BENEATH THE INK
Beneath the Ink is a new ongoing written interview series from Dark Poets Club, offering readers a glimpse beyond the page and into the minds of the poets who shape our community.
Through thoughtful interviews, we explore the inspirations, experiences and creative processes behind their work, uncovering the stories behind the verse.
As the series grows, so too will this collection of voices, each offering a unique perspective on the art of dark poetry and the lives behind the lines.
HOLLY WINTER-HUGHES
'How to Leave a Body' is an unforgettable title. How did it come to you, and what does it hold for you as the heart of the collection?
The title arrived before I fully understood it. For a long time I lived as though my mind occupied a small, calm room just a handspan above my head. It was orderly there, rational, productive. But every now and then I'd accidentally look down into my body and discover something altogether different—a riot of feeling I'd spent years not knowing how to inhabit.
How to Leave a Body grew out of that realisation. It's about dissociation, certainly, but it's also about the quiet ingenuity of survival. Sometimes leaving your body isn't a choice so much as something you learn to do in order to keep going.
The collection follows the slow, often reluctant journey of returning. As I wrote, I began to recognise not only the disconnection itself, but some of the experiences that had made it necessary. Writing became less about documenting that distance and more about closing it. In many ways, the book is a map home—a record of writing myself back into my own body, one poem at a time.
Your work explores trauma, resilience and reconnection with the body. What drew you towards these themes in poetry specifically?
I don't think I chose those themes so much as they chose me. Trauma, resilience and embodiment are simply different names for the conversation I've been having with language for years.
What drew me to poetry, specifically, is that trauma doesn't arrive in neat chronology. It fragments time. It lives in metaphor, in sensation, in silence, in the things we circle rather than say outright. Poetry has always felt uniquely capable of holding those contradictions. It can leap, stutter, whisper, leave space. Sometimes the white space on the page says as much as the words themselves.
As my work has evolved—through facilitating therapeutic writing, researching embodied practice, and now undertaking doctoral research—I've become increasingly interested in the body as an archive. We often talk about finding our voice, but I think before that we have to learn how to listen. The body has often been speaking all along.
Ultimately, my poems aren't interested in trauma for trauma's sake. They're interested in what happens after. How do we return to ourselves? How do we inhabit a body that has become unfamiliar? How do we discover that healing isn't about becoming someone new, but recognising the person who was there all along?
There is something both darkly imaginative and deeply intimate in your writing. How do those two qualities work together for you?
I've never thought of darkness and intimacy as opposites. In fact, I think they're often close companions. The things we're most reluctant to say directly tend to ask for metaphor instead.
I'm less interested in confessional poetry than I am in transformative poetry. I don't want to simply report what happened; I want to discover what it felt like. That's where imagination becomes essential. It gives us a language for experiences that don't always have one.
I think imagination also creates just enough distance for honesty to become possible. You can look directly at something unbearable, or you can look at its shadow. Poetry lets me do both.
Ultimately, I hope the poems feel intimate not because they reveal everything about me, but because they make room for the reader's own interior life. The most meaningful conversations I've had about the collection are with people who tell me, "I thought you were writing about me." That's the quiet magic of poetry—it begins as one person's story, but if you're lucky, it doesn't stay there.
When writing about difficult or deeply personal material, how do you know when a poem is ready to be shared?
I've come to think that sharing a poem has less to do with whether it's finished and more to do with whether I'm ready to loosen my grip on it.
So much of healing, for me, has involved learning the art of release. Releasing old narratives. Releasing the life I thought I'd have. Releasing the need to understand everything before I move forward. Sometimes even releasing the version of myself who first wrote the poem.
Publishing feels like another expression of that same practice. There comes a moment when the poem no longer belongs solely to me. It has done what it needed to do in my own life, and it's ready to enter into conversation with someone else's.
Ironically, that's often when the poem becomes most alive. Readers bring their own histories, losses and questions to it, and suddenly it begins saying things I never consciously wrote. I find that endlessly humbling.
So I suppose a poem is ready to be shared when I no longer need it to tell my story. When I'm willing to let it become someone else's companion instead.
Your poems often feel visceral and embodied. How important is the physical body, as image, memory or site of experience, in your work?
For me, the body isn't simply a subject—it's a way of understanding the world. Once I realised that, it quietly reshaped everything I do.
Whether I'm writing poems, facilitating therapeutic writing workshops, or undertaking research as part of my PhD, I keep returning to the same question: What does the body know that language hasn't caught up with yet? I'm fascinated by the body's intelligence—its capacity to remember, anticipate, protect and communicate long before we find the words.
I think we're often taught to treat the body as a vehicle that carries the mind around, but I've become much more interested in the body as a collaborator. It notices things. It hesitates. It braces. It softens. Sometimes those subtle shifts tell us more than a page of intricately crafted prose ever could.
That curiosity shapes every part of my practice. In workshops, I might invite people to notice where a memory sits before asking them to write about it. In my research, I'm exploring how embodied approaches to therapeutic writing can amplify experiences that resist conventional language. And in my poetry, the body is never just an image—it's both witness and narrator.
Perhaps that's why my poems feel visceral. I'm not trying to write about the body. I'm trying, as far as possible, to write with it.
Was there a particular poem in the collection that unlocked the rest of the book for you?
Yes—the opening poem, Homemaking. Looking back, I think I had to write that poem before I could write the rest of the collection.
It arrived over weeks rather than in a single burst. Every morning I'd wake an hour or two before the rest of the house, roll out my yoga mat, move for a while, and then sit down to write. I wasn't trying to produce a poem; I was simply paying attention. What did I notice outside my body? What did I notice inside it? Then I'd freewrite and let whatever needed to surface, surface.
For weeks, I kept writing different versions of what was essentially the same poem. It was as though it hadn't quite found its true shape yet, and neither had I. There was no forcing it. It simply kept returning each morning until I'd listened properly.
I think Homemaking became the threshold into the collection because it marks the moment I stopped treating my body as somewhere I happened to live and started wondering whether it could become a home again. Once I'd asked that question honestly, the rest of the poems seemed to know where they wanted to go.
Dark Poets Club celebrates poetry that is haunting, honest and unafraid. What place does darkness have in your creative practice?
I don't think it's possible to live a full life without encountering darkness. To love deeply, to grieve, to lose, to hope, to begin again—these are all part of being human. The question isn't whether darkness will find us; it's what kind of relationship we'll have with it when it does.
For me, poetry has become a way of practising that relationship. It asks me to stay present instead of turning away, to become curious rather than afraid. Not because darkness is something to celebrate, but because pretending it doesn't exist costs us so much. The more we resist it, the more we risk shrinking our capacity for everything else too.
I've come to believe that joy and sorrow aren't opposites; they're neighbours. The same heart that can break open can also be filled with wonder. In my own life, learning not to fear difficult emotions has also made me more available to delight, intimacy, playfulness and awe. You can't selectively close the door on one without dimming the others.
So I suppose darkness has an essential place in my creative practice—not as the destination, but as part of the landscape.
Do you find that poetry can offer a form of return, whether to the self, the body or language, after rupture?
I do, although I'm not sure that "return" means going back to who we were before... I don't think that's possible—or even desirable. We're changed by what we experience. The return is more like finding a way to inhabit ourselves again, differently.
That's certainly what happened while writing How to Leave a Body. The collection documents a gradual return to my body, to my sense of self, and, perhaps unexpectedly, to my writing. There were times when I felt disconnected from all three, and the poems became small acts of orientation—ways of asking, Where am I now? and Can I meet myself here?
Language feels slightly different, though. I don't think we ever return to it because language is alive. It grows as we do. Every experience reshapes the words available to us, just as every poem leaves language a little altered for the next one. I don't want to write the poems I could have written ten years ago, because I'm no longer the person who would have written them.
Perhaps that's what poetry offers after rupture: not a way back, but a way forward that still honours where we've been. It reminds us that healing isn't about recovering an old self. It's about learning the language of the person we've become and are becoming.
How do image and sound work together in your poems? Do they arrive together, or does one usually come before the other?
They've swapped places over the years. When I first started writing, I came through spoken word, so sound was my compass. I'd write aloud, tasting the words, listening for rhythm, noticing where my breath wanted to pause. Even then I usually knew what emotional territory I was exploring, but it was the music that led me there.
These days my process is much quieter. I tend to begin with a freewrite—not to find polished lines, but to gather material and sit deeply with whatever I'm trying to understand. From there, images begin to emerge. Some return insistently, others quietly disappear, and gradually I discover which ones belong to the same emotional landscape. That's when the shaping begins.
I genuinely love editing. It's one of my favourite parts of writing because it asks for a different kind of attention. Less excavation, more listening. Less urgency, more trust. Editing feels deeply transformative to me; it's where a poem gradually becomes more itself.
Sound still matters enormously, but it tends to arrive later now. Once the images have settled and the structure feels true, I'll begin reading the poem aloud again. That's when I listen for cadence, echoes, awkward syllables, places where the breath catches or the music falls away. In a sense, I still write with my voice—I just invite it into the room much later in the conversation.
What do you hope readers feel or recognise in How to Leave a Body?
More than anything, I hope readers feel less alone.
Not because they'll have lived the same experiences as me—they almost certainly won't—but because they'll recognise something of themselves in the emotional landscape. Disconnection takes so many different forms. We can become estranged from our bodies, our histories, each other, even from the parts of ourselves we once knew well. I think many of us spend more time feeling disconnected than we're willing to admit.
If the collection offers anything, I hope it's permission. Permission to be curious about what's been silenced rather than ashamed of it. Permission to move gently towards ourselves instead of away. Permission to believe that reconnection is possible, even if it happens slowly.
I also hope readers come away with a renewed sense of wonder for the body—not simply as something we inhabit, but as something that has been quietly carrying us all along. Our bodies are extraordinary storytellers. They remember, they adapt, they protect, they endure. Sometimes they know we're ready to come home long before we do.
Ultimately, I don't hope people finish the book with answers. I hope they finish it with kinder questions. If a reader closes the final page and finds themselves listening to their own body, their own memories, or their own life a little more tenderly, then I think the poems have done their work.
Were there any writers, artists or influences that accompanied you while writing this collection?
Joelle Taylor and Fiona Benson have both been enormous influences on me. Not because I think I write like either of them—I don't—but because of the extraordinary honesty of their work. Joelle's poems carry such force and conviction, while Fiona has this remarkable ability to write about trauma in ways that are both devastating and exquisitely beautiful. They remind me, again and again, that difficult subjects deserve ambitious language. I adore them both. Everything they write is exquisite.
I was also incredibly fortunate to be mentored by Liz Berry while some of these poems were taking shape. Liz is one of those rare poets whose generosity is every bit as remarkable as her writing. She has such a gentle, attentive way of reading a poem that you never feel you're being told what it should become. Instead, she creates the conditions for you to hear more clearly what the poem has been trying to say all along.
Her work has always moved me because it's so rooted in voice, place and emotional truth, but what I'll remember just as much is her kindness.
John McCullough also played an important part in the collection. I was lucky enough to attend his advanced writing course twice and workshop many of these poems with him. He's one of the hardest-working poets I know, endlessly inventive, always surprising, but what stays with me most is his generosity. He creates spaces where poems—and poets—can take risks. John's poems have an extraordinary freshness to them, helping us to see the world in richer, fuller detail.
Tom Hirons was also the first person to publish one of my poems in Clarion, and that kind of belief stays with a writer. I've always admired the integrity of Tom's work and the way he writes from somewhere deeply rooted, soulful and fiercely humane.
More recently, I've been profoundly moved by his willingness—alongside the tireless and compassionate Antony Owen—to speak out against violence and genocide with clarity, conviction and compassion. Those voices feel increasingly rare in a world that so often rewards silence or careful neutrality. Their writing reminds me that poetry isn't separate from our humanity; it asks us to pay attention, to remain open-hearted, and to refuse indifference.
That moral courage is every bit as inspiring to me as their craft.
What does writing poetry make possible for you that nothing else quite can?
I love that my work takes many different forms because each one asks something different of me.
My research helps me understand. My facilitation creates spaces where other people can discover their own stories. My community work is about amplifying voices that deserve to be heard. But poetry... poetry is where I become genuinely surprised.
It's the one place where I consistently encounter things I didn't know I knew.
A poem begins with a question, an image, a bodily sensation, a line that won't leave me alone. I rarely know where it's going when I start. If I did, I don't think I'd need to write it. The act of writing becomes a way of thinking that feels different from any other kind of thinking I know. It's slower, more instinctive, more willing to sit beside uncertainty.
I sometimes say that I don't write poems to express myself; I write them to discover myself. That discovery doesn't end with the first draft either. It continues through editing, through reading the work aloud, through sharing it, and sometimes years later when I return to a poem and realise it understood something before I did.
That's what poetry makes possible for me. It allows me to live inside questions rather than rushing towards answers. In a world that often asks us to explain ourselves quickly and confidently, poetry gives me permission to remain curious. I think that's one of the greatest gifts any art form can offer.
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ROSIE GARLAND
'This Is How I Fight' is such a striking title. What does that phrase mean to you personally, and what forms of fighting does the collection explore?
Thank you! Ok, some background. In my previous collection, ‘What Girls Do in the Dark’, I soared into the night sky and played among the stars. When approaching this new collection I had no clear idea of a theme, let alone a title. My ideas felt hackneyed. Everything I attempted retrod old ground.
Then, during a sleepless transatlantic flight, I watched the in-flight movie: ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ (2022, dir. Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert). I was entranced.
Towards the end of the film, I experienced one of those eureka moments. The character of Wayland Wang (wonderfully acted by Ke Huy Quan – who has his own backstory of battling against the odds) says, “You think because I’m kind that it means I’m naive. It’s strategic and necessary. This is how I fight.”
I knew what I needed to write about. The theme had found me.
Your work often feels both tender and fearless. How do you balance vulnerability and strength on the page?
In terms of ‘tender and fearless’, I’ll follow on from the first question...
The title poem – and the cover image of the rose - is inspired by a photograph I saw as a child, and which became indelibly imprinted on my memory: an anti-Vietnam protestor placing a flower into the barrel of a gun pointed right at him. It was only as I was researching the image for the collection that I discovered the photograph gave rise to the phrase ‘flower power’.
And the protestor was George Harris, aka Hibiscus: a flamboyantly gay actor and founder of queer performance troupe The Cockettes (whose roster included Sylvester and Divine). What began as inspiration took on unexpected, deeper layers of meaning and relevance.
(Flower Power photograph by Bernie Boston, taken during the March on the Pentagon, October 21, 1967. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_Power_(photograph)
The title poem is a haiku. I felt I summed up that vulnerability and strength in a few words. Sometimes less is more.
'This is How I Fight'
I’ll never be done
sliding long-stemmed roses
down the barrels of guns
Kindness appears in your work not as softness, but as something radical and deliberate. What draws you to that idea?
Thank you again. Yes, a thread of resistance and defiance runs through the collection; defiance founded on a bedrock of empathy and generosity to both the self and the other. I don’t confuse kindness with being ‘nice’. ‘Nice’ feels kinda passive & not very helpful. When someone says, ‘oh, that’s nice,’ what does that even mean? Kindness is robust, and not afraid to challenge – with respect and empathy, obviously. Because that is the key to growth and development.
I feel a great affinity with the concept of ‘Hopepunk’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopepunk), described by Elin Kelsey as ‘a narrative of positive resistance.’ In addition, Alexandra Rowland says: ‘Hopepunk isn’t pristine and spotless. Hopepunk is grubby, because that’s what happens when you fight.’
So, with that mind, the poems in This is How I Fight frame kindness as a radical act, forged in the face of escalating division, social upheaval and downright cruelty. There is a determination to refuse cynicism and to strive against creeping apathy, whilst endeavouring to live authentically.
In the words of Albert Camus: “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion”.
This collection explores courage, survival and finding a way through the world. Were there particular experiences, images or emotions that shaped the book as it came together?
For me, I ask myself questions when I write. Not to hammer answers flat, but to explore those questions via the reflection writing enables and allows. To discover what I think and how that changes, develops and grows. With each poem, flash or novel, I challenge myself to go somewhere I haven’t been before. A different corner of the geography.
I am not afraid to venture into frightening places. I don’t ‘like’ or ‘agree’ with some of the voices I channel. There are poems where I try to get under the skin of dangerous characters and ideas. One example is the poem ‘I am a Jealous God; you shall have no other God but me’. I remember when I first heard that line from the bible at convent school (Exodus 34:14 & many other places). Even as a child I thought it strange that a supposedly omnipotent god could be ‘jealous’.
Tolstoy said, ‘Do not trust the religious, for they have an excuse for everything.’ I thought of people down the ages who’ve used their so-called faith as an excuse for land-grab, genocide, rape, enslavement... and the poem ‘Jealous god’ was the result.
'I am a Jealous God; you shall have no other God but me'
So! My temples are fallen into ruin? I need no shrines of granite,
swallowed into sand. There will always be the lost-without-me, the
needy. You, who hunger for authority to feed your nothing. I build
my altar in your hearts: bow down and worship. Burn offerings of
envy, lust, greed. In my name, do violence. In my name, make wars.
I breed hate to stoke your fire. I urge atrocity. I. I. I thirst. I. I. I feed
and fatten. I am never sated.
When history is written, you shall write it to my liking.
To the uttermost stretches of the earth, you shall sing
to me alone. I. I. I hack away the memory of other
gods, pound their statues into forgetting, plough them
into mulch. I. I. I hammer terror onto the world. I show
no mercy, yet all shall call me merciful. I. I. I will never die.
Do my will. In my name, scorch brimstone upon cities. In my name,
raze women, children. Rubble rooms where sons and daughters
sleep. Grief the mothers, despair the fathers. Spill blood upon their
lintels, abandon all their hope. Send the drones, the roaring planes
with bellies full to dropping. Gravel and dust their futures. Empty
out their lives.
Your writing moves across poetry, fiction, lyrics and performance. Do those different forms feed each other, or do they each allow you to express something different?
As Walt Whitman said: ‘I contain multitudes.’
There’s more than one side to a story and myriad ways to tell it. I find beauty and excitement in writing from different perspectives & in different forms. Rather than exerting rigid control, shackling flamboyance and forcing creativity to behave properly and toe other people’s lines, I let go and write. With the help of a notebook beside the bed, or recording voicenotes while walking, I venture into possibilities, and relish the fluidity.
Being ‘in the flow’, if you will. As someone who eludes rigid definitions in their personal life, it seems appropriate for my writing to follow suit. A lived experience of not-fitting has cultivated an awareness of the limitations and inadequacy of labels. Sure, they’re useful in their place. However, I’m wary of the tendency of categorisation to harden into boundaries, which can both imprison and exclude. Oscar Wilde said, ‘to define is to limit’, and he knew a thing or two about prisons.
There is often a strong sense of voice and energy in your poems. Do you hear your poems as you write them?
People talk about the music of a poem, and for me that‘s literal: when I am editing, I read the work aloud. It allows me to hear when the rhythm is right and when it falls flat. I insist that my poems should work in the ear (in performance) and on the page (text). As singer and lyricist for post-punk band The March Violets, my musical knowledge informs how I read my poems to an audience.
So, on the micro level, I am attentive to sound, rhythm, and spacing within a single poem. On the macro level, when I assemble a collection, I’m equally concerned with how those sonic forms and textures move across the entire book, from beginning to end. It is never just a random assemblage of poems; the whole collection has to carry a coherent musical and emotional arc.
Dark Poets Club is drawn to work that does not look away from the shadowed parts of being human. What role do darkness, difficulty or discomfort play in your poetry?
In 1974, Angela Carter said ‘we live in Gothic times’. It’s never been more apt. The Gothic taps into our relationship with internal demons, and that explains its allure and terror. All of us have cobwebbed dungeons in the psyche. They can be frightening places, and we are sold the lie that if we paint our world pastel pink everything will be ok. We ignore personal darkness at our psychological peril. Far wiser is to explore the haunted labyrinth & face the fearsome ghosts.
It’s never been an easy path, and that is part of the territory. Punk rebelliousness motivated me at the start of my creative journey, and motivates me now. I do not explore these themes as a pose, or because it’s this year’s thing in publishing. I write from my passions, spurred to get my dissenting voice heard.
I’m not interested in creating narrow worlds. I’m telling stories about life on the boundaries of what is human, acceptable or normal. I explore lives that don’t fit narrow expectations. And celebrate them.
How do you think poetry can help us live with uncertainty, pain or change?
Poetry nourishes and supports though tough times. There is so much to make us miserable that any avenues to joy are worth highlighting. It’s easy to spin away from the still, small voice of hope and become swallowed up in doomscrolling, which feeds despair and saps what little energy we have for the struggle.
Audre Lorde said, ‘Poetry is not a luxury’. Neither is joy a luxury we’re only allowed to feel when ‘everything is perfect’. It is a radical act. I love what Rebecca Solnit has to say about joy: ‘Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.’
Was there a poem in This Is How I Fight that surprised you while writing it, or revealed something you did not expect?
I change and develop as I write – whatever I’m writing!
I’ve accepted that I can’t change people’s minds. If someone’s mind is completely closed, nothing I say will alter that. What I’m doing when I write is both reaching out and making a statement of existence: I am here, and I am trying to live as openly and as authentically as I can. If that declaration of being—of simply existing in that way—becomes a point of connection for people across the globe, then that is wonderful. That is, in many ways, why I am here.
When starting out, I was inspired by foremother icons, including Siouxsie Sioux, Polly Styrene, Patti Smith, Joan Jett, and Pauline Black. They forged their own path, challenging and disrupting ideas of what women – particularly women in bands – could be. I looked to them for encouragement, hope and permission. If they could do it, why shouldn’t I?
What moves and humbles me is the realisation I have become a scary gothmother for others. I’m deeply affected by the number of young folk who approach me after a show and say how I’ve made a positive difference in their lives. It’s intensely heartening and life-affirming. We never know who has seen or heard our work; never know for whom it’s shone a beacon. Those times when we do find out are a gift. If people are drawing inspiration, I couldn’t be happier.
What do you hope readers carry with them after spending time with this collection?
All my work - lyrics, songs, poetry, short fiction, novels – has at its heart a desire to connect, in a spirit of adventuring out as well as in. Poetry is a place I go to for communion, to create a bridge between writer and reader. I wish to welcome the reader in, and give them space to have their own thoughts. Dammit, I want space for my own thoughts.
I’m not interested in writing a story that thumps its fist on the table, hammering down rigid answers. I write to explore the questions and thoughts that keep me awake at night. I write to take up space, without waiting for it to be given. As a proud declaration of existence. I resist the overwhelming sludge of normality. Life’s too short to wear beige.
We are at our most powerful and most joyful when we are connected. Breaking down isolation and building communities of belonging is vital for emotional health. It is worth hanging on, however lonely you may feel. There are sisters, brothers & all kind of others out there.
Are there poets or artists who continue to shape the way you think about language, resilience and transformation?
So many writers and artist I could name! How long have you got?
I’ll just mention a few.
John McCullough has a sparkling new collection, ‘Crowd Voltage’ https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/crowd-voltage-1392 ). Shivanee
Ramlochan’s work is stunning. Check out her debut collection ‘Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting’ http://www.peepaltreepress.com/books/everyone-knows-i-am-haunting).
Caroline Bird is a marvel – her latest collection is ‘The Air Year’ https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784109028/the-air-year/ ).
Helen Ivory also has a brilliant new collection out now – ‘Constructing a Witch’ https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/constructing-a-witch-1355
What does resilience mean to you now, and has your understanding of it changed over time?
We are in dark times again, witnessing a resurgence of the ultra-right and a howling backlash against hard-won rights. This is no time to surrender. No time for compliance and collusion.
We are all in this together. It is worth speaking against the grain. It is worth being who you are without compromise or excuses. It is worth keeping going through difficult times (especially through difficult times).
Writers have an urgent, exciting task. Our stories, songs and poems have value and are important, even when weird and ill-fitting. Especially when weird and ill-fitting. In a recent interview, Cyndi Lauper said: ‘it ain’t never over until you give in. And you don’t have to give in’.
Times are tough. The time we have is short. Time is all we have. Do it now.
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