Hello beautiful, creative people!
We know it’s only been a week since our last blog and interview, but we were on a roll and we couldn’t wait to introduce you all to PM! She will be the featured poet for March, and she had loads of interesting things to say about why she writes poetry, and what it takes to find success as a writer in today’s world.
Here’s what she had to say:
I think you have a wonderful creative mind, and this is something that very much came to light when I watched your YouTube review of Ben Okri's poetry book. Is Ben Okri a big inspiration to you?
Oh, one hundred percent, like I pointed out in the video, The Famished Road is on my bookshelf and it is one of my biggest inspirations. Because of the way it's written, you never really know if you're actually in the real world or not, and I find that so cool! The fact that he can convey such a complex idea through words on a page is mind blowing to me and Ben Okri does it so well.
Also, Ben Okri saw my video! And he sent an email to his agent saying “look at this video”. And I was like... Oh, my God, he knows I exist!
That's incredible! I watched the review and it was very genuine, and an awful lot of fun. So tell me a little bit about your style, your reason for writing.
I've actually been thinking about this recently because as part of my university work I have to write a reflective piece on how I wrote my portfolio. And I think poetry for me… If anyone knows Sarah Kay, she's a great spoken word poet, and she said in an interview that she writes poetry to figure stuff out. And for a very long time I just adopted that sentiment, but in actually sitting down and thinking about it, I realised that I actually use poetry sort of like photography. I use it to capture moments and capture certain ideas.
For example, the most recent poem that I put up on Instagram is called Onion Rings. It was a poem about my semester abroad in Hong Kong. I hadn't tried to navigate the city completely by myself before, and I managed to navigate to this pizza place after like an hour of wandering around. I finally sat down and I ordered onion rings and I felt really at peace with being alone. And so I wrote that poem - I think that is sort of my style, if that makes sense.
In my mind I consider you very multidisciplinary. Is that accurate?
Yeah, my degree is very interdisciplinary. So right now I'm working on a novel – which is prose, but it also incorporates poetry. I'm also working on a portfolio of feature articles to pitch to magazines. And I think especially if you want to make money as a writer in today's day and age, you have to diversify. Otherwise, I feel like it's just very difficult when you specify in one thing. I personally don't have a problem with writing across genres. If one person wants to do just one genre, then obviously you do you, but I like that if I have an idea that I can be like, OK, what's the best medium to translate this idea through?
In your profile we have pronouns, which is a great thing to be doing. You have "she" and "they", and alongside that we have "queer and here". Is that a part of your identity that you put into your writing?
Yeah, because my style is so personal, it's inevitable that I'm going to talk about queerness. A poem that actually got me third place in the U.K. National Slams in 2019 was a poem called On the Fence, which is essentially about gender. It’s me saying that I am on the fence about gender. Sometimes I identify as a woman, sometimes I don't, and I try to just not put a label on it. And so I think if you are using poetry to capture your thoughts, it's inevitable that that's going to end up there.
As you know we deliver poetry to people, which is a wonderful thing! If you had a message that you could get through hundreds of letterboxes, what would you want to tell the world?
Oh God... Erm...I could sit here for ages and write down a manifesto but when someone asks you in the moment… I don't know!
If I'm talking about right now, then my main message would probably be some sort of comfort, like it will be OK, we're going to get through this, make sure you're looking after yourself and make sure you're doing things that you enjoy! I could stand here and talk about queer identity, or being British-Indian - of course, they're important issues, if I can give you a poem that will make you feel better, that's probably all I want to do right now.
You can find PM on Instagram (@poetpri_m) and the full interview is on YouTube here.
