“…. now my days are packed with spotting seabirds and looking at islands, planning island trips and watching the weather and the tides.”
Poet Seabird Island (Boats Against the Current, 2024)
Could you tell us a bit about your growing up and your path to becoming a writer?
I grew up in a house that always contained books and library cards; my parents fervently believed in the power of education and I was the first in my family to go to university. At four years old I was reciting Blake’s “The Tyger” but didn’t know any nursery rhymes. At seven I was putting on plays in my house, inviting the neighbours round to watch and charging them five pounds, which my parents drew the line at and made me return the money. At ten I had my first publication in the school magazine, a poem called “The Fulmar.” I wish I still had a copy! Despite doing well at school and ok at university, all this education got in the way of writing and I didn’t write, or read, for some time after leaving university. In fact it was about three years before I could properly enjoy reading a book again. It was only when struggling to find employment I wanted to do that I returned to writing, a way to escape the call centre economy, the only places that seemed willing to employ arts/humanities graduates.
Like something out of a fairy tale, an unlooked for legacy came my way from a generous Great Uncle, who had always encouraged my writing. I went back to university and studied Poetry at the University of East Anglia in Norwich and then Playwriting at Birmingham. I gave ten years to writing plays, writing 109 in total, of varying formats, from full plays to ten-minute pieces and five-minute monologues. 37 of those pieces had some form of performance in front of an audience, but when Covid hit, my first planned national tour, complete with a ready team of 22 creative people and one set of rehearsals under our belts and with funding about to be agreed, was utterly de-railed.
However, the poetry was still being written and gaining traction. I’d sent a book called Medusa Retold Mixtape to Fly on the Wall Press and they liked it, not enough to publish the whole thing but they wanted the Medusa Retold long narrative poem as a stand alone chapbook and that turned into my first book, dedicated to Bolthole Bill, my Great Uncle that had left me a legacy to pursue a writing dream. Since then I’ve had a few chapbooks published, Quietus Makes an Eerie with Dancing Girl Press, Precious Mettle with Alien Buddha Press, How to Love the Hat Thrower with Selcouth Station, sadly no longer operational, and now Poet Seabird Island with Boats Against the Current.
A question from Anna Laura Reeve: Do you understand your role in society—as a poet—to be influential, critical, observant, or something else?
A poet’s role is to hold your attention for as long as we’ve asked for it, yes to reflect society back to itself and observe, but most importantly to never be boring.
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?
To read beautifully. Well-wrought sentences and scintillating language will always bring a poet back to themselves. It’s a call and response, you read, then you need to write; the writers were always great readers first.
A question from Shome Dasgupta: How are you doing?
I am well, thank you!
What obsessions led you to write your book?
Four years ago my husband got a new job at the University of Edinburgh and we moved to Scotland. From a bustling city, Leeds, in West Yorkshire in the North of England, we moved to a small village on the East Lothian Coast. We hear seabirds all the time, there is a coastal walk where you can see gannets diving and hear the kittiwakes calling, the oystercatchers jinking and you can spot seals and passing porpoises. It’s a very different place, I grew up in London and have been a city girl all my life, now my days are packed with spotting seabirds and looking at islands, planning island trips and watching the weather and the tides.
How did you decide on the arrangement and title of your book?
The landscape of the poet changed one day and I accepted that I lived here and was grateful to be here instead of in the city, I became obsessed with visiting islands, it’s a lot easier to do in Scotland, we have so many on our doorstep. I read about islands and seabirds and those books started piling up. McKenna Deen, the editor at Boats Against the Current, asked me if I had any ideas for a chapbook and a phrase that had been kicking around came back to me, Poet Seabird Island. I said yes, although I didn’t know what it was yet, but it became this book.
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?
The oldest poem in the book is the one that’s not like the others – “Sapphire” – it was an experiment I was doing with colours and precious stones. As an experiment to gather some poems of the same ilk it was unsuccessful, but some of the other poems have made their way into other collections, “Emerald,” for instance, is in How to Love the Hat Thrower, and “Amethyst” is in Precious Mettle.
Which poem in your book has the most meaningful back story to you? What’s the back story?
The poem “My Sister the Mermaid” refers to the death of my sister, I was aged four and soon after my parents left me with my grandparents, they needed to get away. When they returned my mother gave me a beautiful troca shell, she had one too and it has sat at my bedside ever since, whichever house it has happened to be.
What was the final poem you wrote or significantly revised for the book, and how did that affect your sense that the book was complete?
The last poem I wrote in the book was “Paddling on the Shores of the Wild World” – the title an adapted quote from Keats – and I wrote most of it on the island of Arran, from the southernmost beaches at Kildonan you can see out to Ailsa Craig, the great nature reserve, and the Pladda lighthouse, it’s a wonderful place and was quite empty, just me and the sea and the sky and those islands. I didn’t at all sense that the book was complete with that poem, it took a while, because I’m not sure I am finished with writing about islands just yet. But there was a deadline and I’d reached it, so the book was done.
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 enjoy painting, and the book cover is taken from one of mine, I had sent various paintings and photographs alongside the manuscript and the editor chose the one, “Dreaming the Island.”
I have had several art pieces accepted for publication recently alongside poems which they illustrate or help the viewer/reader into. It hasn’t been so much a conscious choice to get those pieces out into the world, I have really stumbled into it and it isn’t something I would necessarily pursue further as I enjoy visual art more as a hobby and I know how hard it can be with art to get your work in front of people, but if it happens organically as this has, I am happy for my work to be out there.
As I mentioned I also trained in playwriting and there was definitely some overlap there, not always in a good way. When anyone speaks on stage there must be a purpose to it and that purpose must always focus on the character furthering their own agenda, no one ever speaks to just speak, and sometimes for a poet riffing in a stage space that can be a hard thing to learn.
A question from Noreen Ocampo: What is something that fuels you as a writer, your writing practice, or just you as a human being?
Reading and the sea. My first book, Medusa Retold, was called “a love letter to the sea” and in How to Love the Hat Thrower, which is more of a woodsy glade of a book, I consciously tried to keep the sea out, but there are one or two in there where it comes flooding back.
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?
Sorry Cathy, I don’t know that I do dream, I’m constantly told that we all do and I just don’t remember my dreams but I don’t know. A friend of mine once said that she gets the credits rolling on her dreams but I think she’s watched too much telly!
A question from Amy Barnes: What is your favorite fairy tale and how would you modernize it?
So difficult to choose! I love re-writing myth and fairytales… Cinderella or Goldilocks maybe, although I have already written forms of those two, one was a poem at Trampset, “Just Another Panic Attack Cinderella,” a tale of Cinders after she marries the Prince and finds he’s basically an overgrown boy scout obsessed with bird watching…
the happy disguised, like a first date dress somewhere,
hanging, forlorn now, only an empty echo of pride,
swaying in the breeze of a half-open window
twitching memories, the lost shoe, a dress liquid as vodka.
I used Goldilocks in a flash fiction piece where a truffle hunter employed by high end restaurants has a pig to help snuffle out the truffles but hasn’t been very good at it lately, Goldilocks is on her last chance and that piece was published by Ellipsis. So I’ll need to find another one, I think!
A question from Monica Macansantos: Do you ever find yourself inspired or guided by your childhood in your work?
All the time and there are a couple in this book, particularly “Fishcakes,” about a kindly headmistress on my first day at a new school. I also have many poems about my grandmother who brought me up between the ages of 4-10, she was a big influence on my life and died a couple of years ago at the age of 101.
A question from Monic Ductan: Who are your literary heroes? Why?
I once heard a poet say at the end of a long list of poets she admired “and of course Shakespeare the river under everything.” I wish I could remember who that was, it sounds so good.
Writers I go back to include Alice Oswald, Moya Cannon, Frank O’Hara, and recently Ada Limon and Victoria Kennefick.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a book about light, called Lumens, the subject is light in all its forms, natural light, sun, moon, aurora, and then other light sources, bioluminescence for example, also man made light, streetlight, torchlight, candlelight, firelight, bonfire and fireworklight and mythical light too, consider the tired unicorn, with his patched moonlit coat, or phoenix in flame, and dragonfire. There is an atmosphere of adventure that illuminates the poems, looking outward, up to the stars and to other worlds, and back to ours with our islands, the Mirrie Dancers and volcanic light, 24/7 neon lit cities and lighthouses that keep us safe.
What question would you like to ask the next author featured at Speaking of Marvels?
When was the last time you wrote something that surprised you?
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Sarah Wallis is a writer living on the East Coast of Scotland, UK. She has five chapbooks out in the world including Medusa Retold, Precious Mettle and the latest, Poet Seabird Island, now available from Boats Against the Current. 2023 included poem art at Osmosis, podcasting with Eat the Storms and a winning story at The Welkin. Other recent work in 2024 is at Propel and The Dirigible Balloon, in both digital and audio versions.
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