Interview with Lydia Popowich

Hello, Miracle readers, and welcome to our second blog interview. Here, Blog Editor Elizabeth Gibson speaks to writer and artist Lydia Popowich about her life and work.

EG: Hello, Lydia! How did you first get into writing, and which writers have inspired you?

LP: Writing was in my blood from the start due to the influence of my Ukrainian grandfather, Vsevolod Nahyrni, a writer and political activist in the former Soviet Union.  Every birthday and Christmas I would receive a card from him with a poem specially written for me.  


I began writing my own stories and poems at an early age.  As a child I was encouraged to read serious Russian authors, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn.  I read War and Peace at the age of twelve!  As an adult I’ve been inspired by a wide range of authors including Kerouac, D.H. Lawrence, Julia Darling, W.B. Yeats, Sharon Olds, Elizabeth Bishop, Iris Murdoch, Leonard Cohen… and even Stephen King! 

EG: What does writing mean to you?

LP: I’ve always associated writing with the desire to make the world a better place. It's a way of getting inside someone else’s head and seeing life from another point of view. Writing has a therapeutic value but it’s much more than that…it leads to greater understanding and tolerance between people. It is a tool for personal and social change.

EG: You are an artist as well as a poet; how do the two creative forms overlap for you?

LP: Visual arts and writing are two sides of the same coin for me. I often incorporate text in my artwork through collage and photography. I enjoy unexpected juxtapositions. I tend to use abstract and surreal imagery and a lot of colour in both poetry and art.  They are just different ways of communicating my experience of the world as a woman and as a disabled person. In recent years I’ve concentrated increasingly on poetry as it feels purer and more precise. It satisfies my obsessive compulsive streak!

EG: Your work often focuses on disability, health and body issues. How pressing do you feel these issues are in today's society? Which do you think are the best ways to approach them?

LP: Disability is the last great taboo which feeds on society’s fear of death, illness and impairment. Disabled people are not sad, sick people waiting for a cure they are just made differently. There is institutionalised discrimination against disabled people in the work place and in relationships. We are automatically seen as weak and inferior because we are judged physically or mentally ‘imperfect’. We are not allowed to fully participate in the world because of needless barriers and because of people’s ignorance. This is an issue which affects everyone, disabled and non-disabled, because we all age, sooner or later our bodies start to let us down and no-one is ever perfect. We live in a society obsessed with superficial appearances, it’s a kind of body fascism and it creates a lot of misery.  

I don’t know what the answer is…cultural change is slow in coming. It happens in tiny steps with the gradual breaking down of barriers between people.  Racial discrimination and homophobia are now considered unacceptable but people had to struggle to be heard for a long, long time. 

EG: You have lived in Newcastle and the Far North of Scotland; do you feel these places have influenced your writing and art?

LP: I’ve lived in the Far North for eight years but it’s too soon to tell how much my work has been influenced.  I am preoccupied with some of the same themes as in Newcastle, for example, alienation and body image but I feel more focussed on my writing without the distractions of city life. The Caithness landscape with its changing light and extreme weather conditions create great mystery and drama.  There is a unique sense of place I’ve never experienced anywhere else.  

I feel more grounded here and even though there are fewer people than sheep we are more closely involved with each other.  I’ve met many fascinating people and heard amazing personal stories which will inevitably influence my writing.

EG: What are your current and future projects?

LP: I’m working on a play based on my hospital themed poems and a novel called The Bog Country which is composed of interconnecting short stories.  I’m aiming to produce my first pamphlet of poetry next year.  Long term, I would like to produce a series of illustrated poems in the manner of Blake.

EG: Do you have any advice for young and/or new writers?

LP: It might be a cliché but writing every day, even if it’s just for half an hour is the best practice.  My other advice is not to be afraid to take risks or expose your vulnerabilities.  And not to be too precious about your writing, some things work, others less so…At the end of the day it’s just a selection of words on paper and not the cure for cancer.

EG: What do you believe is the future of poetry? How will it change; how will it stay the same?

LP: I feel that poetry is in the ascendant.  It’s becoming more fashionable and less middle class.  The internet has changed the way we communicate so it’s easier and cheaper to reach an audience.  It’s exciting how technology and popular culture have influenced our language, eg Twitter, texting, Facebook, rap music and this is all reflected in poetry.  Performance poetry will become the new rock and roll! 

EG: Could you show us an example of your writing?

LP: Here is a poem I wrote about a year ago:

ARTERIO VENOUS

Her country was besieged.
The Great Saphenous Vein, 
a lonesome road to nowhere,
a waste-land, booby-trapped with incendiaries.
Scarpa’s Triangle sailed a quiet sea
and Hunter’s Canal lay stagnant. 

Beyond a cotton screen of chrysanthemums
her body bore a map no longer secret, 
sketched out in clumsy biro, red for arteries, blue for veins.
Red and blue make purple, she’d learned at school.
Legs splayed a landscape across the table,
roads and rivers marked 
soft, pale flesh, inert on padded leather.
Like seagulls scavenging an empty shore
the white coats gathered in freezing stares
while she traced the tangle of petals,
leaves and stems interwoven beyond.

Pointless, she listened to foreign tales,
remembered a white horse
galloping circles in the wind, 
her purple coat flapping open 
as she ran down the road

Lydia Popowich

EG: Many thanks for speaking with me; I wish you all the best with your writing and art in the future.