Named Nottingham’s first young poet laureate in 2017, Georgina Wilding isn’t new to the poetry scene. But despite being involved in the art for over ten years, she’s only just released her first poetry collection - Hag Stone. Pulling childhood memories through a surrealist lens, the book, which muses on the grittiness and joys of growing up, has been met with great acclaim from authors including Henry Normal and Cathy Grindrod. We chat to Wilding about girlhood, being a working class poet and what her writing process is like…
You just released your first poetry collection, Hag Stone. What can readers expect from it?
So, Hag Stone as a collection is an exploration of the way that broken homes, sex and identity all interact with each other, and how those things are more connected than you might think. It’s written as a look at the ordinary world, but with the use of surrealism and magical realism to elevate some of the poems and their meanings. The book is called Hag Stone for that reason, in reference to seeing the magical side of the world, as legend says the hag stone allows you to do.
You’ve described the book as being about ‘working-class girlhood’, which I think is really special, and you capture the British teenage experience with a lot of the references you make throughout the text…
Thank you! Yeah, I mean, with poetry there are always bits that are going to be autobiographical, and my childhood was definitely that British working-class experience - so that creeps into all my inspiration and how I see the world. It’s a joy to write, because working-class voices aren’t always the voices at the forefront and there aren’t always people discussing our experiences. So it’s nice to be able to talk authentically about memories that are both happy and difficult, and to know that even though some of those experiences are unique to me, there is that universal, shared commonality between a certain tribe of young British girls.
Absolutely. And I really enjoyed reading that through a surrealist lens. Why did you choose that style?
Surrealism in general is something that I always gravitate towards. When I first started out in poetry I was a member of the Mouthy Poets and we used to have lots of teachers who would talk to us about how poetry is a craft. They taught us how to turn an idea or a moment into a piece of art, rather than a simple retelling. So, for me, surrealism is always a way to turn something that happened into something more, and also a way to reclaim an experience. When you simply retell something it feels like you’re writing from a place of things happening to you, whereas I really like the power of surrealism and magical realism because it’s almost like you’re happening to those things.
Working-class voices aren’t always the voices at the forefront and there aren’t always people discussing our experiences
In a funny way, writing in a surrealist style allows you to capture an accurate picture of how something felt…
Yes! Because how difficult is it to sum up a feeling? You’re also never just feeling one feeling, it’s always a sea of different things and humans are so complex. We might feel sad, disappointed, resentful, angry, all at once, so trying to sum that up by simply describing doesn’t pack that punch. When you’re writing, you want people to feel that emotion, and surrealism really allows you to paint a massive image that would be difficult to do in just one line.
You mentioned earlier that the anthology is in part autobiographical. Is it generally based on your experiences?
Definitely. And if it’s not me writing about something that happened to me, it’s me writing about something that happened around me, or maybe to other family members. There are some poems where the speaker of the poem has become an amalgamation of a few different women. So, yes, it’s autobiographical, but above all I’d say it’s female-led.
How was it finding the voice for your first poetry collection? What was that process like?
This book has been stopping and starting for four years. I’ve been a poet for ten years, and I had all this work but had never been a paper poet. I started working with the Arts Council to get some funding for mentors to look at my writing, basically to see if it was good enough to be published, which, thank Jesus, it was. As a part of that I got to work with Caroline Bird, who asked me to send her everything I’d ever written to see if there were any common themes. She explained that quite often you’re subconsciously trying to talk about something without knowing, whether that’s imagery you keep using or simply a story you keep repeating.
Surrealism really allows you to paint a massive image that would be difficult to do in just one line
And did you find any common themes?
She told me that a huge theme for me is home, writing about safe spaces, not feeling safe in myself, not feeling safe in other spaces. She said she could really see me jostling with the idea of trying to find meaning behind all of it. Honestly, it was almost like going for a psychic reading because she knew so much about me. Then, from there, we took that big pile of poems that seemed like they were trying to say something and we spent time writing to prompts and eventually I had this body of poetry that felt like it was vibrating. That's how we started trying to form the book.
Hag Stone has been really well received, with praise from authors like Henry Normal, Sean Thomas Doherty and Cathy Grindrod. Was that an affirming experience?
The first person to get back to me was Sean Thomas Doherty, who is the Poet Laureate of Erie in America. We became friends a few years ago on social media and I really admire him and his work, so naturally I was nervous to hear his opinion. Then I got this incredible review back which I just treasured and which made me really teary. It made me feel like I’d actually done something with this book, to see that it was evoking feelings in people, and that they could feel it vibrating in their hands too.
And finally, do you have any last comments for readers?
Just that I’m hoping to tour Hag Stone in the coming year, so anyone who wants to book can get in touch with me via my website or through my social media.
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