Writing from Unlikely Places
A Conversation between Isabel Galleymore and Declan Ryan
Isabel Galleymore, Declan Ryan
Declan Ryan: We’ve both written poems that have started off in seemingly unlikely places, or at least with unusual material – boxing in my case, and cuteness in yours. Maybe we could start by talking a bit about writing out of that sort of material, how did you find going about giving voice to, or at least being in response to, ‘cute’, vulnerable subjects?
Isabel Galleymore: There’s something sly about cuteness – that’s what drew me to it in the first place. Its vulnerability is irresistible, yet there’s manipulation hidden inside it. And of course that’s what makes cuteness such a great marketing tool. The Squishmallow’s plan is to stir so much tenderness that you have no choice but to buy the plushie and take it home. So whenever I approached cuteness as a subject, I found myself in two opposite states: enthralled by its charm, yet oddly repelled by its force. At times, it felt like being bounced back by a giant, smiley-faced balloon. What at first seemed simply adorable began to feel surreal and even sinister. I wonder if the subject of boxing holds a parallel tension between vulnerability and power and if that was something that drew you to it?
DR: That’s so interesting because yes, that chimes very much with boxing – the idea that you can be beguiled and repelled simultaneously. It’s also interesting what you say about slyness, ‘cute’ is of course itself a synonym for slyness in some ways, too. I’d love to hear more about the sinister elements to it that you felt, was that a visceral or more of an intellectual thing? Or both, perhaps?
IG: I recently watched the entirety of The Sopranos in which Tony frequently says “are you getting cute with me?” by which he means “cunning”. As far as I know, it’s not used often anymore, but its meaning certainly endures and makes for an unsettling dynamic, given the supposed innocence and purity of cuteness. This dynamic was made most apparent to me during a bit of field work I did for the book. In the past, residencies have taken me to the Cornish coast and Peruvian Amazon, but writing Baby Schema I knew it would have to be Disneyland Paris.
I’d never been before. To be honest, it never appealed. But suddenly visiting was paramount. And what struck me was seeing real animals trying to exist alongside their massive, polyester-suited counterparts. Ducklings were dodging the boats of a water ride in Fantasyland, while Donald Duck, in his sailor coat and cap, held everyone’s attention. It makes me queasy to think that animals have to be human for us to love them. At its most extreme, it makes me wonder if Disneyland is a premonition of how animals will exist for us in a post-extinction landscape. But this is delving into pretty intense territory and I guess I wonder – though this might be too much of a leap – whether there’s a human-animal tension in boxing too which is linked to its ability to beguile and repel. Men transformed to beasts in the ring etc?
DR: That idea of real nature having to be filtered through the human, or the post-extinction landscape, is so interesting – the idea that we can’t take it unless we feel we’ve got a stake in it in some way, or at least it’s in some way in our image. Disneyland itself is so fascinating as a kind of ersatz thing, people playing animals that already seem like people. Why do you think that sort of anthropomorphism is so palatable to people, if that’s not too big a question? Is it to do with the bounds of empathy, that we can’t really feel for something that isn’t in some way analogous to us?
And yes, on the boxing front again, the language of it, it’s often a huge compliment if the commentator/trainer etc describes a fighter as ‘an animal’, or brings in something not fully human, or at least uncivilised, to the description. A relishing of the savage, the primal. He was a beast in there tonight, and the language of predation, the hunt, the kill, abounds. Perhaps the reasons are linked – in order to do the sort of violence required, one has to see the opponent as not fully a mirror self, but an ‘other’, the opposite of the Disney transaction. I’m reaching a bit, but maybe there’s something in that. It has, of course, other historical precedents, too.
IG: I think you’ve answered your own question! There are animals we love to love, and the animals we love to hate. I think of it as a spectrum. And as I was reading your response, I was wondering if this spectrum might apply to poetry itself. The idea of a poem that’s an approachable, gentle animal in comparison to a poem that possesses an otherness, that’s difficult or intimidating to encounter. I sense that there’s a lot of literary commentary out there that suggests we’re losing the latter and moving toward a poetics that is, to borrow one of your words above, exclusively “palatable”. Do we really want to read poems that function as mirrors of ourselves? My students frequently place value on poems they find “relatable”.
DR: God, yes, ‘relatable’ is a familiar word in the classroom isn’t it, as if the highest mark of something is its ability to mirror the person encountering it, rather than bringing in surprise, or friction, or anything else that isn’t just recognition or agreement or fellow-feeling. I think that sense of things as palatable, cosy, easy-peelers, is part of a broader trend isn’t it, towards the commercialisation of more or less everything, the market economy and customer-ification of the world. I want what I want, now, tailored to me, and ideally hand-delivered. Heaven forbid we’re made to work, or wait, for something.
IG: “Easy peelers” is such a great analogy! It’s astonishing to me that we now have a fruit that’s advertised on the basis of its skin, rather than its flavour or juiciness. I’m always repeating Robert Frost’s “no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader” and I want – and I think the reader deserves – the tangiest surprise on offer, with pips and resistance and the risk of mess.
Declan Ryan’s first collection, Crisis Actor, was published in 2023.
Isabel Galleymore’s second poetry collection is Baby Schema (Carcanet, 2024). Her poems have featured in The New York Review of Books, the TLS and Poetry. In 2022-23, she was a Fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.
