Interview by Beth Mcaulay
“I’m always thinking about who gets to speak and be listened to, and who gets silenced”
valley burn
in the place where I’m from if you really like animals as a kid someone might kindly suggest well when you grow up, love, you could work in a pet shop no one would think of thinking you might study to become a vet it’s not that kind of place we’re not those kinds of people in the place where I’m from if you like writing, maybe one day you could get a job on the local paper no one has an uncle pulling strings to get you Spectating for the summer or a lonely rich aunt twice removed who’d love to have you stay for free with her in a big London townhouse while you convert your internship in the place where I’m from we watch the other ones on TV like we do episodes of Blue Planet entertainingly fascinating ultimately absolutely nothing to do with us occasionally one of ours pops up the cousin of a hairdresser maybe and everyone will say eeeeeeeeeh! how did she manage to get on there?!
How, if at all, did ideas of testimony and social representation influence your poem?
Those are ideas that influence much of my writing in general. I’m always thinking about who gets to speak and be listened to, and who gets silenced – either individually or systemically, and the ways in which both of those things happen. In terms of social representation, I couldn’t possibly claim to speak for the North-East, but I do feel that there are some very important perspectives missing, due to the disparity between groups who feel entitled to speak or to push themselves forward, and groups who have been conditioned to believe that they don’t belong in certain spaces, opportunities or conversations.
Are the ways in which the natural world or ‘valley’ are engaged with intertwined with feelings of entrapment? Do ideas of rurality and socio-economic disadvantage intersect in your poem?
Yes, but I’d want to be clear here that any feelings of entrapment do not originate from the place itself, which is full of wide open, remote and beautiful spaces, but rather the assumptions that have been put on the people and communities like the one I grew up. I’d feel very uncomfortable with the idea that I have somehow ‘escaped’ by going to university and then moving to London. The socio-economic disadvantage from the rural area being chronically under-funded, under-represented and exploited has been represented as some sort of intrinsic lack of ambition in its people, and it’s easy to make that story hold up if you don’t actually engage with anyone who might tell you something different.
Your poem mentions that metropolitan life is something witnessed with a sense of unfamiliarity akin to that felt when watching a nature show. How, if at all, did you consider ideas pertaining to technology and detachment whilst writing? How did you strive to represent rural attitudes towards the almost mystified and elusive city?
I did want to capture that sense of detachment from London – and I use that to mean not just the city, but the centre of government, media, and business power – as a place where ‘they’ make decisions about ‘us’. That comes from a place of disenfranchisement – that even when you protest, nothing happens – which has been getting progressively worse since the collapse of the miners’ strike and the following devastation wrought on the area. The fall of ‘the red wall’ in the North-East would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago, but when things are bad, of course people vote for change. In terms of representing attitudes, I wanted to give voice to the surprise when one of ‘our lot’ does pop up on TV – even if only a reality show, everyone seems to know exactly who they are and where they’re from and it’s a sense of amazement that they’ve somehow infiltrated an inaccessible space. Because if you’re always given the message you don’t belong, and you’re never invited, seeing even a tiny amount of representation can seem both hugely significant and almost incomprehensible.
