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Bethany has shared her spoken word poetry on various wide-reaching platforms, speaking on BBC3 with her poem Pink, opening up about her depression in a stunning Ted Talk, alongside creating crucial conversations about feminism and sexuality. Go Inspire had the privilege of asking her about creative processes, performances and the pandemic.
GI: What drew you to poetry as a medium to convey your desired emotions and/or messages?
BR: I seem like a really easy-going person, but I am actually really neurotic. I like an even space between my clothes hangers, my photos archived and dated in exact order, and every drawer and cupboard immaculate. I think it’s because I know deep down that I am a hoarder of memories and unfinished thoughts, so I have to create a clear space somewhere physical so that I can breathe. I have always been drawn to the idea of containing wildness- how to hold the unholdable. I think that is what I love most about poetry; that it tidies away chaos and big emotions into straight lines and metrics. I can’t tidy away my messy heart, but I can find ways in which I feel held. Language holds the things that my arms are too heavy to carry.
GI: How did you discover that for you, poetry was the most effective creative outlet?
BR: When I was eleven, I wrote a poem in my English class. My teacher asked me to stay behind after class and told me that it was extraordinary. I couldn’t believe that I was actually being praised for having emotions, that I could actually make a piece of work out of the weird way my brain worked. I wanted and demanded a lot of attention when I was growing up, and this felt like a good way to harness my need to be seen with an actual craft. I love drawing, painting, playing the piano, singing and writing songs too. These are the things that bring me comfort and joy. It’s actually the day-to-day practicalities of living that I have to work hard at getting right. I could happily keep my head in the clouds all day, dreaming of the sky. What is harder for me is balancing my creative outlets against the need for creative escape. I feel like poetry encompasses both.
GI: What were your biggest challenges, personally speaking, mental health-wise when the pandemic first hit?
BR: When the pandemic hit, I was recovering from the biggest mental health breakdown of my life. I had not been working for a year, I had partially been living in my family home as I needed round-the-clock care and supervision, and I had just moved back into my home full time again with my partner Cat (Cc) a few weeks before we went into lockdown. As a result, my life didn’t change much because I had been living in a very small world previously. I remember being worried for those that I love but also relieved that there were no social expectations on me and that I could take my time getting better with Cc by my side. My mental health team continued to work with me remotely, I took lots of photos of flowers and the night sky, and I taught myself the names of the constellations, the names of the trees and plants in the forest, and how to run. For the first few weeks, I was too weak to walk down the road, but I loved putting my music on loud in my ears and looking at the sky. It had been a long time since I had been able to feel any kind of joy. Running took me back to a place where I had not been for a long time; my body.
GI: With that in mind, what did you learn about yourself?
BR: I learned that as somebody who has suffered with depression her whole life, that I am good at ‘being’ as opposed to ‘doing’- because there have been so many times where I couldn’t be defined by my output as a person because I was too unwell to even move. I had to learn how to just be because being present and in the moment was sometimes all I had to keep me above the water. I also learned that I had a resilience I wasn’t aware of. People were talking in horrified tones about isolation, anxiety, fear, the threat of job loss, feeling trapped and claustrophobic, money worries, exhaustion, monotony and lack of structure. None of these things phased me in the slightest. When you struggle with your mental health, then you will know all these things in a familiar and intimate way. So I knew what to do. And my friends who are really successful- lawyers and surgeons and teachers and directors – they would call me and ask me how I was coping with the long empty space of the days, and it was such a privilege to be able to help them in the way they had always helped me over the years. I learned how good a quiet life is for my soul. I love spending time with my cats and my partner, just dotting around the house, chatting and organising and dreaming and reading and being soft.
GI: Do you feel the literary world, specifically in poetry, is a safe space for women or do you think it could be improved? How so?
BR: This is such a complex and interesting question that I could talk for a long time about. I think that there is no place in any world where women are entirely safe, and there are a lot of male poets who are wolves in sheep’s clothing, hiding poor behaviours behind the guise of being gifted with their language skills. Not many happy people write poems, and the sadness in some of the rooms sometimes takes on a strange and dangerous energy. It’s the energy of desperation, a room full of people who are staring into the abyss and don’t know what to do about how dark it is, so read each other poems into a microphone. To me, that isn’t a safe space in so many ways, but it also is - because there is solace in the togetherness and the collectiveness of our shared experience. At some queer nights, there is palpable joy in the room. Joy that we are all still here, making poetry and power out of our pain.
GI: You performed one of your poems on BBC3; how did you personally feel, and what was the public response towards the poem?
BR: I performed this poem in a t-shirt covered in cat hair because I didn’t think anyone would watch it. It has had nearly 6 million views now, and to be honest, I found the whole thing terrifying and exposing. On one hand, I had these amazing messages from all over the world about how it helped them come to terms with their sexuality or how it helped them feel less alone- and then, on the other hand, I was being called homophobic slurs, having my appearance and writing criticised hourly, and I felt so much shame that I hadn’t worn a nicer t-shirt. It opened up some amazing opportunities for me, and I feel really lucky about that. I still sometimes can’t believe how many people have watched it!
GI: What is the main message you want people to take from your new book Neon?
BR: That there is a person who is just as grieving and mad and confused and lonely as them- but who is also laughing rather a lot at all this because what choice do we have but to make art and to laugh? That you can turn your pain into something way more powerful than the person who caused it, even if that person is yourself. That there is absolutely nothing wrong with being sad because it means that you are paying attention. Attention is devotion.
GI: What has been your favourite part of getting your book out there? For example, a certain book shop stocking your book?
BR: I have a few moments which stick out to me. One was the first student I ever taught, ten years ago, messaging me for a signed copy, a grown-up adult herself now. That was magic. Another was going with one of my best friends, Christabel, to the Waterstones in the town where I grew up and placing an order for it as we both screamed and cried with joy. I went home that day, and my Mama brought me a coffee, and my Dad was outside watering the flowers, and I sipped my drink and looked out at the apple tree blossoming in the garden of my childhood home- and I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be for the first time ever. I felt like I could breathe, and nothing in my body hurt. I felt like I made sense.
GI: Who are your target audience for your poems?
BR: Anyone who thinks the world is magical and absolutely brutal in equal measure- and who struggles to hold the dissonance of that. Anyone who has the brain of an adult but the heart of a child. Anyone who is lonely.
GI: With that in mind, what's the most prevalent stigma that you would like to dismantle either in regards to the queer community, mental health or feminism?
BR: There are so many! I feel like, as a lesbian, I don’t fit in with the kind of gay people who write poetry on the scene. I’m not very alternative, and I’m not a hipster- I really like watching Holby City, shopping for candles and pastel-coloured knitwear, and eating snacks on my sofa in my pink tracksuit bottoms. I want people to see that you don’t need to have green hair or androgynous clothes or a lip ring to be listened to (although those things are wonderful too!). I am completely obsessed with talking about mental health. OBSESSED. I think that trauma is incredibly interesting and especially the systemic trauma that we are experiencing living on a planet filled with people we love and stars and forests, but also that is filled with war and poverty and is literally being boiled alive (I’m not very fun at a dinner party!). If I have too much wine, I end up going on a rant about capitalism. I still sometimes can't believe that we actually need to work in order to LIVE- for our basic needs to be met. It seems like a joke to me- and I talk about it in my work a lot. We know it’s time for me to be escorted home when I start going on about how it’s a war crime that we don’t tax the billionaires...
GI: Who were your inspirations growing up?
BR: I really looked up to my baby brother Sammy. He was born seven years after me, and he was just like this insane ball of light and joy. I remember loving him so much that it made my jaw hurt – and whenever I was sad or overwhelmed, he would be there in my doorway at 5:30 am every morning, standing quietly waiting for me to wake up so he could come in for a cuddle, holding his little juice cup and blinking his eyelashes that were so light they looked like sunsplinters. Being around him made me realise that I was capable of great love and that I could make the people around me feel safe and witnessed. That I wasn’t good at a lot of things, but I was good at the most important thing; tenderness.
GI: Do you ever miss London?
BR: I don’t. I live in Scotland now, by the beach and the mountains and the Northern Lights, in a large haunted Victorian house. The ghost here is called Vicky, and she is a babe- good vibes only. I love my new job in a local secondary school, and I love that all my London friends and family visit me. I’m lucky that I still get flown down for gigs and talks and photoshoots – and I enjoy being in the city for a few days, but I am always ready to come back here, to Cat and my cats and the highland skies. London always made me feel pressured- I found it hard to rest there and always felt burned out. My boundaries have always been very permeable, so it is useful for me to have physical distance to act as a protector against me overextending myself.
GI: What message do you have for young poets, especially young queer poets or literary individuals who also find comfort in expressing themselves through words but are unsure on how to get started?
BR: I started doing spoken word in a time where it wasn’t popular or cool. There were often audiences of two or three, and it only picked up after a few years of working at it and going to every venue in the city. It is so much harder now that the market has become saturated with people, and I don’t know if younger me would have been able to have handled the pressure that is on young poets now.
I made sure that I went to all the spoken word nights, that I gave my best, and that I always pushed myself. I entered contests, performed at venues in the middle of nowhere, wrote to publishing houses who didn’t even open my letters, let alone read them. But I am not going to say something pithy like ‘never give up’. Obviously, never giving up is important, but there is always an element of luck in this industry. People told me to listen to my guts- but then again, guts are hard to listen to if you have mental health issues because you can’t work out if the noise telling you to do something is the safety of your car engine or the panic of your car alarm. All I can say is; what you say is important, and you matter. And a poem that lives in a drawer is better than a poem that lives only in your head. And a poem that is read out loud to living, breathing souls is better than anything living in your drawer. If you use poetry as a means to connect with other vulnerable people, not as a means to get famous, then you will always find meaning in the most terrible of places.
Talent doesn’t always indicate success- but good work ethic helps as poets are notoriously disorganised. Sometimes I think the fact that I am organised and on time and reliable is the real reason I get so much work- not actually for my poetry at all!
GI: Can you tell us about any upcoming projects or any project ideas that you are working on?
BR: I am still riding the wave of Neon and the TED talk! And I am currently working on developing an idea for a project where a girl gets so depressed she turns purple- and everyone is finally kind to her because they can actually see how much she is hurting. How amazing it would be to turn the pain into something visible so that we could experience the luxury of universal empathy. I guess that is what writing is for me; a way to make what is unseen and unformed into something that can be held in the palm of your hands.
See more of Bethany Rose's work at https://www.bethanyrosepoetry.com/
The Go Inspire UK team, thank you for such a wonderful interview, Bethany!
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