Porcelain Cherries by Lauren Bulla: A Poetic Study in Heartbreak and Healing

Lauren Bulla’s Porcelain Cherries is the type of reading experience that simultaneously grips and lets go, embodying vulnerability with the kind of abandon only heartbreak can inspire. Released in April 2024, the debut collection has since made waves both in London’s East End and New York’s Chinatown, finding a dedicated following drawn to Bulla’s raw, unpolished takes on the complexities of love, regret, and the lighthearted relief that comes only when we learn to “laugh to keep from crying.”

The work’s initial release was paired with a launch event at The Gallery Cafe in Bethnal Green, East London. The sold-out event set an intimate yet vibrant tone, combining poetry readings with a bi-monthly workshop series Bulla created called Regular Poetry Club: Lost in the Foxglove. This session saw emerging poets performing alongside Bulla, capturing the almost ritualistic spirit of shared experience and community.

A later event in New York City’s Pretty Garden Club in Chinatown in September echoed this, further expanding Bulla’s reach and reinforcing her commitment to fostering safe, artistic spaces that resonate with both local and global creatives.

Bulla’s debut is structured into three sections—“Puppy Love,” “Sometimes Regret is Cherry-Coloured,” and “I’ve Got a Funny Bone for a Reason”—each section peeling back layers of Bulla’s personal journey through love’s highs and lows. With her free-verse, stream-of-consciousness, and prose poetry forms, she brings humour into the frame. Her approach is “thoughtfully destabilising,” as she describes it, inviting readers to feel both unsettled and comforted as her words carve into universal yet often unspoken emotions. It’s poetry that wants to hit you, as Bulla says, “in the chest like some foreign object”—startling but, ultimately, inviting you to stay.

Bulla reflects on the transformative power of writing Porcelain Cherries. Her words suggest a poet growing alongside her work, acknowledging that, though initially raw, her journey has since shifted—her past hurts no longer define her. She sees this collection as a “peeling gold vanity,” urging readers to sit and find their own reflection within. For Bulla, poetry is not just an outlet but a compulsion, “a place of safety, reprieve, and naughtiness” where heartbreak and healing coexist, as vibrant as cherry-red lacquer on porcelain.

Porcelain Cherries is a perfect winter read, though not for the faint-hearted. It's an invitation to laugh at the things that once brought us to tears and to celebrate the complexities of growth and change with a dash of humour, a bit of darkness, and, ultimately, an understanding that love and pain both deserve their place in the story.