He’s still only 20, but model and poet Sonny Hall has lived a lot of life. His mother died of a heroin overdose in 2015 and he lost two years of his late teens to drug and alcohol addictions. He’s now been clean for almost two years and is publishing a book of his poetry, The Blues Comes With Good News. 

Stylist’s guest editor Adwoa Aboah counts Sonny as a good friend: “I love Sonny’s writing, he jots down the chaos running through your head,” she says. “He’s documented his life in such a brave way. It always feels quite therapeutic when I read his poetry.” 

Check out Sonny’s soulful, visceral verse below: 

With the blue moon
We are grudgingly receiving consent
To acknowledge Saturday’s noon
On a day you are torn to breathe
THE effort of morphing into a slug
Your subtle ease
To own a fooling service
Your need to receive
Gloopy porridge
This morning
Your fingers smell familiarly peculiar
The shy water under Williamsburg bridge
Moulds tran utility
Subtly balancing dismissed confusion
And the innocent madness
Of the towering merged red and brown bricks
Of the east river
Decades of poor misfits
Licking society’s balls
Just to merely fit
In the trick of all that is

Everyone unknowingly holds the burrow
Of life’s incognito tick
Tearing through moisturised skin
EXPLOITING the fine line
Between a gentleman’s values
And his wayward sinsssss………..

In my circle of Crooks
We indulge in our stolen books
Bingeing on mischief
Downtown
With little sound
Just chattered teeth
Planting seeds in the hope of love
To lead a furthered hug
Tugging me
The bent slug
Through Chinatown and alla around
Cracked red paint
Glossy catastrophes
Smacked beings with no sake
Our minds the factories
Of post murder fleas
Bloody mysteries
And the delusional blue print
To harbour the Bees Knees

The Blues Comes With Good News, £34, is out this month. Pre-order here.

We’re celebrating Stylist’s 10th birthday in 2019 – and to honour the occasion, we’ve asked 10 of our favourite women to guest edit an issue of the magazine. Adwoa Aboah is our second star guest editor; see everything from her special issue here. 

Images: David Newby / Evening Standard / Eyevine