“For me, poetry can weave our empowerment and freedom from shame.”
Lycanthrope (Saló Press, 2024)
Could you tell us a bit about your growing up and your path to becoming a writer?
I grew up in Wales in an area of great natural beauty. My mother was a teacher and read poetry to me from a young age. Poetry is part of the culture of Wales, with a long tradition going back to the bard or “bardd” as we would say in Cymraeg, the Welsh language.
My grandfather was a miner at St John’s Colliery in Maesteg and my grandmother ran a market stall selling sweets. She was half Irish, and my DNA test showed I was 80% Celtic (Welsh, Scottish, Irish), the rest being English and Norwegian (Brigley may be a Viking name). I grew up in South Wales where community is important. In Maesteg, important institutions (like the hospital) were built collectively by the miners.
A question from Anna Laura Reeve: Do you understand your role in society—as a poet—to be influential, critical, observant, or something else?
I am editor of Poetry Wales magazine, and we had a similar idea come up in an interview with Ariana Benson there in issue 59.3. Benson talks of herself as a gardener in terms of poetry, but I tend to think of myself as a maker of spells. For me, poetry can weave our empowerment and freedom from shame. That’s not all poetry does, but I like to see poets doing that work.
How do you contend with saturation? The day’s news, the disasters, the crazy things, the flagged articles, the flagged books, the poetry tweets, the data the data the data. What’s your strategy to navigate your way home?
I actually thrive on data – I enjoy it, but if you spend too long scrolling, you start to get this dead, empty feeling. Letter writing might be an antidote. I love long letters – writing them and receiving them.
A question from Shome Dasgupta: How are you doing?
I actually got divorced a few years ago, so things have been rocky. I see many of my friends going through the same thing – women deciding that they need their freedom. But I can say that though things are tough, I’m working really hard, and I’m a single mom, I am happy! Yes, I’m pretty happy.
A question from Karisma Price: Do you have any self-care practices you include when writing about something heavy?
I have another side of my life where I work around anti-violence advocacy, so I have to think about this very carefully. Time outside in nature, long conversations on the phone, hugging my kids – it is definitely important to get that self-care.
A question from Toni Ann Johnson: Why are you writing about what you’re writing about?
To an extent, we can’t help what we write about – some of it has to be instinct after all. If you’re too purposeful, you can lose the energy. But I want so much to write stories of women which give us a language to talk about the hard stuff in our lives. For example, I have written about experiencing four miscarriages, and so many people have shared similar experiences with me since then. It is incredibly moving.
What obsessions led you to write your book?
I am obsessed with wolves, and they are at the heart of this minibook. I am intrigued by the parallels between violence against nature and violence against women. I also am really obsessed with texting and how we communicate from a distance, so quite a bit of the story is told through texts.
How did you decide on the arrangement and title of your book?
I think very carefully about ordering in my books. This one was fairly straightforward, because it is a love story and, more than that, it is a story about trust, risk, and taking a chance. Lycanthrope was an easy title because I was reading old medieval tomes about lycanthropes, human beings who can change their appearance to that of a wolf and back again. There is a doubleness to this, as the narrator begins believing that all men might be wolves in the sense that they have the potential to be violent, but love teaches her something different about wolves, and she herself finds her own wolfishness.
What’s the oldest poem in your book? Or can you name one piece that catalyzed or inspired the rest of the book? What do you remember about writing it?
One of the first poems was “When I Touch the Poison Sumac, I Become It Too,” which started out as free writing. I started thinking about an incident in college when a friend and I were at a party, and I was feeling tired and ill. The host said I could lie down in his room, but ended up pinning me to the bed, and I had to fight him off. There’s that risk I am talking about.
Which poem in your book has the most meaningful back story to you? What’s the back story?
The whole book is hugely meaningful to me. It’s inspired by my long distance relationship with the poet Kristian Evans who is based in Wales. Neither of us can move to be closer to one another because we both have kids from our previous marriages. It’s both so easy and so hard for us, but we have such a strong bond with each other. We are both also quite zen and stoic, and so we wait very patiently to see each other.
A question from Caroline M. Mar: What was the soundtrack of your book? Were there specific songs, musicians, or sounds that helped you access your writing?
Not so much a soundtrack, but a filmic reel. I was very influenced by the movie The Company of Wolves, which was in turn based on the stories of Angela Carter. It is a gothic horror film by director Neil Jordan, and watching it during lockdown, it sparked a lot in me. I mention it quite a bit in the poems.
A question from Summer J. Hart: Do you work in any other artistic media? If so, how do the varied disciplines intersect, overlap, if they do at all?
I do academic research into representations of violence. It has taught me so much, and in a way, it has given me the language and knowledge to write about trauma, violence, and healing.
A question from Talia Lakshmi Kolluri: What tools do you use to remain uninhibited in your writing?
I guess there is just the idea that your poetic voice is different to your real-life voice. It’s a voice that comes from deep inside, in a place that we might pack away in the ordinary day-to-day run of things. Tapping into that voice is crucial, as it doesn’t care about embarrassment or shame. It doesn’t worry about what people might think of you.
A question from Cathy Ulrich: What is the last dream you remember having? Do you remember the feeling your dream-self had while you were in that world?
I seldom remember my dreams but when I do, they are extremely vivid. I had a dream that I was a woman who could turn herself into a swan, or in another dream that I could become a butterfly. These dreams from recent years might be – I guess – about discovering freedom.
A question from Amy Barnes: What is your favorite fairy tale and how would you modernize it?
Well, I mention one from my childhood in Lycanthrope. Another transformation story – this time of a woman who could turn herself into a white wolf, but she comes to a bad end when the farmers become tired of their livestock being killed. I was always struck by the moment when she is discovered: a hunter shoots the wolf through its paw but loses its track, until in a nearby cottage, she is discovered with an arrow in her hand.
A question from Monic Ductan: Who are your literary heroes? Why?
My literary heroes are probably poets whose work dispels shame. Poets like Paisley Redkal, Pascale Petit, Penelope Shuttle, Natalie Diaz, Erika L. Sánchez, Dorothea Laskey. Also poets working on environmental crisis like Camille Dungy, Ariana Benson, and more.
What are you working on now?
I am working on a biography in verse of the protofeminist, British writer Mary Wollstonecraft.
What is a question you would like to be asked?
I would love to be asked about Welsh poets writing now and who they are, apart from myself and Kristian of course. Wales National Poet Hanan Issa is a thoughtful, ethical representative. I love recent winners of Wales Book of the Year: Paul Henry and Jeremy Dixon. I tremendously respect Abeer Ameer, who writes about human rights abuses among other subjects. Other heavy weights might be Robert Minhinnick, Jonathan Edwards, Joe Dunthorne, Rhian Edwards, Christina Thatcher, Mari Ellis Dunning, Natalie Ann Holborow, and Eric Ngalle Charles. Other up-and-coming writers include Taylor Edmonds, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Des Mannay, Hammad Rind, Shara Atashi, Taz Rahman, Rae Howells, Matthew Haigh, Rhian Elizabeth, Iestyn Tyne, Glyn Edwards, Rachel Carney, Grug Muse, Hilary Watson, Emily Cotterill, Bethany HandleyDuree Shahwar, Nasia Sarwar Skuse, and Connor Allen. You can see there are loads! I don’t have time to list them all! Sorry to anyone I missed! You’ll find a lot of them at Seren Books.
What question would you like to ask the next author featured at Speaking of Marvels?
I would ask them to name a line of poetry that has stayed with them and that they can recite on cue.
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Zoë Brigley has written three books of poetry: most recently Hand & Skull (2019). All three are UK Potry Book Society Recommendations, they won an Eric Gregory Award (best British poets under 30), were longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize (best international writers under 40) and were Forward Prize commended. Find her writing in Australian Book Review, Chicago Review, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, and Poetry Ireland Review. She is editor of Poetry Wales and edits for Seren Books. With Kristian Evans, she edited 100 Poems to Save the Earth (2021) and founded MODRON. She teaches at the Ohio State University.
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