In Conversation with Indy Grant
You can read Indy Grant’s fiction here, and her poetry here.
SYLVIE: I was hoping you could tell me about some of the things you enjoy about being on the Creative Writing Society committee this year.
INDY: It’s nice to have a little community of people, and even though there’s only six of us, there’s a lot of variety in terms of styles and people’s voices. I’ve not really shared my writing much before; there wasn’t really anyone at my school or at my college who really did creative writing either, so it’s nice to actually have those people.
SL: I’ve definitely had a similar experience, in terms of not having shared things before — besides the odd thing that I’d send off to a university publication or something like that. But there’s not that same conversation around it there. I think there is a lot to be said for just the confidence boost when you’re in a committee where you can share stuff, especially as writing can be such a vulnerable thing. The next question I have is one that I really like asking, because whenever I ask this I feel like people tend to surprise me. I wanted to ask you about any creative influences of yours, whether that be novelists or poets, or anything less conventional, such as music, film, TV, anything visual…
IG: In terms of writers, I love Oscar Wilde. I love how he describes things. It’s always very rich; he has these rich, lavish descriptions. Daphne du Maurier, too. I love her. For more modern writers, I would say Donna Tartt and Madeleine Miller. As for poets, Sappho is a great poet, and I’ve always loved the Romantics. I’m not such a fan of modern poetry; I tend to prefer older poetry. Then for more abstract influences… History, in general — as a History student, obviously, that’s a big part of what I do day-to-day, so that often influences and inspires me. And I also love listening to movie soundtracks. A personal favourite would be The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings…
SL: Next, I wanted to get into the writing you’ve had published with Enigma. So, the most recent one, I think, was your short story, “Pomegranate Juice”, so I wanted to hear a bit about your thought process, and the writing process there.
IG: So, it’s about the story of Hades and Persephone, which stretches back 3,000-4,000 years, and the ambiguity surrounding it. There’s confusion around Persephone, in terms of, you know: Was she kidnapped? Did she go willingly? How much choice was there? Obviously that plays a lot into ideas around women in the ancient world, so that was a really big influence. With writing it, I wanted to give it a slightly modern twist. So, it’s still set in the ancient world, but with a more modern take on the story. And also on the way you think of, I suppose, villains. I don’t think Hades is really classed as a villain; he’s more of an anti-hero. And, you know, ancient characters are very complex. There’s not this clear right and wrong; we can’t judge ancient characters by modern standards. So that was very interesting to sort of play with the ideas there. And Persephone — she’s a young girl, really, so to sort of portray her as a bit more of a naïve character — that was quite interesting. In terms of writing itself, I was very inspired by Wilde with the description in it — really trying to put the reader into the underworld. Which is difficult, again because there’s not that much consensus on what the underworld is like — you know, what it looks like, how you get there… So there was probably a lot of free-write in there; I wasn’t tied to anything. I think one thing I realised through the editing process is that not everyone knows as much about classical mythology as I do—
SL: (laughs) You’re allowed to have that superiority.
IG: (laughs) I was having a conversation with one of the editors, and she said ‘I don’t really get this,’ and I thought: Oh, yeah not everyone’s read The Iliad…
(Sylvie laughs)
IG: So that was quite funny.
SL: Yeah, and I like that idea of trying to tackle how we think about ancient characters, and imposing modern ideals onto them. I find mythology very interesting, but I don’t claim to know everything about it, but Hades… I think there are quite a few misconceptions about him… Isn’t it to do with whether he kills people or whether he just controls the underworld?
IG: Yeah, he’s not the god of death. He’s like the caretaker, to be honest.
SL: He’s the underworld’s janitor.
IG: Yeah, he’s the administrator. He makes sure everything runs smoothly, and no one wanders in or out accidentally, stuff like that. But he’s definitely not a bad guy; he’s just portrayed that way because people in the ancient world really didn’t want to die.
SL: I’m here for a Hades redemption arc.
IG: Yes!
SL: I feel like you’ve already touched on this, but I wanted to talk a bit more about what draws you to mythological retelling.
IG: It’s fun!
SL: It is!
IG: And it deals with really interesting themes and narratives, especially about women, Persephone being one. Helen is another, whether we think of her as Helen of Troy or Helen of Sparta, and how we only really think of her in relation to these two men, and the war that she — she doesn’t cause — but the war that she is a part of. A lot of mythology deals with women being misused, mistreated — women as objects, women as prizes, so, to sort of, retell it in a way where women have more control over their narrative was quite fun. When you think about Medusa, everyone thinks of her as a villain, turning people to stone, but the reality is, she’s raped in the temple of Athena, and Athena gave her a head full of snakes. There is debate as to whether it was a curse, a punishment, or whether it was a way for Medusa to then protect herself, so she couldn’t be raped or abused again. So again that’s interesting to sort of play with. And also it’s a lot easier to retell something that’s already been done—
(both laugh)
SL: Very true.
IG: I don’t have to come up with characters, or a plot. It’s all there for me; I just have to write it in a slightly different way. It can be fun to just… if I want to write something small, just spend an hour delving into who my characters are… it’s all there for me already. So yeah, part of it’s laziness.
SL: (laughs) I have a similar thing in the interest in mythology. I don’t have a super extensive knowledge of mythology, but there are certain characters, often with ideas of representing women, and creative energies, that I find interesting. So Medusa comes up a lot in feminist criticism, but also in things like psychoanalysis; Freud has a very misogynistic reading of her.
IG: Of course he does…
SL: He reads her as, with the snakes, being surrounded by phallic imagery that poses a threat to men.
IG: Why is he like this?
SL: I know. Shut up, Sigmund. But I find her compelling, too, as a symbol of female anger that we’re told to be afraid of. Next, I wanted to ask you about the writing process behind your poem “This Body Is Not My Own”.
IG: The editing process was quite fun, because it’s not something I’d ever really done before. I don’t tend to self-edit much, because I don’t tend to publish much — and I don’t tend to read my work out to people — so, showing it to someone, and having them say ‘maybe this could work better’ — that was very fun. In terms of the poem itself, it is a very personal poem. But I feel like it’s something that a lot of people — especially young women — can relate to. And in the wake of, you know, Me Too, Time’s Up, things like that… it’s a very modern poem.
SL: I find the opening of the poem very striking. It’s one of those hook-you-in openings: ‘A murder of crows. / A parliament of owls. / A bed of eels. / I have made my bed / And I lie in it, / Slimy, squirming, seditious’. I wondered what you were thinking about when you came up with this opening, because I love how plural animals do have those weird collective names, and also I really like the mirroring of the word ‘bed’ from ‘bed of eels’ to ‘made my bed’.
IG: So obviously I’d heard of a murder of crows and a parliament of owls, and I think it’s a ‘gaggle of geese,’ but I’d never heard of a bed of eels, and I was like: Oh, that’s really interesting. So that’s how that started. And then ‘I’ve made my bed and I lie in it,’ that’s a very well-known saying, and I think it’s one of those sayings that very much puts the responsibility on the person being referred to. So you know that the overarching theme for the poem is sexual assault and female bodily autonomy; the idea that you’ve made your bed and you lie in it, it was a question of victim-blaming. Then the whole slimy, seditious bit… I think the sibilance made me think of eels as being quite slimy and kind of… wriggling about… I don’t know. I’ve never seen an eel; they kind of freak me out.
(both laugh)
IG: So the sibilance is to illustrate that.
SL: It’s a really powerful opening. And I do like when people take a well-known phrase and turn it into a very specific context. When I hear that, I already think of victim-blaming, people I even hear the rest of the poem. Lastly, I wanted to ask about your poem “I Am Autumn”.
IG: Autumn is my favourite season. It always has been. I kind of like the clichés; I like crunchy leaves, I like the colours. I love me a pumpkin spice latte.
(Sylvie laughs)
IG: It’s quite basic, but it’s a very overlooked season. People love spring and summer, and they think of lambs, and the sun, and then winter… you’ve got Christmas. With autumn, it’s quite overlooked but it’s also such a period of change. It makes me think of that bit in Frozen 2 where Olaf is like: ‘How do you cope with the fact that nothing is permanent?’ So I think that’s a very core theme.
SL: I haven’t seen it, but that sounds existential for Frozen.
IG: Olaf has a bit of an existential crisis in Frozen 2.
SL: I should see it, then.
IG: You should. It’s so good. But the main inspiration, I guess, is the idea of identity. Which is something I’ve always really struggled with — the idea that I never feel like I have a fixed identity or aesthetic, you know? On Instagram, people post with the same filter, similar content; there is very much a pressure to have a fixed identity, and it’s something that I never found I could really have. I’m quite a changeable person. And then, it used to be kind of troubling for me. Like, okay, well, if I don’t have this set identity, then who am I, really? But now I actually quite like the idea that no one really knows me; there’s always a part of me that’s wholly mine. And if there’s a part of me that people don’t know, then it can’t be judged and it can’t be tainted and it can’t be changed. So that, actually, it quite comforting for me.
SL: I really like that. When you started talking about it, even before you said Instagram, I was thinking: That reminds me of Instagram. Because I definitely have a feeling, myself, that I need to — it sounds really strange — but a sense that, if I’m going to dress myself, or present myself in a certain way, I feel like: I need to let people know what kind of person I am in a really succinct way, and that needs to be my personality. But you can be multiple things, and you can be multiple changing things, and I definitely find a lot of comfort in that too. I was thinking about the representation of autumn because I also had a conversation with Anna about seasons. I wanted to know if, when you write about seasons, it’s important to you to write against cliché, or to incorporate cliché and work with it. And, in the poem, I wondered if you feel that autumn comes to represent something else other than itself — because it feels like what you were touching on there about unfixed selfhood.
IG: I love poetry that uses the seasons. I think it’s lovely to read, lovely to write. I do like poetry that subverts stereotypes and clichés, and I think it’s interesting to explore different connotations. But I also think an advantage of using clichés and stereotypes when talking about the seasons is that everybody can relate, you know? When you write about summer — the sea, the skies — and when you talk about autumn, and orange leaves, the idea of things dying… it’s just an easy way to reference something that everyone’s going to understand. So I suppose it’s reader-engagement; it does make it easier to understand for both you and the reader. It creates a connection between writer and reader, and within the poem itself, it’s really what you said — it’s that autumn represents the self, and the idea that we aren’t permanent; we aren’t limited by these societal parameters of what we should be. So it can represent more than just the season, but by using autumn, and the idea of falling leaves, and almost this void between summer and winter, which are two very different seasons, and this time where everything’s changing and dynamics. So, I think that using autumn as a metaphor for the self really allows people to connect with that, rather than using something a little more abstract, like actually talking about identity itself. I feel like that would be harder to connect with.