ROSIE GARLAND​​​

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'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?

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In terms of ‘tender and fearless’, I’ll follow on from the first question...

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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’.

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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?

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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.

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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.’

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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?

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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.

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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’.

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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.

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'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?

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As Walt Whitman said: ‘I contain multitudes.’

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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?

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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?

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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?

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So many writers and artist I could name! How long have you got?

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I’ll just mention a few.

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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).

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Caroline Bird is a marvel – her latest collection is ‘The Air Year’ https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784109028/the-air-year/ ).

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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?

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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.

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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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