Interview _ Emma Lee

Emma Lee was born in South Gloucestershire and now lives in Leicestershire. She is on the committee of Leicester Writers’ Club and the steering group for the Leicester Writers’ Showcase.

Her poems, short stories and articles have appeared in many anthologies and magazines. Some of her poems have been been translated into languages that include Chinese, Farsi, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Romanian.

Emma Lee co-edited Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) and Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Publishing, 2016). She has four poetry collections, The Significance of a Dress (Arachne Press, 2020), Ghosts in the Desert (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2015), Mimicking a Snowdrop (Thynks, 2014) and Yellow Torchlight and the Blues (Original Plus, 2004).

Her latest collection, The Significance of A Dress, has been described as "Poems informed by, and immersed in politics. Whether investigating the lives of refugees, families or women in crisis, everything has a significance beyond the surface. Beautiful, hair-raising words and form, utterly from the heart."

In this interview, Emma Lee talks about poetry and The Significance of A Dress.

How long did it take you to put the collection together?

The Significance of a Dress started back in 2015 when I was involved in co-editing Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015), an anthology to raise awareness of the plight of refugees and raise funds for refugee charities.

After the anthology's publication, I was involved in the Journeys Poems Pop-up Library where postcards of some of the poems were distributed at Leicester Railway Station during Everybody's Reading 2016. In 2017, the start of Everybody's Reading coincided with International Translation Day so I organised an event where 13 of the poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge were read in their original English and one translation. In turn this led to my setting up Journeys in Translation.

By 2018 I had a collection of refugee-themed poems but hadn't really thought about getting them published as a collection although individual poems had been published in magazines and anthologies.

How did you chose a publisher for the collection? Why this publisher? And, what advantages or disadvantages has this presented?

Arachne Press put a call out for submissions for an anthology in 2018. Arachne like to publish a group of poems by each poet rather than just have one or two poems by each. I submitted some of my refugee poems.

Arachne Press got back and said they didn't want to put my poems in their anthology but were interested in a single author collection. The only sensible response to that request was to ask how many poems they wanted and The Significance of a Dress was born.

I'd been published in some of the anthologies Arachne had produced previously so I knew I was working with a committed, caring publisher.

The disadvantages so far have not been with the publisher but with the Covid-19 pandemic. I was due to hold a Leicester launch on 11 March but the venue was pulled with less than 24 hours' notice. Fortunately I found another and a launch still went ahead on 14 March. However, most poetry books are sold at readings and book fairs and those are all on hold for now.

Who is your target audience?

Anyone with an interest in the themes explored within.

Why does poetry matter?

It's difficult to reduce it to a soundbite. Jean-Claude Juncker said poetry doesn't matter and the focus should be on people's first needs, shelter and food. But that's a very reductive way of looking at humans. Maya Angelou spoke of there being no greater violence than an untold story within you. But refugees aren't always able to tell their stories and, for some, not telling their stories is more important than triggering their trauma by repeating stories. So poetry becomes a way of bearing witness, exploring those stories and raising awareness. Poetry's brevity and structure offer a way of processing strong emotions; we turn to poetry in times of hardship and in times of joy.

With (or in) the collection, what would you say are your main concerns? How do you deal with these concerns?

Themes emerge not only of refugees but violence done to, for example, women, through discrimination and dehumanisation. Through my poems I try to humanise those who have been rendered voiceless.

What influences does The Significance of a Dress draw on? 

I don't think there were any specific influences in The Significance of a Dress. I read and review widely so no doubt readers might pick up influences I wasn't aware of. I do try and indicate positives, even in traumatic subjects, such as those small acts of kindness that can make a huge difference.

Which aspects of the work you put into the book did you find most difficult?

I didn't conceive of the poems within The Significance of a Dress as a book until Arachne invited me to put a collection together. I was conscious that the main themes would make for hard reading so endeavoured to put in some lighter moments, such as a poem about playing a piano on College Green ("How Rapunzel Ends") or a bank teller struggling to spell a surname ("When Your Name's Not Smith" and the transformative power of music ("Put a Spell on those February Blues").

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

The lack of pressure: because I wasn't selecting sample poems and sending them off to a publisher in the hope they'd consider a collection, the process of selecting and shaping The Significance of a Dress was done when I knew a publisher was interested.

What sets the book apart from other things you've written?

My first collection Yellow Torchlight and the Blues was hugely inspired by my time as a music reviewer. My second Mimicking a Snowdrop drew on a poet's autobiography and aspects of her life, particularly during the Second World War when she used her nurse's training to be a first responder and did voluntary work in a disadvantaged children's playgroup. My third Ghosts in the Desert features a lot of ghosts and contains a sequence about The Matrix.

So, the topics and issues explored in The Significance of a Dress are very different. It's also the first of my books to feature one of my embroideries on the cover.

In what way is it similar to the others?

I think some topics link all four collections, discrimination, feeling like an outsider, explorations of whose voices don't get heard and why that might be.

What will your next book be about?

No idea. I'm always writing poems, stories, reviews, articles so I don't think in terms of focusing on a next book. I keep writing and when I seem to have a body of work, I start arranging poems by theme and see what emerges.

What else are you working on?

I'm now reviews editor for The Blue Nib and still reviewing for other magazines. I have a couple of short stories to edit and am still writing individual poems, one based on Bruce Springsteen's explanation of why he doesn't like wind chimes.

See also:

● Interview _ Emma Lee, Conversations with Writers, 19 April 2017

● Interview _ Emma Lee, Conversations with Writers, 27 April 2007

Interview _ Emma Lee

Emma Lee

Emma Lee co-edited Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) and is one of the coordinators of Journeys in Translation. She also co-edited Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Publishing, 2016) and has three poetry collections, Ghosts in the Desert (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2015), Mimicking a Snowdrop (Thynks, 2014) and Yellow Torchlight and the Blues (Original Plus, 2004).

She reviews for The High Window Journal, The Journal, London Grip and Sabotage Reviews and is currently Vice-President of Leicester Writers' Club. Her poems have been published in the UK, USA, Mexico and South Africa, broadcast on radio and she has performed them at venues such as Leicester City Football Club, Leicester's Guildhall and the Poetry Cafe in London.

In this interview Emma Lee talks about her writing and about Journeys in Translation.

How would you describe the writing you are currently doing?

In between poetry reviews and blog articles, there are poems. I'm currently taking part in NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month, April 2017) where the aim is to draft or make notes towards 30 poems during April, averaging a poem a day. Outside of NaPoWriMo, I'll still be writing poems, blog articles and reviews, going to poetry and spoken word events and Leicester Writers' Club, but without the pressure of averaging a poem a day.

In that, who or what has had the most influence on you?

I usually avoid naming contemporary poets for fear of leaving someone out, but it's fair to say many of them are my Indigo Dreams Publishing stable mates. Other influences include Sylvia Plath, Charlotte Mew, Rosemary Tonks, Maya Angelou, Marcia Douglas, Anna Akhmatova, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell.

How have your personal experiences influenced the writing?

Not all my poems are semi-autobiographical. I love that poems give me the chance to try and imagine what someone else's experiences feel like and explore how others might tell their stories if they were given a chance.

What has been your most significant achievement as a writer so far?

In terms of being noteworthy, probably co-editing Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015), not only in the interest it generated in readings in Leicester, Nottingham, St Andrews, the Poetry Cafe in London and interviews in The Morning Star and on Iraqi TV, but also in fundraising for refugee charities and subsequent projects such as the Journeys Poems Pop-Up Library, Journeys in Translation and the "Poetry and 'The Jungle'" paper I presented at the Jungle Factory Symposium organised by the University of Leicester in 2017.

On a more personal level, it has to be the publication of my third collection Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015).

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

Ambrose Musiyiwa and I were chatting over coffee about the Journeys Poem Pop-up Library, where we gave out postcards featuring eight poems from Over Land, Over Sea at Leicester Railway Station during the Everybody's Reading Festival, and how we could build on that.

At the time of putting together Over Land, Over Sea we only took poems in English, a language common to all three co-editors, because our priority was to raise funds, however we were aware that the publication being monolingual was a potential issue because it raised barriers to reading and sharing poems about a universal experience. So the idea came about to translate some of the poems into other languages and break down some of those barriers.

We picked the eight poems used in the postcards and added a further five, using local poets so that we could work towards an event where the original poems would be read and displayed alongside readings and displays of some of the translations.

I suspect if I hadn't stopped for that coffee, I'd still be involved somehow.

"[We] were chatting over coffee about the Journeys Poem Pop-up Library, where we gave out postcards featuring eight poems from Over Land, Over Sea at Leicester Railway Station during the Everybody's Reading Festival, and how we could build on that."

Which were the easiest aspects of the work you put or are putting into the project?

Coming up with the design for the posters. We're using the cover image of Over Land, Over Sea and each poster features the original poem alongside one translation.

Where more than one translation in a specific language has been done, these are being featured with the original poem on one poster, where possible. For example, there are three German translations of "The Man Who Ran Through the Tunnel" and these are featured with the original English version on one poster. The idea is not to directly compare the translations, but discuss how the differences occurred and difficulties in translating phrases or idioms which don't have a direct translation into another language.

One of your poems, "Stories from 'The Jungle'" is also being used as part of Journeys in Translation. How did the poem come about?

One frequently asked question is along the lines of: "Why don't refugees apply for asylum in the first European country they arrive in?" or "Why do refugees camped in France want to come to the UK?"

I wanted to explore some answers to that.

Sometimes it's because the refugees already have family here and want to join their family. Sometimes it's because the only European language they speak is English (usually because they were from a former colony and English was and in some cases still is one of the official languages). Sometimes it's a combination of reasons.

"Stories from the Jungle" takes seven stories from newspaper interviews and explores them not only through the question of why try to get to England but also why leave home and country in the first place.

Primarily I was trying to show that refugees are people with stories too. Not only that but they also have the right to tell those stories in their own words and on their own terms. There are a lot of negative connotations attached to the word migrant. But there is also a tendency to imply refugees are victims with no agency. Neither is accurate.

We won't solve the problems that large migrations cause without understanding why they are happening. People don't choose to leave their homeland and embark upon long, perilous journeys unless they have good reason for doing so. In an age of austerity, it's easy to fall into the trap of seeing migration as an economic problem but it's not that simple. I wanted "Stories from 'The Jungle'" to re-humanise de-humanised people.

Emma Lee's poem "Stories from 'The Jungle'" on the pavement at the Leicester Against War / Leicester for Peace vigil. The vigil started in December 2015 and is held at the Clock Tower in Leicester, every Friday,  in solidarity with people everywhere who are bearing the brunt of war as well as those who are seeking refuge.

How has the poem been received?

One of the translators in the Journeys in Translation project commented:

I found that when focusing on the words and stories within the poems I started to really focus on the human aspect of the refugee crisis, which I had not perhaps really appreciated until this point. Suddenly all those news images and statistics took on a more personal meaning. When I read through the experiences of Abdel, Sayid and Ziad in “Stories from ‘The Jungle’” and the lives they left behind, which seemed very normal and comparable to my own, I couldn’t help thinking, "It could have been me!"

So far, which were the most challenging aspects of the work you put into the initiative? 

The most challenging was translating some of the poems myself. I do have a basic understanding of German but hadn't spoken or written in German recently. I started with my own poem because I knew the intention behind the words I'd chosen so wouldn't be so daunted by there not being a direct translation.

I used several online dictionaries (not just Google Translate) so I could be more confident I was picking the right German words for the poem. I also re-translated my German back into English using online dictionaries so I could be sure that the selected German words would be interpreted in the right way. It was very reassuring when others translated the same original poem into German and I could see their approach was very similar to mine, although still with small differences.

I had tried to reproduce the original rhyme scheme (at least by sight) in my translation, but the other translators had gone for a more literal translation without the rhymes.

What would you say is the value of initiatives like Journeys in Translation?

It's great to see the enthusiasm and involvement of both poets and translators.

Translating the poems isn't just about widening the audience for the original poems, it's about breaking down barriers to the poems being read and enabling the stories behind the poems to be shared. It also gives others the opportunity to share their stories and experiences.

Editor's Note:

Journeys in Translation aims to facilitate cross- and inter-cultural conversations around the themes of home, belonging and refuge.

The project encourages people who are bilingual or multilingual to have a go at translating 13 of the 101 poems from Over Land: Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) from English into other languages and to share the translations, and reflections on the exercise on blogs, in letters and emails to family and friends, and on social media.

So far, the 13 poems that are being used as part of the project have been translated into languages that include Italian, German, Shona, Spanish, Bengali, British Sign Language, Farsi, Finnish, French, Turkish and Welsh. Currently, over 20 people from all over the world are working on the translations. More translations and more languages are on the way.

In Leicester, Journeys in Translation will culminate in an event that is going to be held on September 30 as part of Everybody's Reading 2017. During the event the original poems and translations will be read, discussed and displayed.

Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for Those Seeking Refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) was edited by Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan and is being sold to raise funds for Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Leicester City of Sanctuary and the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

Copies of the anthology are available from Five Leaves Bookshop (Nottingham).

More information on how Over Land, Over Sea came about is available here.

Interview _ Emma Lee

Leicester is home to some of the most exciting emerging writers in the United Kingdom. One of these is poet, short story writer and novelist Emma Lee, who has had poems nominated in competitions that include the Forward Best Poem Prize. Other poems by Emma Lee have been published in anthologies, magazines and webzines and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

Her short stories are proving to be just as significant. "Restoration," was runner-up in Writing Magazine's Annual Ghost Story Competition while "First and Last and Always," another of her short stories, is appearing in Extended Play, a new anthology of music-inspired pieces.

Emma Lee talked about her concerns as a writer.

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

It chose me. I spent a lot of time alone as a child — I wasn't lonely, it's just a reflection of the circumstances I found myself in — and frequently made up stories as entertainment. Later I filled exercise books writing my stories and branched out into poems. Although I didn't call myself a writer until I reached adulthood and began getting poems and stories published.

Who would you say has influenced you the most?

At school we mostly studied the War Poets, Heaney, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Ted Hughes... which left me with the impression that either women didn't write poetry, which I didn’t believe, or that women's poetry wasn't worth studying - which was discouraging to say the least.

A friend showed me Ted Hughes's "You Hated Spain" and it spoke to me: I identified with the woman who hated Spain. After reading Ariel, Sylvia Plath had me firmly hooked. Here at last was proof women did write and were worth studying.

How have your personal experiences influenced the direction of your writing?

Fifteen years of music reviewing have provided a rich seam of inspiration and some of my poems and stories have started from exploring a personal experience - not always directly, sometimes from overhearing or reading a news story.

What would you say are the biggest challenges you face?

Finding time to write around a full-time office job (necessary to pay the bills as writing, especially poetry, doesn't pay) and family commitments.

Poetry magazine editors are so generally overwhelmed with poems most are rejecting 98 percent of submissions, which means increasingly my writing time is spent dealing with submissions rather than writing new material.

How do you deal with these?

Planning ahead so that as much as possible of my writing time is spent actually writing rather than "warming up" and thinking about what needs to be written next. Taking advantage of any "spare" time — lunch breaks, waiting for appointments, etc. Ensuring that as soon as a batch of poems is returned by an editor, they are out again with another editor within a couple of days.

What is your latest book about?

Yellow Torchlight and the Blues is about musicians, the pressures of performing and relationships with fans and general hangers-on. It's also about relationships, loss and what makes people who they are.

How long did it take you to write it?

The publisher approached me with a view to publishing a collection of my poems. The poems within Yellow Torchlight and the Blues actually span 16 years.

Where and when was it published?

By Original Plus in Fall 2004.

Which aspects of the work that you put into the book did you find most difficult?

Deciding which poems to leave out. Poetry collections work best when the poems are inter-linked in some way, perhaps by theme or subject, rather than merely being a collection of loosely gathered poems. So some poems that deserved to be in a collection had [to] fall by the wayside because they didn't fit in this particular collection.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Nothing beats seeing your name on the spine of a book. Giving live performances at, for example, poetry readings are great experiences as the audience give you instant feedback and reassurance. But a book says "you've arrived, you really are a writer."

How did you get there?

Persistence: building up a long list of publishing credits in magazines and competition successes plus a couple of nominations for the Forward Poetry Prizes, giving readings where opportunities presented themselves and establishing a reputation as a reviewer as well as continuing with other writing projects. Success breeds success: you are more likely to get published if you've been published and in poetry it's not unusual for the publisher to approach the poet - many presses won't consider unsolicited work. Initially Yellow Torchlight and the Blues was accepted by another publisher, but the publisher's sad, untimely death meant searching for an alternative publisher.


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