Interview with Morag Anderson
Writing allows me to explore my place in the world and navigate a path to a healthier future.
Confident and assured of voice, she navigates womanhood and its attendant desires and abuses, permitting the reader to embrace the power and vulnerability encased in the female form. Anderson’s delicate choice of words ‘unlace restraint’ and take us to the limits of the female body’s potential.
‘And I Will Make of You a Vowel Sound’ won the Aryamati Poetry Prize 2023. Isabelle Kenyon from Fly On The Wall press spoke with Morag about the collection and her poetic approach.
You write in free verse for this collection. Which poetic form do you find yourself drawn to the most often?
“The form of my work changes shape as the poem develops. If I want to slow things down, I’ll develop couplets. If the writing feels more urgent, then my stanzas will be tightly packed. If the poem is reflective, I’ll stagger my lines. Lately, I’ve been drawn to the modern sonnet. I’ve enjoyed the confinement of fourteen lines and surprising myself with unexpected half-rhymes. I love finding words to bring music to my poems. I heard Don Paterson say that some poets place a word with the precision of tweezers (I don’t think he was being complimentary). I fear that’s me! It can take me weeks/months to find the right word but when I do, I’m so happy.
You have said in a previous interview you find imagery and narrative to be co-dependent. Do you always choose a narrative before writing or does it arrive during the writing process?
Imagery and narrative remain co-dependant for me—usually, the narrative comes first and then imagery forms around it. Until John McCullough, poet and tutor, taught me to hone my imagery to one or two themes, I hadn’t noticed that my images were a bag of pick ‘n’ mix. John’s teaching brought a clearer focus to my writing and, as a result, I sometimes find the narrative is influenced by the imagery and changes tack.
A lot of writers keep a diary of sorts through their work, infusing parts of their life at that point in time within the narrative, sometimes even shedding light on what they had not previously noticed. Do you find you make sense of your own life through poetry?
I grew up in a Catholic household as one of four siblings—all close in age—sharing bedrooms. Keeping a diary was not an option. As well as being dangerous and reckless, paper (like money) was in short supply. However, my reason for starting to write poetry was exactly that—to make sense of my own life.”
Some poets find the idea of sharing themselves on the page incredibly vulnerable. Do you ever write poetry with no intended audience? And if you do always write for an audience, do you find catharsis in sharing your work?
“This is a great question. I am often asked why I write poetry, but not why I share it. I used to write with no intended audience, but the poems were overemotive and lacked craft. I learned to write the first draft as a cathartic process, but to redraft for the reader – to open the door, allowing others to enter the poem.
Writing is a vulnerability but, as clichéd as it sounds, it is also strengthening. It allows me to explore my place in the world and navigate a path to a healthier future. Through poetry, I can examine my reaction to events and better understand myself and others.
There are poems which have had, and continue to have, a deep impact on me and the space I occupy in my own history. One such poem is Dorianne Laux’s Two Pictures of My Sister—it transfixes me every time I read it. On three separate occasions, with three different poems, three individuals contacted me to say that my work had changed their behaviours:
- one emailed to say that her multiple miscarriages had been her greatest source of sorrow but hearing me read my poem Migration was an unexpected joy. From it she learned that foetal cells from all her babies remained, rosefoamed, within her and could potentially migrate to heal sites of injury,
- a second—a General Medical Practitioner—sent me direct message on X to say that my poem The Unheard Testimony of Agnes Wilson had given her courage not only to speak about her own sexual assault as a young woman, but to deal with patients who had suffered sexual abuse,
- the third, a man who came to speak with me after hearing me read Kintsugi (a poem about my mum’s earrings which I’ve worn every day since her death 29 years ago). He told me he kept a pair of his mum’s trousers in the boot of his car. On the day she was admitted to hospital, and died, she had been wearing those trousers and he couldn’t bring himself to throw them away. Having heard my poem, he decided it was alright to leave them there.
So, when I’m feeling vulnerable to exposure or criticism, I think of these people and it gives me courage to continue sharing my poetry.”
When growing up, the local library was a safe space in an angry town
Do you often read the poetry or prose of other authors, and if you do, how do you think it influences your own work?
“Oh, I read continuously. When growing up, the local library was a safe space in an angrytown—I spent hours exploring the shelves, hiding with books in nooks and quiet corners. I always have multiple poetry books at my elbow and at least one novel on the go. Reading other authors opens my mind to new ideas and ways of using language. Every book is a journey of discovery, I never know where it will take me in my own writing.
Writing is communal, I use other poets to solve problems that arise in my poems—looking closely at why a poem works for me and asking what poetic techniques/devices have been employed.”
Your poetry sometimes responds to political events, such as the overturning of Roe vs Wade. Do you find your inspiration in events such as this more potent than reading poetry? Could you tell us a little bit about what inspires you to write?
“It is hard to be apolitical in this time of social inequity. Much of my poetry is informed by my own history of poverty, food insecurity, health inequity, classism, and discrimination. During a time of acute poverty, my mother stole food from the meat processing factory she worked in to feed my siblings and I. She, of course, went without. Poverty, health inequity, and early mortality go hand-in-glove. My mother died young.
The late, great poet Audre Lorde said your silence will not protect you. Lorde dedicated her life and creative practices to confronting, and addressing, injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. She warned that women are powerful and dangerous.
I was the poet-in-residence at Creative Brain Week 2024, Trinity College, Dublin, organised by the Global Brain Health Institute. Art is necessary for brain health. Neuroscience, through the study of psychophysiological responses and neuroimaging, informs us that reading or listening to poetry reduces depression, increases emotional resilience, and builds empathy. The universal agreement being that access to the arts is as essential for health as exercise. Unsurprisingly, there is a direct correlation between social inequity and a lack of access to the arts. Art, in all its forms, should not be a luxury.
Joelle Taylor, T.S. Eliot Poetry Winner 2021, described my latest chapbook as delicate and furious, while Mab Jones, reviewing for Buzz Magazine, found it daring, disturbing, and defiant.”
There is a conversation in the poetry world right now about the influence of social media on poetry. Do you have any opinions on the young poets using TikTok etc to reimagine spoken word poetry, and do you write with spoken word in mind?
“Oh, great question! This can be such a controversial subject. I am not a TikTok user, but I fully support young poets using social media to reimagine spoken word poetry. Poetry doesn’t need to have gatekeepers – there is space enough in the park for us all.
Aged eleven, my daughter discovered Rupi Kaur on Instagram and saved her money to buy Milk and Honey. She fell into that book headfirst and, following on from that, then discovered Carol Ann Duffy. She now reads as widely as I do.
I always write with the intention of the poem being read. For me, it’s important for the piece to earn its place on the page and to deserve the attention of the listener. I don’t think I have written a poem that I didn’t intend to be heard.”
Do you have any advice to poets who are feeling stuck with their own work? Is there anything you find yourself doing to shake up your practise and infuse a new sense of creativity in yourself?
“The best advice I received was simply to keep reading. And to read a wide selection of poets – don’t gravitate back to the favourites. There are so many fantastic, and free, ways to access poetry – www.poetryarchive.org www.poetryfoundation.org.
I sometimes take a line from a poem and use it as a prompt, this can springboard thoughts into poems. I also read a lot of non-fiction - history, the natural world, art – this, too, can infuse a new line of creativity.”
Lastly, if a reader could take away one thing from the pamphlet ‘And I Will Make of You a Vowel Sound,’ what would you hope it would be?
“Oh, to have courage. To write without censorship. Poetry can be made of truths, half-truths, or complete mis-truths – write your own rules. Believe that you may write something that will change someone’s day for the better.”
You can grab a copy of, And I Will Make of You a Vowel Sound from Fly on The Wall Press.
