Interview _ Becky Swain

Becky Swain is Director of Manchester Poetry Library, the North West’s first public poetry library, opening in 2021. She has experience leading arts, literature and learning programmes at organisations including Arvon, Creative Partnerships, and Creativity Culture and Education, and is an experienced youth worker, English and Drama teacher, coach and arts learning facilitator. A Clore Fellow (2009), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, she is a member of the Advisory Group and Young Poets’ Stories, a poetry writing development research.

In this interview, Becky Swain talks about poetry, the Manchester Poetry Library and why poetry matters.

How would you describe the Manchester Poetry Library?

Manchester Poetry Library based at Manchester Metropolitan University, is the North West’s first public Poetry Library, and the only public poetry library in the country to be based within a university. The Manchester Poetry Library will open on Oxford Road in Manchester early in 2021.

It will host a public programme where language is celebrated in all its diversity. It aims to imagine, make and grow a leading collection of contemporary poetry with our members and partners and to be a place where the next generation of readers and writers are made.

Open to everyone, visitors will be able to enjoy a collection of contemporary poetry in the widest sense of the word; including anthologies, spoken word in recording, films, and poetry in translation.

The public will be able to borrow from and mould the collections and events programme to reflect their interests. We aim to work with people across and beyond the region to ensure that poetry from over 200 of Manchester’s community languages are represented within the collection. The collection will begin in 1889 – the year of the world’s first audio collection.

Tell us more about the library's focus on poetry in recording.

Manchester Poetry Library will also have a special focus on poetry in recording from film to audio. The library will be seeking funding to trace the history of poetry in audio recording from the first wax cylinder recordings to podcasting.

If you know of recordings that need to be preserved or made more widely available, please let us know. We’ve also had quite a request to collect vinyl and we have run our first Poetry Record Club online.

How did the idea of the library come about?

The idea for a public poetry library came from conversations some years ago between the amazing group of poets based at Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University – these include the recent poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Malika Booker, Jean Sprackland, Michael Symmons Roberts, Andrew McMillan, Helen Mort and Adam O’Riordan.

Manchester Metropolitan University has a thriving undergraduate and postgraduate creative writing community, and the North West has a huge array of poetry talent and a love of poetry. The idea of a dedicated poetry library captured the imagination of the university and it became part of the new Arts and Humanities Building on Oxford Road.

The idea has gathered momentum across the city, and amongst our partners as Manchester is a UNESCO City of Literature. Celebrating the many languages of the city will be key to the mission, and working with communities to co-curate the collections. There is excitement about the opportunity to work in partnership with poets, literature, arts and community groups across the city as we start to develop the collection and public programme.

What can poetry libraries add to literature and life?

I think that just the act of creating a poetry library in Manchester shows the sheer love for poetry in this city and will add to the vibrancy of the scene that already exists.

Connecting poetry with the civic role of libraries has the potential to be a powerful combination, especially during times when public libraries have had to fight for their very existence - and where our curriculum in schools often lack any real commitment to, or understanding of, poetry and how it can engage young minds.

Creating Manchester Poetry Library enables us to develop a space dedicated to poetry in all its forms. We aim to create a poetry place of opportunity and creativity. The Poetry Library will be for everyone interested in, curious about, or simply inspired by poetry. A place to read, hear, perform, write and talk about poetry. We will work in partnership with literature, arts and community organisations across and beyond the city which already has a thriving literary heritage and scene.

How is the Manchester Poetry Library different from other libraries that are out there?

The focus on poetry makes it different – and poetry not just in books, but recordings and on film, with a programme of reading, writing and performance in partnership with poets. We will work closely with poets to develop programmes that meet the needs of residents and members of the library. Specialisms will include poetry and community languages, poetry and recording, poetry for children and poetry in collaboration.

Why does poetry matter?

For writers and readers I think the best of poetry can explore what it means to be human and help us make sense of ourselves and the world around us.

Poetry matters to people in so many different ways.

It’s always good to ask a poet too. When asked whether she felt poetry could change the world, poet and Manchester Metropolitan University lecturer Malika Booker replied, “Poets interrogate the world to arrive at truth and honesty and that can inspire people.”

Poetry can often articulate what cannot be said and give it clarity.

As an educator, I have seen that poetry can change a person’s life in the way that they find comfort in other’s words, and through writing poetry themselves, which can help us see a sense of possibility in their future. I have seen students re-engage with themselves and learning and take a new kind of pride in their own voice – to understand that they do have something to say that is of value to others.

And people turn to poetry in challenging times. Carol Ann Duffy initiated the WRITE Where We Are NOW poetry project at Manchester Metropolitan online in March and we have seen over 50,000 people engage with the poems about people’s experiences of living in the time of a global pandemic. The Manchester Poetry Library will be collecting public submissions to curate an archive for future generations.

Manchester Poetry will be the first dedicated public poetry library in the North West of England, a place where poets are plentiful and held in high esteem. Not just at Manchester Metropolitan, but also Lemn Sissay and Jackie Kay, who hold Chancellor roles at University of Manchester and Salford University respectively.

Manchester alone is home to award winning independent presses such as Comma, Carcanet, Saraband, Confingo, Flapjack, Manchester University Press and the Manchester Review. We also have Commonword/Cultureword and fantastic festivals – including the Manchester Literature Festival, and Manchester Children’s Book Festival.

Is there anything you would like to add or emphasise?

You can sign up for the Manchester Poetry Library monthly newsletter for the latest on news, opportunities, writing workshops and events, and blogs.

We are always interested in what you'd love to see in the library and any ideas for working in partnership - email poetrylibrary@mmu.ac.uk

Interview _ Siobhan Logan

Siobhan Logan is a storyteller and poet.

Her first collection of poems and non-fiction, Firebridge to Skyshore: A Northern Lights Journey (original plus, 2009), was sponsored by auroral scientists at the University of Leicester. It was performed at the British Science Museum, the National Space Centre and Ledbury Poetry festival.

Her second collection, Mad, Hopeless & Possible: Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition, was also published by Original Plus Press, whilst Philae’s Book of Hours was published on the European Space Agency’s website.

Logan's poetry is widely published in magazines and short stories appear in various anthologies, including Wednesday’s Child (Factor Fiction, forthcoming 2020), Leicester Writes Anthology 2017 (Dahlia Books) and Mrs Rochester’s Attic (Mantle Press 2017). In 2014, she led a WW1 writing residency for 14-18 NOW and in 2015 co-edited a Five Leaves Books anthology for refugee solidarity, Over Land, Over Sea.

She is co-director of indie publisher, Space Cat Press, who published her poetry/ non-fiction collection Desert Moonfire: The Men Who Raced to Space in 2019. When not being led astray by stories or dodging the claws of an errant ‘space cat’, Logan teaches Creative Writing at De Montfort University.

In this interview, Siobhan Logan talks about poetry, Desert Moonfire and the race to space.

How would you describe Desert Moonfire: The Men Who Raced To Space?

Desert Moonfire is a collection of poetry and non-fiction about the era when humans became a space-faring species. The narrative centres on two scientists, Sergei Korolev and Wernher von Braun, who designed the rockets that got us there. These two rivals from either side of the Iron Curtain mirrored each other’s lives in uncanny ways, as they struggled to realise their dreams of spaceflight. And it turns out to be a rather dark tale with our protagonists passing through gulags and concentration camps as well as nuclear near misses along the way.

The rocket technology was very much a product of superpower conflict, with the Cold War driving the whole Sixties space project. So that stark front cover depicting a night-time rocket launch captures the mood of Desert Moonfire’s story – both ‘chilling and exhilarating.’ However, I did also get interested in how science fiction first sparked these impossible imaginings for early space pioneers. And indeed, how scientists eventually used sci-fi films and TV shows to harness the public’s support for realising such costly and dangerous ventures.

What influences does Desert Moonfire draw on?

I’m never aware of particular influences when I write. But years of reading – non-fiction, poetry, fiction – no doubt seeped into the boggy ground that I worked over for this project. And sometimes got lost in. It took me seven years, all told. Lots of biographies and books about the Space Race. Also immersing myself in films, TV shows and other art of the period. Because this book did feel rather like writing historical fiction.

I loved going back to read the sci-fi of Jules Verne, HG Wells and others and watching obscure Russian sci-fi films as well as Hollywood B movies etc.

The book began with a sequence of poems which are imaginative re-enactments of real-life events. My friend Rod Duncan has described these as ‘non-fiction poems’. But I approach the material as a storyteller and I’ve been drawn to other poets who write in narrative form. So I think of Susan Richardson’s marvellous sequences about Arctic explorers in Creatures of the Intertidal Zone (Cinnamon Press, 2007) or Lydia Towsey’s The Venus Papers (Burning Eye Books 2015) where the goddess washes ashore in the UK as a Mediterranean migrant. Or the poems of Emma Lee who unfolds tightly compressed narratives in a single poem with great delicacy. Like Desert Moonfire, Lee often draws upon true-life histories, whether WW2 children in the Blitz or women navigating refugee camps more recently. (See The Significance of a Dress, Arachne Press 2020). So yes, I enjoy poetry collections with lots of storytelling and big thematic sweeps, whether historical, mythical or contemporary.

Why does poetry matter?

Why does any creative work matter? Perhaps the instinct to create might counter that to destroy. Or at least keep us sane.

At a time when the world seems to be in free-fall, when we are racked by political crises, a global pandemic and the accelerating crisis of climate change, stories have never been more important. They are at the heart of who we are and how we envision our future as well as our past. They transmit our values and generate the stuff of identity.

My book about the Sixties Space Race came out in 2019 just as the world was moving into a second Space Race. Many countries and companies are chasing to colonise the Moon’s South Pole and its buried supplies of water and minerals. It’s worth looking back to understand the dynamics that drove the last Space Race and ask whether we want to write a different narrative this time round.

Poems to me are stories but in a sung form. Carol Ann Duffy talks about poems singing the stuff of our lives, the everyday as well as the big life events. Like the people singing in deserted streets or calling from balconies, poems will be passed across our spaces of isolation. They remind us of the hidden music of our lives and relationships.

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work you put into Desert Moonfire?

The problematic aspects of the work always generate the most interesting material and push you to dig deep creatively. With non-fiction, it’s about doing masses of research and then compressing these large, complex narratives into a few chapters that each have their own distinct story arc. Trying to make sure the research doesn’t suffocate the narrative. So I’m using novelistic techniques to give pace and urgency to the story of two men caught up in this superpower to chase to the Moon.

For Wernher von Braun, the Prussian baron, it was always a matter of opportunism. Pitching his projects first to the Nazis and then to the American state, to win a chance at ‘the Big Time’, as he called it. But Sergei Korolev faced an ongoing struggle to survive the upheavals of Russia’s Civil war, Stalinist Purges and Soviet realpolitik.

Mostly this comes across as a very male world, as my title suggests. It’s typified by von Braun’s engineers decorating their V-2 test rockets with the logo of a naked woman astride a crescent moon. Women surfaced in sci-fi films as alien sirens or glamorous astronauts but seemed confined to the spectators’ stadium or the back office in the real space programme. The truth was more complex of course. It’s only recently that NASA’s begun to acknowledge and celebrate long-buried accounts of its female and Afro-American ‘Hidden Figures’.

The core of my narrative remains two men from either side of the Cold war locked into the machine of political conflict. But I did explore their relationships with women and wanted those voices to come through in certain poems.

The challenge with the poetry was to find a human centre, given this context of technology and global politics. While the non-fiction chapters conjure up vast social forces at work, the poems open intimate windows into the two men’s lives. They put us right there, in the immediacy of their world.

Often with poetry, it’s about finding a surprising metaphor or image that illuminates the scene. So when I was writing about Korolev sitting out the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, I came across a brief reference to his wife Nina serving up a watermelon. What a gift that was! The whole poem "Martian Watermelon" was built around that footnote, from the red fleshy fruit to the sound of the pips. His men had been trying to launch a rocket to Mars when their launch pad was taken over by the military to ready a nuclear missile for firing.

By contrast, I’d read several accounts of the night the secret police arrested him in the Thirties but couldn’t find out what music he put on the record player while he waited for the knock on the door. That gave me freedom to invent. The spiky rhythms of a tango inspired two poems about the police harassment that dogged his career. So these unexpected details pulled me into their world and I hope that works for the reader too.

What sets the book apart from other things you’ve written? And in what way is it similar to the others

Desert Moonfire is similar to my previous collections, such as Firebridge to Skyshore: A Northern Lights Journey, in that it combines poetry and non-fiction with a strong narrative structure and touches on science, history and politics along the way.

My chapbook Mad, Hopeless & Possible: Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition told an equally dramatic story of two linked Antarctic expeditions during 1914-17 when notions of empire-building and heroism collided in devastating ways. That was another all-male adventure shaped by the somewhat toxic ideologies of the time.

Yet Desert Moonfire is a scaled-up narrative. It starts off discussing the 19th century science-fiction which inspired a generation of rocketeers and rounds off their story in the 1970s, a century later. So yes, the ambition of this book marked a shift for me. I was in no hurry with it, wanting the book to find its own form and the right publishing home too.

Where Firebridge and Mad, Hopeless & Possible both centred on journeying across wild frozen landscapes, Desert Moonfire has a biographical impulse, tracing the life journeys of two men who lived through extraordinary times.

I have noticed there’s various styles and voices here, including poems about deserts and cars and movies, shape poems inspired by rocket technology, dramatic monologues in the voice of bystanders and loved ones, poems of gulags and concentration camps as well as space modules and two lunar book enders. So hopefully something for everyone.

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

For some time, I weighed up whether to tilt this book more towards the popular non-fiction market, given the expanding scale of the narrative. Or alternatively to strip it down to a poetry chapbook with a tight focus on these two men’s intertwined lives. I researched possible publishers from both angles. In the end, I decided I wanted to try something different with this book. I knew from my previous collections that there is an audience for this kind of non-fiction and poetry combination but it is a niche audience that I encountered mainly by giving talks, shows and face-to-face readings.

With the sci-fi and space science strand in Desert Moonfire, I was thinking of taking this new book to SFF conventions too.

So I decided to set up my own imprint, Space Cat Press, with an eye on further space-themed books I have on the back-burner. And I was lucky enough to embark on that as a collaboration with freelance editor Darragh Logan Davies. She is the Kaylee of our Firefly rocket and without her, we’d never have got into orbit.

Having got that far, we considered the possibility of using our press to also publish work by other writers, in the form of space-themed anthologies. In that sense, Space Cat Press is a hybrid, combining an indie-author venture with micro-publishing at the non-commercial end of small presses. It’s enabled me to structure the Desert Moonfire book in exactly the way I wanted to and I’m thrilled with the design Darragh came up with. I love the feel and look of the finished article. Plus I’ve learnt a huge amount about how book production and marketing works.

The disadvantages are it takes a lot of time and energy. That’s definitely slowing my writing progress on new projects. We did rush into the anthology rather quickly after publishing Desert Moonfire, so it’s hard to get on with marketing that whilst editing our Race to the Stars submissions. But it’s been so much fun and a real inspiration to work with stories, poems and flash fiction by other writers and watching the anthology take shape. Everything from detailed structural and copy edits to budgeting to working out the brand of the book. And soon we’ll be getting to grips with e-publishing and doing virtual launches as well. Quite the small-press adventure.

What will your next book be about? And, what else are you working on?

Well, I’ll have editors’ credits on our Space Cat anthology, (working title Race to the Stars) which should be out in e-book format by the summer of 2020.

I then have a small chapbook lined up for the SCP roster with a sequence of poems about the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to chase a comet. An earlier digital version of this, Philae’s Book of Hours, appeared on the ESA website in 2015.

There’s another sprawling non-fiction book on the back-burner about those Space Race sci-fi films I got so engrossed with whilst researching Desert Moonfire. But on the front burner, right now, I’ve dividing my time between a poetry chapbook about my father (who passed away recently) and a dystopian fantasy novel which will probably develop into a trilogy - if I can ever get this first book edited into a readable shape!

So in between teaching creative writing at De Montfort University and running a small press publishing outfit, there are plenty of writing projects competing for my time.

See also:

● Interview _ Siobhan Logan, Conversations with Writers, February 20, 2010
● Interview _ Siobhan Logan, Conversations with Writers, 4 June 2007
● Interview _ Siobhan Logan, Conversations with Writers, 11 April 2007

Interview _ Andrew Button

Andrew Button lives in Market Bosworth in western Leicestershire, England.

His poems have been published in magazines that include Orbis, Staple, The Interpreter’s House, Iota and Ink, Sweat and Tears.

His pamphlet, Dry Days in Wet Towns, was published in 2016 and a first full collection, Melted Cheese on the Cosmic Pizza in 2017 by erbacce press.

In this interview, Andrew Button talks about his latest collection of poems Music for Empty Car Parks and poetry in the time of Covid-19.

How would you describe Music for Empty Car Parks?

Music for Empty Car Parks is an eclectic mix of poems that wryly observe life with all its quirks and obsessions. Eccentricity and human preoccupations particularly fascinate me. You could say that is my poetical obsession!

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

I have a large back catalogue of poems written over the years and it was a matter of selecting the best ones, old and new. I really enjoy the process and quite often it involves some revisions and even virtual re-writes.

The book itself came out in January 2020 and was published by Erbacce Press in Liverpool.

How did you chose a publisher for the book?

Erbacce published my previous book, Melted Cheese on the Cosmic Pizza at the end of 2017 which was my first full collection (and still available to buy from the publisher’s website and on Amazon). I respect erbacce and their publishing philosophy which is all about supporting the poet’s development. It was not a difficult choice to ask them to publish my second book. I have a positive and well established relationship with them and, of course, it helps that they actually like my poetry!!

Who is your target audience?

I have always maintained that my audience are adults still amazed or willing to be amazed by the wonders of human nature. As my favourite author, Ray Bradbury said, the most rounded adults are those that still retain an element of that childlike sense of wonder.

My aim as a poet is to make people laugh and ponder at the same time.

What influences does Music for Empty Car Parks draw on?

Poetically, I am largely influenced by the likes of Simon Armitage, Ian McMillan, Philip Larkin, Roger McGough and Adrian Henri to mention but a few.

In an unorthodox way, I am also heavily influenced by the science fiction and fantasy stories of the American author, Ray Bradbury. His fiction was very poetic. I read every single word of his voraciously from the age of 13.

Music and lyrics have also inspired me, too, and I would like to think that although I am not a rhyming poet per se, that my poems have an intrinsic rhythm. I am certainly an alliteration junkie!

Why does poetry matter?

Ah, the £64,000 question - or more like £64 in the case of a poet!

Even in the difficult days, in an unassuming way, poetry matters. People are popping up on programmes like BBC Breakfast with their poems about life in lockdown, their hopes and fears laid out in verse.

I think poetry is the undercurrent of our lives and poets are the ones who bring it to the surface for public consumption.

Increasingly, poets are finding a variety of imaginative ways to spread the words; online, outside, indoors, on beer mats… Social media and the internet has played a very important part.

You say why poetry matters is the £64,000 or £64 question. What do you mean by this? Why £64,000? And why £64?

What I mean is that it is the big question for poets and the poetry world. The example of £64 instead of £64,000 is a jocular reference to the fact that most poets don’t make much more but are grateful for what they earn.

With (or in) Music for Empty Car Parks, what would you say are your main concerns?

Yes. I do have my go-to themes. All writers and artists have their fixations. Some can focus on just one and write a whole book of poetry about it.

I have discovered that most humour comes from humour behaviour. I love watching people, eavesdropping, reading about their antics.

In the new book I have written a trilogy of poems about a man who is the world authority on roundabouts. His quirky singlemindedness is absorbing to me as a poet and of course there is a lot of comedy in his story. He’s been married three times for example. So, obviously, his all-consuming passion for roundabouts has affected his ability to maintain an intimate personal relationship (at least three times).

I have a quirky sense of humour myself which comes through in my book. Hopefully, my poet’s world view is unique.

I strive to find the unusual in everyday situations whether it’s marvelling at the variety of different toilet rolls or the removal of expiry dates on cucumbers in supermarkets.

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

If I’m honest, I don’t write many poems about myself and if I do it is often in the third person. There are occasional exceptions. For example, in the poem “Life lessons” in Music from Empty Car Parks, I write about a history teacher who inspired me at school. It isn’t because I can’t, but more about my natural writing style as an observer and commentator. Humour helps me to express myself and I like to explore subjects that interest me as well.

Having said all that, there are poems in my new book like “Six Month Man” where it is obvious, despite being written in the third person, that it is autobiographical albeit unashamedly comical. It is true to say, though, that I can see the funny side to most situations and experiences (including my own).

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

I enjoy the whole process of creating a poem from the conception of the idea, the research, compilation of ideas, forming of the poem and refinement in the writing to the finished product (some argue that a poem or story is never finished but that is another discussion to be had at another time). It is such an immense thrill when you get the seed of an idea and it grows. Sometimes, it feels as if you are given the idea from the poetic ether. That as poets we retrieve these vague ideas and shape them into poems.

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

I see the latest book more as another instalment in my writing career. It’s a philosophy of ‘welcome to the wacky world of Andrew Button’. I am always writing about new subjects and themes that interest me and striving to do so in entertaining ways. So, that will be evident over the two books I have written, I hope. The style is the same but the content is different.

In what way is it similar to the others?

It is similar in that there is a recognisable style. The same observational slant by and large. The mantra of chronicling human absurdity continues. It’s what I get off on as a writer!

Can you say more about the title poem?

The title poem started out as a poem in its own right before I decided to use it as the title of my collection. The inspiration for that poem came literally from an empty car park blaring out music. I thought to myself, How pointless. This then inspired me to write a poem about pointless situations. I had a lot of fun with that poem which really  lends itself to live performance!

How has Music for Empty Car Parks been affected by the state we are in with the coronavirus and Covid-19?

The book was conceived and collated before Coronavirus. So, in that sense there is no obvious connection. I hope, though, that my book might act as an antidote against the dark thoughts and despair prevalent in these dystopian times.

Smiles and laughter have not been outlawed.

And can you say more about the poem about toilet paper?

“The Bottom Line” is a poem that chronicles and celebrates the history of toilet paper manufacture in the UK encompassing the ghastly and the great!

My initial point of reference was my hideous childhood experiences with a severe medicated toilet paper that was a common feature of my school life in the 70s and 80s. With friends of the same age I was reminiscing about the notoriety of this product and even found an online forum where people were sharing their adverse experiences!

One of the ways people have responded to the coronavirus is by stockpiling toilet rolls? How would you explain this?

I think the whole toilet roll stockpiling syndrome is a symptom of the panic that broke out when people thought they would be holed up at home for weeks (which they are now, ha, ha). Basically, a siege mentality. I saw someone reacting to this online and it made me chuckle, because they quite rightly pointed out that if people contracted the virus, it wouldn't be coming out of that end!!!

What do you think a post-Covid 19 world could look like? Are there things the world is learning that it should retain? Are there things the world should let go of?

Hopefully, a post-Covid 19 world will mean there is a greater sense of community around the world and especially in the UK. Also, I would like to think that we will value the work of NHS and care workers more (increased Government funding will contribute to this significantly). More kindness and consideration to the more vulnerable members of our society must ensue. Overall, appreciating our families and life itself would be a desirable outcome.

And what will be the role of the poet in that world?

I see poets as imaginative observers and commentators. Most of us hold a light up to the world as it is and as it could be. We can be poetic healers with our metaphors and similes, insights and humour.

What will your next book be about?

It may be another smorgasbord of themes that tantalise me, or untypically for me, carry one thread through it. I don’t really know at the moment. It could even be a poetic view of the Coronavirus crisis we are living with. I have been keeping a daily diary of my poetic thoughts and observations of life in lockdown. So, watch this space!

What else are you working on?

I am currently involved in putting together a poetry performance for the Leamington Poetry Festival in July (if it still goes ahead). It features myself and three other fellow poets from the Midlands.

The show will be called Meta4.

We are all quirky, observational poets with a unique view of the world we inhabit.
Hopefully, it will happen and if it does come along and see it at the Temperance Art Café in Leamington Spa on Saturday 4th July at 3.30pm. Four local poets sparking off each other in an engaging melee of metaphors, similes, rhythms and rhymes.

Notes:

● Details of Andrew Button’s books can be found on the erbacce press website.
● See also: Interview: Andrew Button, Conversations with Writers, 12 June 2019

Interview _ David R Mellor

David R Mellor is from Liverpool, England. He spent his late teen homeless in Merseyside. He found understanding and belief through words, and his work has been aired widely, at the BBC, The Tate, galleries and pubs, and everything in between.

His books include the poetry collections, What A Catch (Mellordramatic, 2012) and Some Body (Mellordramatic, 2014). One of his poems has also been featured in Bollocks to Brexit: an Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction (CivicLeicester, 2019).

In this interview, David talks about his writing:

When did you start writing?

In my early 20s, I started to carry a notebook with me everywhere I went. (Still do). I wasn’t that well educated at the time. To me, words... they were just words. After a while I saw them as what they were. Writing was a way of finding my voice after a very troubled childhood.

I was published in the poetry press, then found a local publisher, and I’ve had three books out.

I’ve played pubs, art galleries and everything in-between since.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

A friend of mine stated that what I’m doing is trying to stop things that have already happened either personally or politically and I guess there is something in that.

The poetry is brutally honest. Being from Liverpool and from a working class background gives a bit of edge to what I do, especially in performance. I don’t think I change what I write to suit audiences.

In the writing you are doing, which authors influenced you most?

Wilfred Owen. I was lucky, later in life, to be poet-in-residence for a while for the society in the north.

Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas. But also music, The Smiths and David Sylvian. The former provided an alternative northern voice, the latter for deep spirituality in his songs.

How have your own personal experiences influenced your writing?

Completely. You can only be that and true to that. Anything else is being fake.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

Acknowledging that I am a writer and have something to say. My parents still don’t recognise what I do.

Do you write everyday?

I’ve carried a notebook with me everyday since the mid 80s. It’s like a friend, a friend to myself. Usually when I’m out and about a word or sentence will pop into my head and will write itself.

When I don’t write for a few days, I feel out of kilter.

How many books have you written so far?

What A Catch (2012), Some Body (2014), and Express Nothing (2019).

Each are a build up of world, personal, social and political.

Best found on Amazon or via paypal.

What is your latest book about?

Express Nothing presents my take on modern life and the human conditions. It is a collection of poems written over the last few years. Choosing which to include was agonising.

The book was published in April 2019 by a small publishers in my local area, who have always been supportive and good to me.

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

In the book, there are a number of poems that are deeply personal and you wonder if people will get it, but I believe if you have felt something then others have too.

In the book, there are also a number of poems that I have been wanting to send out into the world for a while and some that are more meditative and gentle or in which I’ve captured something deeper. I enjoyed working on these a lot.

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

I am always touched after performances when people say a reason they relate to a poem and having 20.000 YouTube hits on my site MellorDR.

One of your poems has been featured in Bollocks to Brexit: an Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction. How did the poem come about?

I saw a Facebook post about the book, so decided to send it. The poem changes verses of the Hokey Cockey and how we danced ourselves to this terrible point concluding in comic irony over the cliff.

Humour and politics have long been a British tradition.

Why is it important for poets to speak up on social, political and related matters?

Politics affects people's lives and words can be very subversive and powerful.

In your view, what do anthologies like Bollocks to Brexit add to poetry and public discourse?

Brexit is vile, driven by snobby elites and hateful narrow-minded Brits. This book, Bollocks to Brexit is a statement that we don’t all support Brexit or the thinking that’s led to the verge the country is now on.

Interview _ Marija Todorova

Marija Todorova has worked for international organizations that include the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Department for International Development (DFID), and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include interpreters in mediation, intercultural education, and visual representation in translation.

Todorova is an Executive Council member of International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS). She holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the Hong Kong Baptist University, and a PhD in Peace and Development Studies from University Ss. Cyril and Methodius Skopje.

In this interview, Maria Todorova talks about translation, peacebuilding and Journeys in Translation:

What would you say is the role of translation or translation studies in peacebuilding?

For me, language is maybe one of the most important aspects of both peacebuilding and development. In the current state of the world when we are witnessing increasing numbers of refugee crises around the globe, the need for language professionals who work alongside humanitarian personnel is greater than ever.

My interest in this topic started with my employment with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) during the Kosovo conflict in 1999 and the ensuing refugee crisis in Macedonia in 2001 as well as the repatriation process in Kosovo. I was interpreting for the refugees at the Macedonia-Kosovo border as well as in various refugee camps throughout Macedonia, and for the internally displaced people and minorities in Kosovo. This was a truly life-changing experience for me.

I have done a lot of research to explore some of the aspects that make interpreting in conflict different and specific.

My personal experience provides me with a lot of insight, and I also conducted interviews with people who were working as interpreters in both the Kosovo refugee crises and the European refugee crises. Although employed primarily for their linguistic skills, field staff working in situations of emergency often decide to adopt a role similar to that of a mediator, and giving voice to the vulnerable. In doing this they undertake tasks beyond the scope of the work of a language broker and more of a peacebuilder.

Can you tell us more about the book chapter, "Interpreting conflict: Memories of an interpreter"?

Interpreters have been traditionally seen as invisible. Even when their presence is mentioned by historians, interpreters working in conflict zones are rarely referred to by name or given space to share their stories and comment. However, if we listen to their accounts we may be able to learn a lot about how they feel and how they perform their tasks.

The chapter you mention was published in Transfiction: Research into the realities of translation fiction (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014), edited by Klaus Kaindl, Karlheinz Spitzl. The chapter makes an attempt to make some sense of the life of a Serbian interpreter in a Kosovo US Army base by examining the main character of Tanja Jankovic’s semi-autobiographical work of fiction, The Girl from Bondsteel. The novel is an account of how an interpreter copes with the difficult situation of being “in between”. This ‘in-betweenness’, however, does not mean being in a place which is neutral or objective, in between cultures. For Diana, the main character in the novel, this means constantly making decisions and taking sides based on her own ideologies and loyalties which are connected with specific cultural spaces, and not with the ‘in-between’.

And, with Zoran Poposki, you co-authored "Public memory in post-conflict Skopje: Civic art as resistance to narratives of ethnicity and disintegration". Can you tell us more about that chapter as well?

The violent conflicts in the countries emerging out of former Yugoslavia may be a thing of the past but the ethnic and nationalistic tensions underlying them remain part of the daily life in the new independent states. This article looks at how art in public space is used to promote or resist the legacy and ideology of ethnic division, disintegration and conflict.

The article, in Post-Conflict Performance, Film and Visual Arts: Cities of Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), edited by Des O'Rawe and Mark Phelan, explores tactics of creative resistance to the official public narrative of ethnicity, history and disintegration, focusing on the work of a few Macedonian new media artists who seek to resist the government-led transformation of Skopje’s public space into a place of division and spectacular power. One of these artists, Zoran Poposki has produced several projects focusing his art on transforming the public space from a place of exclusion into a place of inclusion and representation of the multifaceted nature of Skopje’s citizens.

In the article, we also focus on the difference between public art proper (artworks in public space commissioned by governmental or corporate entities that ultimately reproduce existing mechanisms and relations of power as well as a culture that glorifies violence); and civic art (artworks in the public sphere, largely immaterial in form and created through broad participatory processes that are representative of various counter-publics and help create a culture of peace).

You are also the author of "Hong Kong Diversity in Anglophone Children’s Fiction". Tell us more.

A few years ago, my family and I moved to Hong Kong. Moving to a new country for us meant being able to learn a new culture, experience it in our own unique way, and adding that layer to our existing (multi)cultural experiences.

It also meant implanting a bit of ourselves in the diverse and cosmopolitan culture of Hong Kong.

We do this by embracing the local literary and art scene. Hong Kong offers a unique possibility to do this due to its production of local books in the English language.

I was particularly drawn to children’s literature because of its potential to transform and change deeply rooted stereotypes.

My study, "Hong Kong Diversity in Anglophone Children’s Fiction" (in Cultural Conflict in Hong Kong: Angles on a Coherent Imaginary (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), edited by Jason S. Polley, Vinton W.K. Poon and Lian-Hee Wee), approaches fiction books for children as framing and representation sites that contest or promote stereotypes. Books should assist children in building their identities and thus encourage children to accept differences and reject discrimination. They should serve to open young readers’ horizons to other cultures and ways of life, thereby helping them to overcome fears that stem from ignorance.

The written word has a great potential to convey to children information about social diversity. One of the goals of effective use of children’s literature is to familiarize and celebrate cultural difference, to develop interaction, experience, understanding, and respect for people from different cultures. Both Anglophone children’s books and the Anglophone authors from Hong Kong speak to the diversity in Hong Kong, but migrant and ethnic minority experiences are still less likely to become the center of Anglophone children books published and distributed in Hong Kong.

How did you get involved with Journeys in Translation?

Translation is not only my profession; it is something I take great pleasure in. In addition to my work as an award-winning professional translator of numerous literary works primarily catering to a particular market, serving as a volunteer translator gives me the opportunity to participate in the socio-cultural processes by promoting the voices of the marginalized periphery.

For several years, I have served as a volunteer translator for the International Children’s Digital Library, translating children’s picture books in Macedonian. It all started with the translation of the picture book, Ciconia, Ciconia by the Croatian author, Andrea Petrlik Huseinović, about a white stork who is forced to leave its home destroyed by war.

In Hong Kong, I have served as a co-translator for the Hong Kong Poetry Festival, introducing Macedonian, Bosnian and Serbian poetry to Hong Kong readers. On the other hand, literature produced in and about Hong Kong is often overlooked by foreign translators and critics, rarely getting the attention it deserves as part of the world literary scene. Thus, my translation students at the Hong Kong Baptist University and I curated a website that introduces new contemporary prose and poetry from Hong Kong authors to English readers.

Hong Kong is also home of a significant migrant and refugee community. Recently, I was invited as guest speaker at a literary sharing on the issue of belonging and hospitality. Here I shared some of the poetry from Journey in Translation and the poems were received with great interest.

Marija Todorova's translation, into Macedonian, of Emma Lee’s “Stories from 'The Jungle'”, Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publications, 2015) p.85. 

Which were the most challenging aspects of the work you put into the initiative?

Translating poetry is not an easy task. Poetry contains a multi-layered and complex language, condensed with images and feelings, very different from any other literary genre. Translating poetry means that one has to interpret all the potential meanings embedded in these features. For some poems this meant retaining the poetic form as well. Whether or not this is at all possible when translating poetry from one language to another is a big question. Finding the right words to make the same impact in a new language can be very challenging.

Which were the most enjoyable aspects of the work?

Translating poetry is a very rewarding task. By translating the poetry in the Journeys in Translation project into Macedonian language I hope to contribute to the internationalization of the narratives of refugees and their plight. With this translation I hope to confront and change the misperceptions and stereotypes of the ‘other’ as enemy, along with providing positive models for acceptance and integration. This acceptance of cultural diversity as a positive thing and not as an obstacle helps promote models of coexistence and the expansion of identity.

As Macedonia has been affected by several refugee crises over the years, these poems will find resonance with the readers affected by the cultural conflict still present in the country.

Translating into Macedonian does not only represent sharing different voices and perspectives with the Macedonian readers. For me, it also means preserving the Macedonian language.

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

Culture has been seen as an integral part of conflict, being both the cause of and channel for direct violence and its justification, as art can also be used to perpetuate cultural violence. Johan Galtung defines ‘cultural violence’ as referring to aspects of culture such as religion, language, art, empirical science and formal science, all of which justify direct and structural violence.

Art has an important role to play in the symbolic continuation or challenging of that culture of violence. Art, in all forms, is used as resistance to narratives of hate. The artist is a citizen, too, who reacts to social problems in the city just like everyone else.

By being an oppositional aesthetic practice, art of the activist or socially engaged type can offer powerful resistance to the state’s power structures, becoming civic art, the type of ‘art that promotes and creates civic values, invites and fosters citizen participation in public affairs’, all of which are essential to the functioning of democracy as a discursive space. In this process, culture is perceived as vital to social transformation, conflict mediation and resolution.

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 through blogs, letters, 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. 

Over Land, Over Sea 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 _ Jacob Lund

Jacob Lund’s poetry has been published in Openings, the annual anthology of The Open University and in N2 Poetry, London. He has worked as a reviewer for the Daily Telegraph, and has published on Shakespeare in academic journals. He lives in Brighton.

In this interview, Jacob talks about his writing:

When did you start writing?

I only began writing poetry seriously about three years ago, though before that I had been published as a book reviewer for the Daily Telegraph’s youth magazine Juiced. I have also been a contributor to NATE and EMag, writing mostly on Shakespeare and on literary theory.

After a conversation with the poet, short story writer and memoirist Dr. John O’Donoghue, I went home and found quite a lot of half-finished poems, fragments, titles, images – and realised that a few of them were probably worth completing.

A friend of mine who teaches at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Sean McEvoy, encouraged me to carry on with the work, and I began by giving a reading in Norwich, alongside Andrea Holland, Naomi Foyle and others. The poet Peter Pegnall invited me to do this. At about the same time I had started to contribute regularly to the magazine of The Open University Poetry Society, and my first published work was in their anthology, Openings.

I never really took the decision to want to be published: I just write and hope that others will find something of interest. I think that if I started to try to guess at what people might want to read, I wouldn’t be able to write at all.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

The very first poems I had published were to do with ageing, memory and loss, though more recently I have been engaged with ideas of identity, nationhood and history, and this has coincided of course with the UK’s decision to leave the EU.

Some of the poetry is written, loosely speaking, in blank verse, and for two reasons: first, it is a form that offers wonderful flexibility in terms of rhythm and movement; second, it is the form in English verse that is so frequently associated with argument, ideology and rhetoric – in Shakespeare’s soliloquies or in Milton, for example – and I guess I have more or less consciously taken the decision to try to speak to that tradition, to a poetry that has the power to make the case for change.

I also write in free verse, so that I am able to work with allusions and intertexts, some of which might be in languages other than English. Overall, I guess I am a kind of modernist writer, though I am not sure that this sort of categorisation is all that helpful.

Who is your target audience?

My target audience is anyone who cares to look. I am hugely grateful for people’s responses to what I write, whatever those responses are, but I’m not really motivated to write for particular groups.

In the writing you are doing, which authors influenced you most?

This is a difficult one. I read widely and eclectically in terms of poetry, and I think there are probably many influences of which I am barely aware. I do think, however, that it is my responsibility as a writer to know as much as I can about what has gone before – it’s part of the job.

How have your own personal experiences influenced your writing?

My early poems touched upon personal loss and the subjective experience of getting older, but I have always been conscious that poetry can become boringly self-obsessed. I think that, unless they are for private use, poems need to reach out in one way or another.

More recently, I have visited areas of the UK that are unfamiliar to me, and my experiences there have started to allow me to write in a more observational way, I think. Lately, I have been to the Isle of Grain, Swindon, and Dungeness. These locations appear in a poetry collection I am writing about identity, nationhood and history.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

I am always concerned with the capacity of language to handle the truths of who we are or where we are, and I think that I deal with this simply by continuing to try to write. It doesn’t always work, of course.

The biggest challenge as a writer, I think, is to challenge your readers. I never, ever lose sight of the fact that people who see your poetry will quickly apprehend cliché, tiredness, overused tropes… and discard your work, which is absolutely fair enough!

Do you write every day?

I write every week, certainly, though not in a particularly structured way. A session might include writing up a draft from rough notes, then editing a piece that is well on its way to completion. I also love to prevaricate, which is good news for coffee sellers and BBC Sport, I think. I have a notebook and pen, but the main work is done on a PC: I like the coldness of type: it makes me somehow more critical of what I have before me, and this really helps with redrafting and editing.

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

It’s those moments when you realise that you have made people think. Nothing beats this.

Some of your poems are featured in Bollocks to Brexit: an Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction. What would you say the poems are about?

I have two poems in the anthology. ‘Views along the English Coast’ is about the fragility of people’s lives in times of economic and political trouble, and of how in the end we have much in common with those who, too often, are deemed by reactionary political voices to be undesirable.

The other poem, called ‘The Territorial’, takes an imaginary English male figure who represents a sick, post-imperial, far right set of attitudes that are both echoed and challenged by other cultures. The emergence of ultra-conservative and fascist organisations in the UK, Europe and the USA are, I think, my preoccupations where this poetry is concerned, though the ostensible vehicle for responding to these developments is Brexit.

How have the poems been received?

I am absolutely delighted that some readers have been curious about and interested in the work. To say why they have been received well would sound way too much like self-congratulation – not my game at all.

Why is it important for poets to speak up on social, political and related matters?

I think that all art forms can speak to the political discourse of their time – and to other times as well. It’s difficult to make a special case for poetry, except perhaps that it has the capacity to handle political and social issues in a highly compressed way that doesn’t necessarily need to lose the nuance of argument.

In your view, what do anthologies like Bollocks to Brexit add to poetry and public discourse?

I think that the strength of an anthology like Bollocks to Brexit lies in its range of arguments, forms and tones, and in its linguistic variety. It gives the book its chance to engage with a broad audience, at a time when public engagement in politics has never been more important.

Interview _ Deborah Tyler-Bennett

Deborah Tyler-Bennett is a poet and fiction writer with eight volumes of poems and three volumes of short linked stories to her credit. She is currently working on her first novel, Livin' in a Great Big Way. Her new volume, Ken Dodd Takes a Holiday, will be out from King's England in 2019.

Her poems have also been featured in anthologies that include Bollocks to Brexit: an Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction (CivicLeicester, 2019), Leicester 2084 AD: New Poems about The City (CivicLeicester, 2018) and Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Publishing, 2016).

In an earlier interview, Deborah talked about her concerns as a writer, and some of the influences she draws on.

In this new interview, Deborah talks about her latest book, Mr Bowlly Regrets, and about poetry and politics:

Do you write every day?

I do write everyday: on trains; in cafés; in bars; at home; in other settings. I try and give myself a timetable between teaching Adult Ed creative writing, workshops, and performances, and the writing itself. I think the important thing is to do it. If the session is me writing alone, I split my day between the writing and reading aloud what I’ve done so far. I end when I feel the writing’s becoming stale and I need a break. I think knowing when to stop’s an art like anything else.

How many books have you written so far?

I have just finished the manuscript of my ninth poetry collection and am working on my first novel. I’ve also written three books of linked short fictions set in the world of variety. Also, I’ve had published a poetry pilot for schools and three creative writing textbooks and packs. I was fortunate enough to co-author the Victoria and Albert Museum’s creative writing web package with Gillian Spraggs. See below for details:

Volumes and Chapbooks: Poetry

Forthcoming 2019: Ken Dodd Takes a Holiday (King’s England).

Mr Bowlly Regrets (King’s England, 2017)

Napoleon Solo Biscuits (King’s England, 2015)

Volume Using Record Office Collection, Leicester:

Friendship’s Scrapbook (University of Leicester, 2015, reprinted and re-issued as two volumes in 2017, with extracts being published by the University’s Centre for New Writing in Women’s Writing in the Midlands 1750-1850, 2016). Two of the poems were later displayed on the front of Leicester University’s David Wilson Library and in the new Digital Resource Centre, for International Women's Day, 2018. ‘A Walk with Susanna Watts’ from the collection also appeared in Welcome to Leicester (Dahlia Publishing, 2016). Two Responses to the poems, plus a poem based on images of child migrants appeared in Leicester 2084 AD (CivicLeicester, 2018).

Kinda Keats (Shoestring, 2013): Inspired by Residency at Keats House, Hampstead.

Revudeville (King’s England, 2011): Featured many poems inspired by adult and school museum workshops.

Mytton … Dyer … Sweet Billy Gibson (Nine Arches, 2011). Three portraits in verse.

Pavilion (Smokestack, 2010). Poems set in Brighton and featuring images of Dandies.

Clark Gable in Mansfield (King’s England, 2003)

Selected Poems:

Take Five (Shoestring, 2003); The Staring Owl: An Anthology of Poems by the Poets of the King’s England Press (King’s England, 2017)

Special Museum Volume:

Ballad of Epping and Other Poems (Leicestershire Open Museum Pilot, 2007-2008)

Three linked books of short stories set in the 1940s/ 1950s/ 1960s world of variety:

Turned Out Nice Again (King’s England, 2013),

Mice That Roared (King’s England, 2015),

Brand New Beat (King’s England, 2017).

Museum and Education Volumes:

Words and Things: Writing Creatively from Objects and Art (with Mark Goodwin et al, Leicestershire County Council, 2008).

Speaking Words: Writing for Reading Aloud (Crystal Clear, 2005),

Poetry, Prose, and Playfulness for Teachers and Learners (with Mark Goodwin, Leicestershire County Council, 2004).

Museum Packs:

Leicestershire and Nottingham museums (includes Art and Education packs for Leicester’s Open Museum).

Special Commission, Victoria and Albert Museum:

Co-authored creative writing adult education web-package for the Victoria and Albert Museum with Gillian Spraggs, which included two of my poems on objects, these have since been used for summer schools at Wake Forest University, NC, USA and elsewhere.

See also Wellcome Collection work at the British Society for the History of Science (BSHS).

What is your latest book about?

It’s called Mr Bowlly Regrets, is a book of poems, and came out from King’s England Press in 2017. It has many poems about growing up, memory, and change, some on performers, including Britain’s Bing Crosby, the wonderful Al Bowlly. It also contains a sequence on the First World War, which came from a series of Lottery Funded workshops done for Diseworth and other Leicestershire villages. Those poems often contain images of real soldiers from the villages’ war memorials.

I’ve also just completed a further volume of poems for King’s England, Ken Dodd Takes a Holiday which is due out later in 2019. The poems are mainly about theatre and imagery from the lives of Music Hall and Variety performers – of which an elegy for Ken Dodd (to my mind the last of the Victorian inspired performers) is key to the rest of the poems.

On top of these, I’m working on my first novel, Livin’ in a Great Big Way, for the same publisher. This tells the story of Dad, Rosa, and their daughter, Spring, who live on Velia Street, Sutton-in-Ashfield. When the novel opens it’s 1946. Spring’s beloved Aunt, Reena, is dying, and her husband, Nev, is just back from service in Italy. The family have kept things buttoned-up throughout the war, but as Reena fades, secrets and confessions begin spilling out. Also, Dad has visions of moving up in the world, while Rosa’s happy where she is. This is not to mention Grandad Stocks who lives with Mrs Close, much to the family’s shame, Mrs Jim, next door neighbor and Velia Street’s beating heart, and Butcher Mr Cole and his odd wife – whose dreadful crime will come to haunt them all.

How long did it take you to write the book? 

My forthcoming book of poems has taken me a couple of years but, interestingly-enough, some of the poems are earlier ones I had in magazines and have since re-written. The poems in Mr Bowlly, likewise, took a couple of years to write, and King’s England published it in 2017. The novel was begun on the way back from the Callander Poetry Weekend in Scotland, in 2017. At first, I thought it was a short story, but it got longer and longer. So, in the end I had to admit it was a novel and carry on!

How did you chose a publisher for the book? Why this publisher? What advantages and/or disadvantages has this presented? How are you dealing with these?

Over the years I’ve had many publishers including Shoestring Press, Smokestack, University of Leicester Press, Leicester County Council Press, Nine Arches Press, and others. But the majority-of my stories and poems have been published by King’s England Press, Huddersfield, under direction of Steve Rudd. When they accepted my first volume of poems, Clark Gable in Mansfield in 2003, they published mainly historic and children’s books. Over years their poetry and fiction lists have grown, and I’ve come to trust Steve’s judgement as an editor. He’s allowed me a lot of consultation on how the volumes look, and how my poetry and prose is presented. He’s also allowed me to experiment and been honest over what did and didn’t work. So, I’ve enjoyed working with him and continue to do so.

Which aspects of the work you put into the book did you find most difficult? Why do you think this was so? How did you deal with these difficulties?

I think with most of my books of poems I deal with memory and characters a lot. I want the poems to be true to the ‘voices’ of various narratives and narrators. So, I think about who sees, who speaks, and period detail as I work. In Mr Bowlly, I wanted the title poem to bring Al Bowlly’s life, the fact he’s such a great performer and yet didn’t get his fair dues from history (he died in 1941 during the blitz, is buried in a communal grave, and has a blue plaque but no statue), and his wonderful singing voice to life. In performance I sing bits of the poem. If someone comes away from reading the volume to watch a clip of him on YouTube, I’ll be happy.

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most? Why is this?

I enjoyed playing with poetic form in Mr Bowlly – there are sonnets, monologues in rhyming couplets, shaped poems, a poem to the rhythm Longfellow uses in ‘Hiawatha’, unrhymed couplets, and poems chiefly in dialogue. I love playing with form and have previously used sestinas and villanelles, which I go back to in my forthcoming book. Form really tests you, makes you think, and alters the poetic ‘voice.’ I review many poetry books and always feel a bit cheated when a poet doesn’t stretch themselves via form. Lots of unrhymed ‘free verse’ (like many poems I find the term doesn’t really describe what a verse with structures you come up with is) can feel much the same to me. So, I like testing the limits of a poem, and form helps me do this.

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

Although most books represent developments and, hopefully, advancements in style and technique, I think Mr Bowlly differed in that I wanted the sections of the book to be read in tandem, but also stand alone.

I also think I dealt with the subject matter of the First World War in a more sequential way. Those poems were important to me as they dealt with histories of real soldiers that I came across during my workshops and I really wanted to get things right. I also realised that I used the poems to memorialise people who may not have got much of a memorial in death, a technique I began with an earlier poem about my Great Grandad’s son – ‘James William Gibson’ (in Mytton …Dyer …Sweet Billy Gibson) – who died in infancy and was buried below the cemetery wall. The soldiers I came across and used in poems for this newer volume often came from Institutions like the Industrial Schools, so, their next of kin might be their last employer.

In what way is it similar-to the others?

I think I’ve looked at similar histories and voices throughout my poetic career – maybe I’m fascinated with the ‘little things’ in history (both familial and wider) which, as my friend Ray Gosling once remarked, might be more important than the big things.

What will your next book be about?

As this will be the novel, I’d say about family life, of the triumphs and tragedies of human beings being able to live and work together. I realised, also, that the book has a lot of images of craft, (sewing, making, cooking etc.) that may go un-sung as a talent because people separate if from art. I collect vintage items from the 1940s, and often go to 1940s events, loving the music, endurance, and style of the period. Talking to historians and re-enactors (there are some splendid displays on the Home Front, from wedding dresses to the contents of a larder) has made me aware that making something from nothing is a skill to celebrate and venerate – yet often it’s passed-over in favour of the more showy-and-expensive object.

I have begun collecting brooches made by women (started when Mum gave me a brooch made by my Great Aunt from fuse wire, a belt buckle, and buttons shaped like flowers) and marvel at the artistry they create from things you would throw away. I wanted the novel to celebrate craft as someone’s art, their talent, and love – hence Reena in the book is a wonderful seamstress, and Mrs Jim comments at what she might have achieved with money behind her.

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

I think, like most writers it’s carrying on writing. Not many people get to do what they love every day, and I think that’s something to be celebrated and, also, marveled at. Obviously, getting published is significant, as it gives your voice an audience, and I hope never to take this for granted. I’ve also been very lucky in the places I’ve worked and read in from the Wellcome Trust, Brighton Pavilion, and Keats House in Hampstead (where I did a residency), to small art galleries, schools and colleges – I wouldn’t have guessed, early on, that I’d work for any of them.

You have a poem featured in Bollocks to Brexit: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction. How did the poem come about?

I was tremendously pleased to be asked to be in the book and another poem on Brexit, ‘Ennui’, appears in my new collection. As a writer and someone who has always considered themselves a European, the divisions occasioned by Brexit have made me tremendously sad. I think that the poem, which I wrote especially for the volume, gave me an opportunity to highlight these divisions as they seem to me.

I hope the poem gives you a whistle-stop tour of what I observed after the vote, and how I consider it is the young who will suffer loss of opportunities, from which European Citizens such as myself benefited, from this most disastrous decision. When you feel that your voice is not being heard above shouting – poetry can give you your voice back.

Why is it important for poets to speak up on social, political and related matters?

Poetry has always spoken out on such matters! From Shelley to Blake, Suffragette poets to John Cooper Clarke, poets speak for themselves but also often for the excluded, and those finding themselves ‘voiceless.’

I think it’s worth considering that people sometimes remember lines from a poem giving protest, such as poems by Sassoon, Owen, and Graves from the First World War and those lines come to represent certain times in history perhaps more poignantly than anything else.

What do anthologies like Bollocks to Brexit add to poetry and public discourse?

In a time of shouting, it’s important to hear something more measured, and in a time when phrases such as ‘will of the people’ are being bandied about, it’s a good thing to remember that not all ‘people’ are being represented. You can read a poem over-and-over again, and think about it, come back to it. I always thought Barrack Obama sounded a better statesman than most, because I felt he’d considered his words with care.

Poetry considers its words with care.

Seamus Heaney talked of the right words in their proper places. I think public discourse, at present, is lacking in thoughtful, measured words. Perhaps it’s up to poetry to fill-in the gap.

Interview _ Sarra Culleno

Sarra Culleno is a London-born, Manchester-based UK poet, a mother of two and an English teacher.

She writes about issues that include children’s rights, motherhood, identity, technology and politics. Her work has been published in magazines and anthologies that include Les Femmes Folles (‘Lost in my DMs’, ‘Song of the Young Mother’ and ‘Phone Phantom Pantoum’), Three Drops (‘PMT Virelai’), Hidden Voices (‘Hansel and Gretel, the Woodcutter’s Children’) and in Bollocks to Brexit: an Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction (CivicLeicester, 2019).

In 2019, Sarra was longlisted for the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Prize and appeared as a featured poet at HerStories Festival, Celebrate Whalley Range, and That’s What She Said (For Books Sake).

Readings can be found on her YouTube channel and through her Instagram and Twitter profiles.

In this interview, Sarra talks about her writing:

When did you start writing?

I've always written, but only started sending pieces to publishers this year.

I'm an English teacher, so I have taught the nuts and bolts of poetry for sixteen years. My two children are now old enough for me to have a hobby which led me to performance poetry and spoken word events.

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

It's a mixture of formal and blank verse, on themes of dual heritage identity, motherhood, monogamy, the education system, gender, and politics.

The motherhood poems are autobiographical, as are the dual heritage identity poems. I'm of Iranian-Irish descent which did not seem particularly interesting or unique to me until I left London in my twenties.

My poems on the education system are rooted in my experiences as a classroom teacher and mother of primary school age children.

I hadn't realised the impact Sylvia Plath had on my writing till recently. I can see the influence of her cadences and extended metaphor. Hafsa Aneela Bashir, more recently; her bravery is raw and visceral which made me braver when writing about painful personal experiences such as post-natal depression.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

My main concern is producing a finished poem, but I can't stop tinkering with syllable counts, metre and so on even after I've sent them off! I'm very badly organised, so I do not keep track of what I've submitted where... Sooner or later a publisher is going to get very cross with my simultaneous submissions!

What are the biggest challenges that you face? And, how do you deal with these challenges?

Rejections are hard to take, but it's an unavoidable part of writing. It's also a chance to ask myself what I can improve.

Do you write everyday?

I can't write everyday. I have a demanding full-time career and two small children. I get my ideas while driving home. Before I get out of the car I scribble them into a notebook. Once the children are asleep, I'll do my research and choose a suitable form which I hope will enhance the meaning or topic. Finally, I'll sew it together and then review it in a day or two. Then the tinkering starts... And never stops!

I'm writing my poetry collection at the moment. I started it in February and I'm still working on it now. I have about forty poems I'm happy with and many more I've cut. When I have about eighty, I'll submit it for publishing as a book rather than a chapbook. An early draft of it was longlisted for the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Prize this year. I hope I've improved on it since then.

When I've finished, I'll submit it to small presses based in the North West and London as it will be easier for me to be involved in launch events. The types of publishers which I think would be a good fit, would be women-focused and known for releasing titles exploring gender.

Which aspects of the work you are putting into the poems do you find most difficult? Why do you think this was so?

I ended up scrapping all my spoken word poetry from publishing submissions, and I will not usually read my more formal poetry at performance events. I love both for different reasons, but only a few of my poems cross over. I've tried to include a number of accessible poems in my collection, which are not in the least oblique or literary, hoping this will broaden appeal. I've recorded readings for some of these on my YouTube channel.

I most enjoy writing poetry when an idea emerges of its own accord, and writes itself. It's depressing when there's a "drought", though.

I'm looking forward to the school holidays to start the writing flow off again.

One of your poems, ‘Terza Rima's Woke Blog’ is featured in Bollocks to Brexit: an Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction. How did the poem come about?

I wrote ‘Terza Rima's Woke Blog’, for my pupils and younger colleagues. Neither can build any stability into their futures, and yet they are the hardest working and most conscientious people that I know. I feel their generation is forsaken.

Advertising agencies were employed to peddle Brexit and manufacture consent. Marketing companies know that facts will not sell products, but that emotions sell a brand. There needs to be awareness raised for both sides, that referendums are opinion polls, not unbreakable contracts. Perhaps this is where poets could help.

Why is it important for poets to speak up on social, political and related matters?

It's important for everyone to speak up. But if you have an unusual way of saying it, it's to your advantage.

My worry is that Brexit is what Chomsky might call "a Roman Game of Circus" designed to incite a very narrow but impassioned debate involving both left and right, to distract us all from what is really going on: the stripping of human rights to bring our workforce in line with China and India, and to colonise our publicly owned assets in the TTIP deal. Chomsky, in his explanation of how we are kept passive, puts it better than me, when he says in The Common Good, "Limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum..."

In your view, what do anthologies like Bollocks to Brexit add to poetry and public discourse? Why does this matter?

As a reader, I prefer anthologies as you get a broader perspective on a theme, and experience multiple forms and styles.

Politically, art resonates better than facts, figures and debates. And if Brexit proved anything, it's that people follow their hearts. Not their minds.

The TTIP deal was debated a lot on social media before the referendum - it has vanished entirely since. The debates on public services, spending, living standards, and many other pressing issues are silenced now too. Brexit is the greatest political distraction ever contrived. It was never a possibility or even a yes/no question. It's important for anyone who realises this, on the left AND the right to reach people still arguing about a non-starter distraction. We still have to protect our hard won rights from the greedy, who will happily turn us into an impoverished, enslaved, poisoned and hateful nation.

Brexit is “a non-starter distraction” because it was invented as a Roman Game of Circus, purely to divert debate from other issues. It is an impossibility, but while we all argue about it, our civil rights and public assets are being stripped under our noses. It is useful for the government to prolong their inevitable admission that it was never going to happen, as this cultivates a climate of fear and apathy, which controls everyone (those of us already impoverished, and also anyone left who realises however little we have can be taken away). I believe they will push the deadline forward each time it arrives until they eventually admit they had no intention or means to take the eggs out of a cake which is already baked. So to speak.