the competition were published in Motherhood Uncensored, a collection of raw and honest stories that can be found online or in bookshops. Kirsty says, “The competition was being judged by Lucy Jones who is a writer I really admire and found her book Matrescence to be transformative.” Kirsty was the only Scottish selected writer, therefore decided to host the Scottish book launch/open mic event. 

Reading your work to an audience, especially work centering around your own personal mental health or trauma, can be extremely daunting. However, Kirsty has given me a new perspective about sharing work with others. Instead of fearing it, Kirsty finds it “liberating to give the words space and to have an audience.” 

Kirsty has a background of working as a performer and professional dancer in London up to about ten years ago, when she switched careers to work in conservation and community engagement. Is there anything Kirsty can’t do? Seriously. Kirsty enjoys being back in front of an audience and feels now she is doing so “in a more honest way.”

Following her success winning both the Poetry prize and Jury prize at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival’s writing awards she feels “incredibly proud.” As she accepted her awards, Kirsty gave a short speech reflecting on the difficult emotions and times she faced when writing her shortlisted work, adding that winning the award in comparison was “a good moment.”

Kirsty’s writing transforms her darkest moments to something beautiful and wholeheartedly relatable. “It does make me emotional to look back at the place which the words came from, a place of pain and suffering and to stand on the stage in a much better and calmer place, it felt like a huge win for me”. 

With her achievements and successes so far it is beyond exciting to envision what she will accomplish next. Kirsty says, “I will keep going with my Postpartum Poems events raising money for key charities which support pre- and post-natal mental health, birth trauma and miscarriage” and “plan to collate my poems on the first eighteen months of my son’s life into a pamphlet collection and see this published at some point in the future.”

What a beautiful, one-of-a-kind, pamphlet it will be.