Hussain Manawer: the poet who has tackled mental health with everyone from Ed Sheeran to Oprah

Hussain Manawer: the poet who has tackled mental health with everyone from Ed Sheeran to Oprah | Soho House

The east London mental health activist tells Soho House why he waited over a decade to release his debut book, ‘Life Is Sad And Beautiful’

Sunday 15 May 2022   By Tilly Pearman   Photography by Freddie Pearson

Hussain Manawer is not a man who cares for superficiality. ‘I emotionally respond and I emotionally react out of frustration to societal shifts,’ he begins.  
  
We are talking on the phone as he journeys across London to a local art exhibition where he’s due to perform. It’s a rare window of time for the critically acclaimed, east London poet, who is currently mid-tour promoting his debut book, Life Is Sad And Beautiful. ‘I waited more than a decade to release this book,’ he continues. ‘I held onto my art as it was more important to me that it went to the right home.’ 
  
For those who are familiar with Manawer’s work, this emotionally led stance should come as no surprise. His close friends may also recall that despite their ongoing pressure, Manawer once waited two and a half years to release You Are Not My Best Friend, a poem on drug addiction that in time found its home through a joint reading with British boxer, Tyson Fury. In a culture where we are so often misguided and led astray by the wants and pressures of others, Manawer’s patience is admirable. 
  
When I ask if he has a secret trick to hold the line, so to speak, he pauses for a brief moment before asking me if he can read a few lines from the opening pages of his book. He starts: ‘As soon as we harness our true power, we will have enormous control over the world. We will be able to design reality, rather than merely acting and being controlled within it...’  
 
He continues reading from his prologue, and when he finishes there’s a conscious moment of stillness from us both. Once the words settle, it’s the authenticity of Manawer’s voice that I am reminded of; his unique ability to so simply, yet so articulately, write with touching prose that both softens despair and ignites hope. ‘People have learnt to trust me, to not take their pain and bend it in a way they can no longer relate to,’ he explains.  

Hussain Manawer: the poet who has tackled mental health with everyone from Ed Sheeran to Oprah | Soho House

It’s true. Manawer and his poems have travelled from the attic of his childhood Ilford home to charity music concerts via Ed Sheeran, national broadcasts led by The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and most recently, alongside Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry in their latest docu-series, The Me You Can’t See. Recognised by these celebrities, broadcasters and notable dignitaries for his empathetic approachability and power, Manawer’s stage may be global, but he’s quick to point out that he never started with the intention to become famous. ‘Everything was done with the pure intention of having a form of betterment to society,’ he says.  
  
This perpetual drive, unwavering focus and unique tenderness is something he attributes largely to the sudden and tragic death of his mother in 2017. Realising that he was ‘approaching it all wrong’, out went the PDFs, spreadsheets and presentations that he believed would be his entry ticket to mental health activism, and in stepped emotional verse; his true voice and art that would go on to become the catalyst to the conversations he knew the world needed to have. 
  
‘Poetry has meant people reach out to me. My DMs are always flooded with people expressing and relating to something I’ve said and done’, says Manawer. He gracefully goes on to tell me that he receives others’ emotions as a form of currency. This sincerity only grows when he recounts that earlier that day his local bookshop called to tell him that since the arrival of Life Is Sad And Beautiful, they have never had so many people from the South Asian community come in to buy books. It’s a small but meaningful shift for Manawer, who recounts that the only ‘book’ he had growing up was the Argos catalogue. 

 
Hussain Manawer: the poet who has tackled mental health with everyone from Ed Sheeran to Oprah | Soho House

Right now, it’s hard for him to contain his joy. ‘I’m just so glad schools are going to have a poetry book about mental health,’ he exclaims, and not least, one written by a male British Muslim who subverts every norm we typically associate with a largely whitewashed industry. His trajectory to ‘normalising’ mental health across underrepresented groups of society, however, doesn’t end with poetry.  
 
Working in partnership with Hackney Empire, Trinity Buoy Wharf Trust, We Are Stripes and the Black Ticket Project, Manawer also runs Compulsory Subjects – an educational initiative that provides free and accessible development opportunities for the next generation of creative entrepreneurs and arts activists. ‘It’s only through education that we can really change the course of things,’ says Manawer, who just so happens to also hold a Guinness World Record for delivering the World’s Largest Mental Health Lesson. 
  
So, what’s next for the man who’s already being quoted as ‘the voice of a generation’ and ‘one of today’s dopest poets’? One thing is for sure, he’s not here to sell an image. This journey may have personally started with depression and grief, but through joy, hope, tears, and laughter, this is one emotion-led story that will continue to travel to its rightful homes, and not even Manawer can write an ending for that. 
 
 
Life Is Sad And Beautiful is out now

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