S5E7: Michael Mullen - What Was Left but Poetry?

Something Borrowed Podcast With Harry Baker

Recorded live at the StAnza festival, Harry Baker interviews poet Michael Mullen about their respective journeys in literature. The conversati

Key takeaways

• Michael Mullen's collection 'Goonie' explores themes of queer identity, working-class Glasgow, and loss.
• Harry Baker discusses his book 'Tender', which captures the raw emotions of the first 100 days of his son's life.

Main topics

• Poetry performance vs. page
• Writing in the Scots dialect

Notable quotes

Grief is love with no place to go.

Conclusion

A profound exploration of how vulnerability and authenticity in writin

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Hello friends and welcome to a very special edition of Something Borrowed, recorded live at Stanza Festival up at St Andrews earlier this year. The day this was recorded was the day that I officially became a Sunday Times bestseller, so let that just be known, was going beneath the surface from the off. I was so excited to get to speak to the incredible Michael Mullen, a poet from Glasgow whose work was nominated for the Forward Prize. They are an incredible performer and writer. We talk about the difference between those two things, about being a frustrated rock star leading to a life of poetry, relatable content. I'm sure there is an amazing discussion about authenticity, about writing in Scots, about channeling your heroes and finding your own voice, and much, much more to Speaker 1 (0:50) come. Speaker 3 (0:51) So I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. I will leave you to it now. Come back and say hi at the end. Speaker 3 (1:11) I will start off with something old because the theme of the festival as well is You Are Not Alone. I've tried to fit some of those in as well. So this poem is called Maybe. And I think when I started writing, it was for me all about playing with language, writing about things that felt fun to sort of me and my friends, but it became with me to help process the wider world around me as well. So I'd write about things, whether I was angry, sad. happy, confused, anything in between. And the writing helped, but for me, it was the sharing that was so transformative and feeling like I wasn't the only person who'd felt these things and feeling like the very act of putting them out there shifted them in the moment. And then the response from others kind of, for me, finishes that journey. So this is one of the first poems I wrote that felt like it came from that more personal space. And it came about because in the space of a week to... Different mums had come up to me after a gig and asked me the same thing. They both told me they had a child that was being bullied at school and they asked me if I had any advice for them. More specifically, they asked me, how did I deal with it when it happened to me? And my first thought was, why would you look at me and just sort of assume that I'd be bullied? It feels very harsh. But one of these mums was my aunt, so... She knew. She was talking about my cousin who is one of my favourite people in the world. I saw her just last week and she is absolutely thriving. But she was being picked on at the time and that is something I went through. And when you are going through that, or at least when I went through that, it's easy to blame yourself or to feel like you've done something wrong and you deserve it. Whereas I think it is something that happens to all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons, mostly to do with what's going on in their lives. So this is for anyone who feels that they've either... been made to feel small in any way, I guess, by someone else, especially if it is for standing out or being different, because it takes a while to figure out that is an absolutely phenomenal way to exist and live your life. So it's called Maybe. I'm trying to answer some of the questions I at least had about why it was happening. Maybe it's because they don't understand you. Maybe it's because they do and they're afraid of what they see. Maybe it's because you are not normal. Maybe normal is not the thing you need to Speaker 1 (3:30) be. Speaker 3 (3:31) Maybe today will be a good day. Maybe today feels like it's way too close to call. Maybe one day you will look back and laugh at this. Maybe one day you will not look back at all. Maybe it feels like it's getting harder. Maybe you're still waiting for that day to come around. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner that I believe you can't stop building bridges just because one is falling down. Hey, I just met you and Speaker 1 (3:57) this Speaker 3 (3:57) is crazy. Speaker 1 (3:58) But Speaker 3 (3:59) maybe you're going to be the one that saves me after all. You are wonderful. Right now, this feels like everything. Right now, it always is. It's only afterwards that we can see there's more than this. You can be informed by this without being formed by this, just as a calm before the storm, there is a dark before the dawn in this. Whoever told you you must shrink to fit in got their filter wrong. We are not sculptures to be chipped away, but platforms to be built upon. So if somehow this changes you, let it be in a resilience in knowing that you made it, you don't look for them an inkling of a thicker skin. If we stop listening on counter truth, that permeates, starts sinking in. Not every day's a battle. Speaker 1 (4:39) Not every part of life's Speaker 3 (4:41) a Speaker 1 (4:41) war. Speaker 3 (4:42) It is the times that lie between and need to be worth fighting for. So remember what this moment is. You may not have chosen this, but one day you will be someone who rose from it. When you see the same in others, you can notice this. So show them this. There's no eclipse without some kind of glow in it. Speaker 1 (4:55) Those that know you know to love you. Those that love you love to know you. Speaker 3 (5:02) Those that don't. They forfeit the right to get to be the ones that mould you. If you ever need the old, you say, I come from what you go through. There will be times when that is all you have to hold. There will be times you cannot help but cry and times you cry for help. There will be times you resist and are too tired to rebel. And it takes everything to not just be defined by someone else. You can start by showing kindness to yourself. Speaker 3 (5:30) Thank you so much. Can you please keep that warmth and love and applause going? So welcome to the stage, the fantastic Michael Mullen. Speaker 2 (5:37) Hello. Speaker 3 (5:38) Hello. Lovely to have you. Before we get into it, would you be up for just sharing something odd off the bat? Speaker 2 (5:44) I can do that. Yeah. So I'm going to do a quick trigger warning of slurs, suicides, mental health and poetry. In general. It's called Harvest. So what will we do for our forgotten crop of boys? Swinging fae Scotland's trees, a flock of strangled gasps, ringtones bleating out their tunes, becoming missed calls, a text chimes, Mike, where are you? Jim, gonna answer me? Thatcher cleared your fathers out the factories and now your sons hang for their structures. Rivers swollen with a bulk of fleshy pebbles, boys trying to disappear into an intimate stoned darkness. Then it's the tick, tick, ticking of unpaid tick bills. Can't just be the gear, the fear and the pills. For some boys, the dawn just seems to see her a little more vicious. Hodding onto health like it was an ice age ripping in June Then it's the shimmering sing of silver on bone as trains get cancelled Commuters tuck and curse, choking to get home And Facebook is a graveyard, statuses flash their epitaphs Can't believe that's big deck he passed, sleep tight my man, gone but not forgotten and the menchies that lie on walls and in jotters are like scribbledoos screams for the other side so what will we do for the daddyless boys scared of attraction eyes fixed to appointing the changing rooms rejecting erections rejected by family ejected into early heavens for the little Forever boys, joining the nameless plague for the mammy's. Blown incantations into strong tea by the TV's blue light. They dine in for two's, they're awfully big, ain't they? I winna know, hen. I cannae eat. Toxic masculinity is virgin on the caustic, fizzing on the soul corrosive. The only harvest to speak of this year is loss. So what will we do? Thank you. Speaker 2 (8:42) Absolutely stunning. Thank you Speaker 3 (8:44) so Speaker 2 (8:44) much. Speaker 3 (8:44) I will say, having started this off sort of on Instagram Live in my front room, this is the highest production value I feel like we've had. We've got, for the listeners, we've got flowers on stage. Speaker 2 (8:57) We've got Speaker 3 (8:58) comfy armchairs. I feel like sort of Zach Galifianakis in between two fans. Yes. It won't be as chaotic as I hope, but it's an absolute joy to have you. In the context of something old, I think even choosing my poem, I realised that when I started writing, it was because I was listening to so much music. I fell in love with the lyrics, particularly hip-hop and rap music and the lyricism. And for me, writing was a joyful act and it still is. But what I found was that it then gave me this framework for when other life events came into the mix. That was my natural outpouring, was I knew that... that poetry was what I wanted to try and capture these things through. What was it for you that made you start writing poetry or see yourself as a partner? Speaker 2 (9:49) Well, it's interesting you say that because a wee bit of a frustrated rock star, a wee bit of a frustrated rapper, Speaker 3 (9:56) wee Speaker 2 (9:58) bit of a failed painter. So what was left but poetry? Speaker 3 (10:08) When I listen back to these, I've got one ear out for what the title of the episode is going to be. But I think we already know it's going to be What Was Left But Poached. So that's got that out Speaker 1 (10:20) of Speaker 3 (10:20) the way. I was going to say, I couldn't play guitar, I couldn't sing, so I rapped. And then I couldn't rap, so I did poetry. Well, I could rap, but I found that letting the words speak for themselves was so much more interesting with what I was sort of doing and trying to do. And when you write so... beautifully about this whole range of topics, but some of them very personal and heavy. Was that from the off or is that something that's entered your work later on? Speaker 2 (10:44) So, I mean, a lot of the work is very personal and Harvest is obviously about very difficult things and it's more sort of stuff that I've seen around and, you know, stories from friends as well as something really personal. And do you remember the old... It was like a TV show, Damages, about lawyers. Does anyone remember that? No. Anyway, it's amazing. But Glenn Close is in it and she says she only ever takes a case if she's really, really angry. And I kind of always liked that idea of I only write about something. It's almost like if I have that reaction or if I have, I'm like, that needs to be put down somewhere, you know? So although I always say everything in Harvest is real, but it's not necessarily true. And I think that's a really good thing when you're writing that, you know, it's good to be autobiographical. but it doesn't always strictly have to be as well. Yeah. So it's more just about taking that in. Yeah, definitely. Speaker 3 (11:51) And I think there is a truth in the emotion of a partner. There is so much more to it than reporting the facts of the situation. And I am interested in, we'll talk about this for something new as well, but your collection has been shortlisted as sort of best new collection. Does it feel Speaker 2 (12:11) new to you? Yes and no. I would say the oldest poem is about 10 years old and the newest one was like a couple of months before the submission. I've been writing poetry my whole life and I studied it at university. I did creative writing and then I was like, okay, I kind of think I'm Speaker 1 (12:29) a Speaker 2 (12:29) fully formed-ish creative. I'm going to start my poetry career in 2020. So the world had a different... idea, but I did have this big sort of backlog of things that I could work on and then find myself with a lot more free time to work on them. So it's completely old and completely new. Speaker 3 (12:56) And how was it for you combining those things in one collection? Because I think for me, almost everything I'd written initially was with a view to perform it in front of people and that was where it felt like it connected with people and so I hadn't thought about putting it down in book form but it was speaking to another poet who kind of said it's as much for you to not forget these you know it kind of immortalizes them in a different way and for me getting to to put those poems together it was kind of almost a transcript of the live performance as it always been done. Because for me, I wrote every single poem separately and then we put it together the way a musician puts together a set list. And so for me, creating the book was kind of also thinking about how to do this narrative. But for me, it felt very natural for it to be a kind of chronological journey almost of this is how I got into poetry and this is where it's taken me and this is where it is now. And I was so excited