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Tala: "Softness isn't a weakness, it's a strength"

Hello, beautiful, creative people!


Today’s interview is with Tala; multi-talented writer and fellow champion of creatives. We hope you enjoy it!



Hi Tala! Please can you introduce yourself?


Hi, my name is Tala and I'm a UK based writer, poet, music journalist, and I run Tala Writes, which is my small business and my poetry account.



You’re an editor for something call Story of Song. Can you tell us a bit more about that?


Yeah, sure! I've been writing for Story of Song for about two years. I'm a really, really big fan of music, it's a really important part of my life. For the site, I write about the story and the inspiration behind so many different songs, and I have to say I feel very lucky - It's a very fun job! I run all the content on the site, and I'm in charge of finding new musicians to interview.

One of my favourite things to do is highlight up and coming artists, I like to do the same on my Instagram too. I always like to make space for new creatives who aren't getting as much space as I believe they should.



Do you take a lot of inspiration from music to put it into your creations? And if so, who do you find who inspires you the most?


I go through phases with my music where I listen to certain decades and certain time periods, so at the minute I'm really into 80s music like Bronski Beat, the Pet Shop Boys, just a lot of funk and disco. But if I really want to have a good therapeutic writing session, I always look to Bob Dylan, Jeff Buckley, Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin… so many other people.



And I know you share your current writing playlist through your Instagram, so people can check out what you're listening to and maybe seek inspiration and where you're finding inspiration!


Yeah, hopefully!



A lot of your work focusses on feminism, culture, sexuality and identity. These are all things that you're really passionate about at the moment?


I am at the minute really, really passionate about cultural identity. I have a mixed background, I'm English, Syrian, Irish but I moved to the U.K. when I was about nine to quite a small seaside town and I lost a lot of my Arabic. Because I was young, I wanted to fit in, but during lockdown I feel like I've had the chance to reconnect with my Mum and kind of reconnect with that part of my culture and my identity that I just swept away when I was young.

So at the minute I'm really enjoying reading a lot of work by mixed-race poets, works about culture and identity and how they intertwine. I think it's so important to read other poets' work and other writers' work. I think it's so important to expand your media that you read, decolonise what you read, try and get in works and poems from all experiences or backgrounds or genders or races, everything! Ultimately when you write, the things you read, you can apply them to your work and they do add a different dimension to the work that you create. And no two people will ever have the same thing to say on one topic!



Do you have a particular piece of work that you're particularly proud of?


I've been going through a lot of my old work recently, and I found this piece of work called 'A Stream of Consciousness'. I was obviously in a very angry mood or just not in a very good place in my head, and it was one of the first pieces of work where I was like, I'll just write without thinking of verses or form. It's one of my favourite works I've ever done because… I started writing poetry because I felt it difficult to be honest with myself about how I was feeling. And me writing all these things down that were in my head, they were just on paper. So I couldn't deny that that was the way I was feeling. It was a way for me to come to terms with my emotions, I guess.



At Poems by Post we have hundreds of letterboxes that we drop poems through. If you could drop a message into any letterbox, what would that message be?


Oh, gosh, so many things, but one I would say... Softness isn't a weakness, it's a strength. I think this year, more than ever, we've had to learn how to be soft but not weak. I think there's a very strong, strong difference. Being soft just means that you're open to understanding, you're open to learning and you're open to acceptance and to new things. I think it can change the world, really, if we're softer in a way!



You can find Tala on Instagram (@talawrites), and the full interview is on YouTube here.




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