Interview with an Author

This month we are chatting to author, Erin Bolens, about her wonderful poetry book, Alternate Endings.

How did you get into writing?

Hmm, I’ve always written in one way or another but it was quite a private thing and not something I thought of sharing for some time. I went to drama school and did a lot of performances but after graduating I didn’t feel very at home in that world. I discovered live poetry when I moved to London and realised it was possible to share your notebook musings in rooms of other people. I found it really liberating to share my own thoughts in front of an audience simplicity of writing something, sharing it, and sitting back in your seat to watch other people do the same was just what I needed at that time. It quickly became what I did for fun and then for a living and now as well as writing things I love to perform, I write lots of pieces I prefer to live on the page. But I’ll always hold onto that time of discovering what was possible and how that changed so much of my outlook and life really.

Alternate Endings is a poetry book that not only makes you get a lump in the back of your throat but also makes you belly laugh; was it important to you to take your readers on an emotional journey through this collection?

That’s so lovely to hear. I think it felt important to share the different parts of me – no-one is a purely ‘serious’ person or 100% funny and light-hearted. Something hilarious can happen when you’re having a terrible time and vice versa. I wanted to share that mixture that life throws at you and I hoped I’d take the reader with me and it might be relatable but you never know, of course. I think if you write in one way and it gets a good response it can be tempting to stay in that realm but I try to push through that where possible and just write what I want and need to at the time.

Your recurring series (if you like) ‘Worry Doll’ throughout the collection was something that I so adored and just felt truly transparent and real which I believe poetry should do, was it hard for you to share this part of yourself?

those parts for the book, I just wanted to sort of make notes of my worries to sort of track my thinking and maybe realise some of the tricks my mind was playing on itself. Then when I was putting the book together I wanted there to be some relief from the poems and to play with a different voice so I cut up my worry notes and scattered them between poems. It did feel quite scary to share them partly because it feels like a big overshare but also because there’s no ambiguity in those bits. There’s no imagery or metaphor or anything symbolic going on so they feel quite open and frank which was a bit scary to send out into the world. I’ve really enjoyed sharing those bits though, and it’s been incredibly cathartic to hear other people’s versions.

Seeing London is one of the best conceptual poems I’ve did it throughout a whole poem rather than just in one line. What inspired this?

That’s a big, old compliment, cheers! That was one of those (very) rare occasions where you open the door and the poem pretty much walks through. I can’t remember how I came to use that tool but I know I’d been really wanting to write something that captured my sort of embarrassment at having ‘succumbed’ to London and my inability to really accept it as home. It’s an old one now but I am fond of it because it became a way for me to be quite honest about way that acknowledges it’s not a huge problem in the scheme of things.

The ending of Alternate Endings is a stroke of genius and how much can be said with so little. Was this always going to be the ending?

That’s very kind. If I’m being completely honest I just had to go and check what the ending was! I think that one came about when I’d settled on the title and then tried to play around with that theme a bit more. Thanks for noticing the economy – it was much longer at one point! I think I was to say was that when I think of the present and the future as a sort of added bonus to the life I’ve had – it kind of takes the pressure off. I don’t always remember it but when I do endings was a running theme through some of the poems I wanted in the collection I saw it as quite a sombre and felt that there was hope and positivity in endings too so I think I wanted to end the book on that note.

What advice would you give to budding poets reading this today?

Oh, um, probably just write whatever you need to when it comes and to try not get too pigeon holed into a certain style or topic. We all feel such a range of things every day – do something you hadn’t thought possible. It’s always nice to ask other people for a poem or writer that they like. It’s an

What is something you’d like to continue the voice on?

This is probably a bit niche but I’m just coming to the end of training to be a counsellor at the moment and I’m really interested in crossover between poetry and therapy. I think it’s really important that there is a distinction between the two but I think writing is such a useful tool to have in your wellbeing toolbox. I think it’s important to say that there’s lots of writing I don’t share and don’t even look at again. can really help our understanding of them. So I’m looking forward to experimenting with ways of enabling writing just for the process and not the outcome.

The theme of this month’s issue is health, what little things do you do to improve your health?

Trying not to Google every symptom I have, deleting social media apps from my phone home screen and putting on songs to dance chaotically to. I know it’s a bit of cliché but I’m also one of those weirdos that loves being in cold water. Which is ironic because I absolutely don’t drink enough of it.

writing?

I’m @erinbolens at the usual places and try to keep erinbolens.com as updated as possible. You can buy Alternate Endings here.