AMHERST — Mary Lambert sits in a corner of Amherst Coffee on a Friday afternoon. Though the coffee shop is bustling, the Grammy-nominated singer goes seemingly unnoticed in the very spot where she wrote much of her recent book of poetry, “Shame is an Ocean I Swim Across.” She’d sit at a high-top table there with a martini and work, she said.
Lambert rose to fame after writing and singing the chorus of “Same Love,” a 2012 Macklemore and Ryan Lewis song that became an anthem for marriage equality. The hit led Lambert to share the stage with Madonna and snag a record deal with a major label, Capitol Records, and later her song “Secrets,” made the Billboard Hot 100 in 2014.
Originally from Seattle, Lambert moved to Amherst five years ago, and has performed at Valley venues including Gateway City Arts in Holyoke and The Parlor Room in Northampton.
The singer-songwriter is outspoken about her queerness, body positivity and mental-health issues. “Shame is an Ocean I Swim Across,” released in late October, is her first book with a major publisher, Macmillan. The collection takes on everything from body image to heartbreak and draws from poems she’s written over the past 10 years.
And it’s all personal. “It’s very autobiographical,” Lambert said, drinking from a small mug.
The title, for instance, is from a poem about growing up with her mother who was in an abusive relationship for a period.
“That particular four years of my childhood really grossly affected my brain patterns, and it’s something that I’m still working on shifting.”
A lot of the book relates to her own shame, which was the “genesis” of the book, she said.
“The concept of it being an ocean — you can’t possibly swim an ocean,” she explained. “What I wanted to convey was, ridding yourself of shame is a lifelong journey.”
Lambert came out when she was 17 but struggled to reconcile her religion and her sexuality.
“I grew up Pentecostal — yes, the scary one,” she said with a laugh. She joined an Evangelical church in high school and still identifies as a Christian.
“Honestly, that was where the inspiration for ‘Same Love’ came,” she said. “I was going to church every Sunday — actually, I would go to two different churches on Sunday. I was that into church.”
She’d go to one church where she liked the sermon, and another, at St. Mark’s Cathedral, where she liked a half-hour music service.
But attending an Evangelical church as a queer teenager was hard, she said: “That meant that I had to also subscribe to a belief that my identity is inherently wrong — that’s why I cried every Sunday for a year.”
“When you’re 17 you feel like a freak already,” she continued, “and if you’re queer it’s just compounded … it was a really difficult time.”
She frequently draws from difficult times like these in some of her song lyrics, like in the opening lines of “Secrets”: “I’ve got bi-polar disorder/My s–t’s not in order/I’m overweight/I’m always late,” and later in the chorus: “I don’t care if the world knows what my secrets are.”
Lambert also has made her mental-health issues public on Instagram, posting about how she felt after a 2016 bipolar episode.
Her honest embrace of issues often overlooked by other pop artists has made fans feel connected to her art — and many reach out to Lambert herself.
“I’m not scared to share,” she said. “I think it is an invitation for other people to feel and process and heal,” she added.
After she released a music video “Body Love (Part 1 & 2),” which fuses together music and spoken-word about body positivity, Lambert said she got around 50 emails a day from fans, including some saying that her music had helped them get through eating disorders.
“I’d pat myself on the back, and I’d be like, ‘Look at all this good I’m doing,’ and you know, I think it’s easy to develop a savior complex in those situations because you kind of feel like God.”
Talking with fans at meet-and-greets can be emotional, too, she said. “They’re real moments where people are crying, and I’m holding them, and I’m telling them it’s OK. Every show I do, it sort of feels like facilitating group therapy. It’s just what I do.”
At one point, Lambert felt obligated to respond to all her fans, but time has taught her to empower her fans in a different way. “I encourage the listener to have agency over their own change and not to say, ‘You saved my life.’ I’m like, ‘No — you did that.’”
Though Lambert considers herself a songwriter, she has been writing poetry since high school and has long loved and performed spoken-word poetry.
She previously had a collection of poetry she released independently and would sell at shows and on her website, and some of those edited pieces are in her new book.
Originally, her literary agent wanted her to write essays instead of poetry. She tried that, but her essays ended up feeling contrived, she said. “So, I was just like, ‘Well, I guess I won’t ever get published.’ ”
Now her first major book is being sold around the Valley, in places like Broadside Bookshop and Amherst Books. Lambert lives in Amherst with her former assistant-turned-best friend and her sister, who moved here after she did.
Lambert travels frequently for work, recording music mostly on the West Coast — and people often ask if she’s based in New York or L.A. “I’m like, ‘I’m in western Massachusetts!” she said.
“They’re like, ‘What are you doing out there?’ ” She laughed. “I’m like, ‘well, all the queers live there.’ ”
Lambert originally moved to the Valley because she was in a relationship with a woman she met online who lived here.
Then that relationship ended. “I went through a pretty gnarly breakup last year,” she said. “All of a sudden, I was just like, ‘I moved across the county to be in this relationship, and I’m just very very alone.’ ”
She considered moving but is glad she stayed. “I’ve made really good friends here and set up a good home base,” she said. Now she has a different partner, who also lives in the Valley, and said the two enjoy watching movies at Amherst Cinema and walking her partner’s dog.
Lambert is currently working on her upcoming album, “Horror Orchid.”
The artist, who studied music composition at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, said she’s putting more of those skills to use on the album with some songs that combine orchestral music and spoken word.
She is producing it by herself, not with a record label, she said: “This is the first collection of songs that doesn’t have any outside influence creatively.”
Movie theater: Amherst Cinema. “I love Amherst Cinema, I’m partial to it,” Lambert said.
Restaurant for brunch: The Green Bean or Jake’s in Northampton
Date spot: Coco in Easthampton.”Their food is unreal,” she said. “And then they have a bar downstairs called The Cellar Bar that’s awesome too. I go there a lot.”
Places to be outside: Northampton Community Gardens, Mount Tom in Easthampton, Amethyst Brook in Amherst, Skinner State Park in Hadley
Bars: Brass Cat in Easthampton, The Tunnel Bar in Northampton, Amherst Coffee
Bookstores: Booklink Booksellers, Grey Matter Books. “I think Grey Matter is really cool … It’s vast, it’s so huge and I always take an allergy pill before I go, but I’ve found some really neat stuff there.”
Other spots: River Valley Co-op in Northampton. “My parents would go to Walmart, not to get anything, just to hang out,” said Lambert, who likes to hang around the co-op. “I just love River Valley market.”
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com