No Map of the World
Poems of survival, healing & hope
Her debut poetry collection, No Map of the World, is an intimate exploration of survival, loss, human connection, and the search for meaning in circumstances that rarely offer clear answers. Rather than presenting healing as a linear journey or offering easy reassurance, her poetry acknowledges the complexity of recovery and the uncomfortable reality that sometimes there is no resolution, only the gradual process of learning to live with what has happened.
Buy the book →
The Black Hole
The black hole wrapped its arms around me,
promising peace,
promising silence.
I let it pull me under—
I thought dissolving
was the only way
to stop the world from breaking.
I surrendered.
I let the darkness claim me.
I truly believed
my absence was mercy.
But when I crossed that edge,
I didn't vanish.
I was spit into a parallel world—
raw, injured,
reborn with burning lungs
and eyes that suddenly saw everything
with terrifying clarity.
I came back a new earth,
cracked and shaken,
but alive—
and the light that returned to me
was fierce,
unwilling to let go.
The black hole tried to take me.
But I came back
louder than its silence.
Get No Map of the World
Available in paperback and eBook from these retailers.
Laura Hales
Laura Hales is an Australian poet whose writing is shaped by her lived experience of bipolar disorder, addiction, trauma, and the often complicated nature of recovery. Her work explores the less comfortable aspects of being human — grief, dysfunctional relationships, identity, and the contradictions that exist between resilience and vulnerability. Writing with honesty, emotional depth, and a willingness to confront difficult truths, she is particularly drawn to the experiences we struggle to articulate and the questions that remain unresolved.
Laura lives on Victoria's Surf Coast, where the ocean provides a sense of perspective, solitude, and connection to the natural world. Her writing is influenced by her background in mental health, her interest in human behaviour, and a belief that even our most difficult experiences can reveal something meaningful about what it is to be human.