A Girl's Writing Is Never Done (c) Shauna Gilligan 2026
In times of strive what can we do but appreciate the weather? It is the constant that follows us through these days of uncertainty, lockdowns, doubts and fears. After the rain, the sun will come, even if it is only for a moment. Feel and see and be in that weather, if you can, remind yourself that life keeps on.
Photographs taken this summer at Lough Borra, County Offaly.
You’re very welcome to my Writers Chat series, Sue. We’re going to explore your latest poetry collection Scion (Cinnamon Press: Wales, 2020).
SG: Scion is comprised of 46 poems and a glossary. As I glanced through the collection for the first time, I found myself pausing at the glossary and reading through it. It surprised me how many terms I knew and how many that were unfamiliar with me. I wondered how knowledge – or lack of – Yiddish or Hebrew would affect my reading. What I found was that my reading of the poems was not paused or interrupted by having to refer to the glossary – as with all good writing, meaning can be inferred by context. Tell me about including a glossary and how would you like readers to use it?
SR: Thanks, Shauna. I’m so glad you didn’t feel that the use of Yiddish or Hebrew words hindered your reading of the poems. I did agonise over whether to include a glossary or not for this book and considered initially just glossing a few of the more obscure terms, perhaps at the bottom of a poem. However, it’s very hard to second guess what people know – I think American readers may be more familiar with certain Yiddish or Hebrew terms than UK readers, but it’s impossible to generalise. Although in poems like Don’t Knock Me a Teakettle, I think all the terms are pretty much self-explanatory, I was concerned that the impact might be lessened in other poems by not knowing the meaning of a particular word or the importance of a Jewish custom, so I wanted to make sure that readers had the necessary tools, if they wanted to use them. As the book came together, I found that I had used more Yiddish or Hebrew words in individual poems than I had expected or intended to and I don’t think I had realised in any self-aware way how much this vocabulary had permeated my upbringing, defined my relationship with my parents and shaped my identity. My glossary was an acknowledgement of that, while also functioning to an extent as a supplementary creative space, with the inclusion of a few less-than-objective definitions! I’d say really that the glossary is there as an aid, rather than required reading – I hope it sheds light on some of the poems but in an indirect, complementary, way, rather than being a necessary adjunct.
SG: I love the title Scion – how it refers to being both detached, living and descended from and how, in your opening title poem, we embody – literally – the ghosts of our own mothers, anchored in our lineage. Did the title come first, or did it emerge when you put the collection together for publication?
SR: The title was quite a long time in coming, actually. Although I know poets who have their collection title very early on and work towards fleshing out its potential, I nearly always put together a book by theme and atmosphere, rather than title. In actual fact, I find titles very difficult. Before I put together this book, I had been working on a sequence of poems in response to black and white photos of trees by Lawrence Impey, which resulted in the limited edition hardback art book, Tonewood. As some of the poems in this sequence tackled themes of identity and heritage, I wanted to include them in this book. Ideally, therefore, I needed a title that could serve as an umbrella for themes relating to heritage, lineage, horticulture and Judaism! “Scion” was a gift – not only is it used to describe an offshoot in horticulture and a descendant of a family tree, it also suggests the word “Zion”.
SG: Scion really is a fine example of how writers can make the personal and specific mean something – through life movement and emotion – universally and collectively. I found myself intrigued by and particularly interested in how the collection explores the labels we give ourselves alongside those we are given; how we perceive and are perceived; and what we feel is core to our identity, or not.
If we consider “In Kaput Memoir”, a heart-wrenching piece of a beautiful life, the narrator, born in March 1929 informs us “I didn’t tell anyone I was Jewish – it never came up” and yet, generations later, our narrator is filled with identity conflict and confusion in the poem “Jew-ish.” Can you talk a little about how you managed to explore identity and belonging in a very personal context and yet have your poems speak universally about the commonality of life?
SR: I think I tend to work from the basis that all individual experience is shared experience in some way. When I write about the personal, I am completely invested in conveying the emotional truth of a situation and in crafting the poem in such a way as to make it a compelling vehicle for that truth. I think that when you do that, when you delve into your own fears, joys and sorrows in order to confront them, you allow other people to use your words and thoughts as a means of reaching their own fears, joys and sorrows, which can be similar or completely dissimilar – it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that moment of communication, of acknowledging that we are all human and that we all struggle with parts of our past, present and future.
I found it very interesting to touch on my parents’ sense of identity as Jews, their experiences as the descendants of Jewish immigrants, and how they were shaped by the political mood in the pre-war and post-war periods; how so many people were caught between assimilation and acculturation and how, in these turbulent times, when overt anti-Semitism seems to be on the rise again, it feels necessary to stand up and be counted, to lay out a stall for diversity…
“Jew-ish” and “Kaput Memoir” are like the bookends of this exploration. The former hints at my father’s Jewish past – his grandfather was a Rabbi and he was brought up in a very orthodox setting. The latter looks at my mother’s far more secular upbringing and tastes. It was important for me to have both voices in the book, as so much about my life has been influenced by my childhood, my upbringing and my conflicted relationship with religion. Scion is my attempt to see where I stand along this continuum of faith and culture – something that I think changes depending on age and where you are in life.
SG: In this collection – at least as it appeared to me – lineage is an ongoing line, one which connects backwards as well as forward. Writer and poet Sheenagh Pugh in her review says the collection covers an “oddly reassuring timescale of centuries”.
You explore the darkness of place, almost accidental but terrifying in its relevance and how it can dictate life or death. I’m thinking here of “Tracks” whereby an everyman figure “let’s call him Rabbi Rosenstein” steps on to a train to Edgware and “can call the shots/on his passage; he can alight.”
Also I’m thinking of “Badges” where the ordinary fun of growing up is juxtaposed with and dominated by the political: “…not so far,/perhaps, from the stamps of history,/those special hats, yellow belts,/yellow taffeta, yellow stars,/the past beneath the skin.”
SR: I think there is no escaping the past, however distant it is. We are the product of a ‘slow relay’ that takes us from there to here in small increments. I do feel that lineage is a continuum and that we are related in equal measure to our distant forebears and our future descendants, as individuals and as part of humanity. Forgetting the lessons of the past and becoming complacent in the present is dangerous – as a writer, I think it is important to provide an aide-memoire so that past experiences, however painful or damaging, are not lost or squandered but become formative, preventive, both on a personal scale and on a collective one.
SG: Yes, I agree that we cannot escape the past – and I like what you say that we’re all products of a slow relay that takes us from there to here and yet we are also part of a continuum. That idea of the collective – with nature and with ourselves – and how we are interconnected.
As I read these poems, I found that grief runs through the collection, like tears collecting. I was very moved by “Growth, “Bedside”, and the particularly open and almost vulnerably wounded “Kaput Memoir.” In a way, you seem to anchor this grief in the every day. Can you talk a little bit about the order in which the poems appear and the themes that you explore in Scion. Would you consider that grief underpins the collection?
SR: I do think grief is a very present theme in this collection, as it was in my first Cinnamon Press collection From the Dark Room – many of the poems in that collection were written in response to the illness and death of my father, while quite a few of the poems in Scion were written about my mother’s dementia and death. However, I hope that grief is not the overriding emotion that readers get from the book – I would like to think of the poems handling loss and bereavement as poems of love rather than of death, because although they contain grief, they also celebrate the role those people played in our lives. As the proverb goes, “Grieve not that they are gone, rejoice rather that they lived.” Other than that, as we’ve already touched on in this conversation, I think my main preoccupation with this book was an exploration of identity – with age, I think I’ve become more alert to the question of identity – as a woman, as someone regarded as elderly (even vulnerable in these Covid-19 afflicted times), and as a lapsed Jew with an agnostic bent. It is a questioning of my place in the world and of my relationships with others… However, although I would hesitate to call my work political, I have been worried and horrified by the growing menace of racism generally, and I cannot deny that this also influenced the mood of the book.
In terms of the ordering of the poems, as always this was a headache! I wanted the book to be an exploration of all the themes outlined above, but I also wanted it to be positive, celebratory and not mired in the past. As I mentioned, I was also keen to include some of the relevant poems from Tonewood, but not in the order that they had appeared in that book. What I went for, and hope I achieved, was a roughly chronological meander through the past, passing the decline and death of my mother, to end with a celebration of family (as represented by Hava Nagila), the possibility of further discovery (Zion) and a recognition that we are more than the sum of our pasts.
SG: I particularly like what you say about the recognition that we are more than the sum of our pasts. In relation to the theme of grief also being about love and life, I found that you captured that circularity so perfectly.
Lastly, here are some fun questions:
Thank you, Sue for such generous and enlightening answers.
Readers, you can purchase a signed copy of Scion direct from Sue Rose at suerosepoet@gmail.com or from Cinnamon Press
View Cinnamon Press’s virtual launch of Sue Rose’s Scion:
Writers Chat – Edgar Allan Poe and The Empire of the Dead
Karen, you’re very welcome to my Writers Chat. We last chatted about Edgar Allan Poe and The Jewel of Peru and today we’ll discuss Edgar Allan Poe and The Empire of the Dead which was described as “a gripping read, and a worthy homage to Poe’s genius” (Historical Novel Society). In this novel you evoke “Poe’s unique sensibility through passages of inspired prose, in a narrative that preserves the spooky penumbra surrounding Poe’s enduring legend” (Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal) it is, as described by Mystery Scene Magazine “a brilliant historical whodunit.” In the words of yet another starred review (Booklist), it is a “superlative historical mystery, capturing the tone of the time and Poe’s lasting literary legacy” and for this Writers Chat rather than focus on the narrative and the mystery, to save ourselves from spoilers, we are going to look at themes, motifs, setting and atmosphere.
SG: The novel opens with one of my favourite first lines: “It began with a cat”. A simple first sentence, yet intriguing and so very gothic. I am delighted to present a short clip to our readers/viewers of you reading it. Was this the line that set you off on telling this tale or did it come later?
KLS: Thank-you, Shauna, for inviting me to talk with you again. You always ask questions that make me think about the novels in new ways. I’m pleased you like the opening line, which was in the very first draft. I thought of Edgar Allan Poe and the Empire of the Dead as a ‘gothic noir’ when outlining it and my intent was always to use a flashback structure, an homage to film noirs like Double Indemnity or Sunset Boulevard. As for the cat, Poe was very fond of his calico who was named “Catterina” and apparently used to write with her wrapped around his shoulders. It’s said that when Poe’s mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, learned that Poe had died in Baltimore, she discovered that Catterina, who was with her in New York, had also died. Given its very gothic flavour, that little tale inspired me to include Catterina in the opening and resolution.
Press Play to hear Karen Lee Street read from Edgar Allan Poe and The Empire of the Dead [duration of 6 minutes, 1 second]
SG: So, after hearing your wonderful reading – there’s always something special about hearing the author read – can you tell us a little about what helped you capture – what seems like – the narrative voice of Poe that runs throughout? We’ve talked about this before but it’s important, I think, as you capture, as the History Revealed review says “a heady mix of the macabre and enigmatic.”
KLS: To try to capture the flavour of Poe’s narrative voice, I re-read Poe’s Dupin stories, but relied more on his letters, which can be found at EAPoe-dot-org. I was pleased when a reviewer for the British Fantasy Society noted that he really enjoyed Empire of the Dead and “found it very easy to get into (I do sometimes find period-style writing to be difficult to warm to.) ” That’s always a concern when trying to capture period voice. Accuracy does not always mean accessibility for a modern reader. Some authors choose to write period novels in a modern voice, with plenty of anachronisms, but I’m personally not as fond of that approach unless it’s comedy or YA literature.
SG: Magic and mystery- in the writing, the reading, and the plot – abound through the novel. We have Dupin’s servant Madame Morel appearing “as if by magic”, we have Virginia, Poe’s decesased weife standing or sitting before him at key points in the narrative, and indeed, advising him at times:
“Moonlight trickled into the air and coalesced into her form – she was sitting in the chair near the fireplace, glimmering and pale… stay safe.”
Can you tell us about your interest in magic and how you’ve used it both to create atmosphere but also as a plot device (the scenes with The Great Berith, for example)?
KLS: When I came up with the idea for the trilogy, I knew what would happen to Valdemar (Dupin’s nemesis) as his name is from one of Poe’s short stories: “The Facts in the Case of M. Ernest Valdemar.” It’s a story about mesmerism, which fascinated people in Poe’s day, and when the story was published, Poe insinuated that it was a factual account of a real experiment. He also mentions esoteric literature and the supernatural in some of his tales, so I wanted to play with those elements and how our ideas of what is science and what might be considered occult practices have changed. For example, things we take for granted today such as electricity, telephone communication, the internet (to name but a few), would have seemed like impossible magic in the early 1800s. On the other hand, many nineteenth century intellectuals believed in phrenology, autography, the power of mesmerism, all of which are typically dismissed by today’s scientific community. In my trilogy, the highly intellectual Dupin has a keen interest in esoteric studies such as alchemy and has a firm belief in his superior intelligence. He delights in exposing charlatans who dupe people with seances or magic shows. When Dupin encounters the Great Berith, a charismatic magician in the tradition of Victorian conjurers, he is instantly suspicious of him, particularly when Berith uses popular magic tricks of the day to impress the mob of the Île de la Cité. The analytical Dupin knows how each trick is done… until he doesn’t. That wrong-foots him and forces him to be more open-minded. Or perhaps his desperation and desire make him gullible. A mystery that deals with the magical (in the widest sense) is more than just a who-dunnit; it often forces the investigator to investigate him or herself.
SG: Yes, and I think that double layer you have running through all three books is what gives them that extra edge. I love how animals serve as portals into other worlds – physical and psychological – but also as warnings. I’m thinking of Catterina the cat, the gulls “like demons” on The Independence ship that brings to Poe to France , the cobra head on Dupin’s walking stick (weapon!) and, most importantly, the carvings of owls that lead Poe and Dupin to the “mysterious world that existed beneath their very feet.” Owls, are “associated with Athena, goddess of wisdom – but the screech owl is sacred to Hades, god of the underworld.” Can you talk about the role animals play in this novel?
KLS: Certainly, as you point out, animals provide messages or act as harbingers in the book. I suppose fairy tales initially provoked my interest in animals as guides to other worlds or as messengers. Of course Poe’s poem “The Raven” uses that bird as a messenger and ornithomancy—messages from birds—is an important element in Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru, so I felt a thread connecting the trilogy would be useful: Charles Dickens’s pet Grip the raven in book I; all the birds in book II; and the owls in book III. Following the owls into the dark world beneath (or within) can lead to wisdom and transformation… or perhaps death. Owls being associated with Athena and wisdom is also important as many of the owl figures in the book are associated with spaces that are or were libraries in Paris, a little puzzle in the book linked to the epigraph.
SG: One of my favourite scenes is Madame Legrand’s literary salon. Poe, Dupin, and the Prefect of Police attend the salon where Poe is accused – by the Madame also known as Undine (“who kills with a kiss”) of telling only “tales of the macabre…poetry…and ghoulish affairs of the heart”. Poe brings us right into the room with him:
“A thin male servant wearing alarming orange livery and a sour expression guided us into the salon. Crossing the threshold into the room was like stepping into a confectionery shop filled with glazed cakes, sugared candies and marzipan sweetmeats, all glistening with a surfeit of sugar.”
Here we encounter historical literary figures such as George Sand, Eugene Sue, Charles Baudelaire. How much fun was that to research and write?
KLS: It was great fun to write, particularly Undine who is all about shiny surface but has little depth as exhibited by her decorating sense, fashion, and the vapid poetry she writes. She is very loosely modelled on the Marquise de Merteuil in Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses— a very beautiful, but narcissistic person who uses her wit to undermine others. I enjoyed bringing together some of France’s nineteenth century literary greats for a “poetry slam” as one reviewer put it and to give Baudelaire, who greatly admired Poe’s work, the chance to defend him in the flesh. During my research trip to Paris, I visited Baudelaire’s grave in Cimetière du Montparnasse, and the cemetery plays a part in the novel. I also went to George Sand’s house; I hadn’t known until I started researching that her birth name was Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, which was a fun coincidence. I had to wonder if Poe borrowed her name. Probably unlikely, but not impossible as Poe knew her work.
SG: In all your Poe and Dupin mysteries, place and setting are characters in themselves and no less so here. The Paris that you bring us to is full of illusionists, magicians, tricksters, ruffians, even an ogress (Mother Ponisse). It’s also full of rich food and wine – hare stew, heavy red wines – as well as “ravening darkness”, elixers, poisons and, who could forget, the subterranean world of the underground tombs and tunnels. We are presented with contradictions and mysteries in just a few examples which illustrate your beautiful sensual writing:
“Golden light shimmered along the bleak walls, but our four lanterns did little to dispel the malevolent atmosphere. Sounds were amplified: pattering feet, the flutter of wings, chatters and squeaks – sounds that might fill one with the joy of nature in a woodland or some attractive city park, but evoked nothing but dread in this tomb-like space.”
“Perfume snaked through the night air, intoxicating and cloying as the scent of death, accompanied by a haunting voice raised in a song without words.”
Can you tell us about how you used 21st Century Paris to re-create 19th Century Paris?
KLS: My main inspiration in trying to give a convincing flavour of 19th century Paris to Empire of the Dead was to read some books written and set during that time, most particularly Eugene Sue’s The Mysteries of Paris and Honoré de Balzac’s Le Père Goriot as well as Poe’s Dupin stories. The descriptions of clothing and furniture and food were inspired by these works and those familiar with The Mysteries of Paris will recognise some characters and some places from the Île de la Cité, which are part of a little subplot linked to one of the book’s themes. Prints, illustrations, and maps of Paris from the time were also incredibly useful in trying to create a convincing picture of 19th century Paris —trying to work out which streets, bridges, cemeteries, libraries, and other buildings were in existence in 1849 was not an easy task. And then there were the tunnels beneath Paris and their history. When I had most of a very rough draft in place, I did a research trip to Paris and visited key locations and areas, especially the catacombs, which I hadn’t been to previously, and took a lot of photographs. I also visited Paris at the same time as the book is set (in July), which was useful in terms of weather, light, general atmosphere – and below you can see some of my photographs!
And now for some fun questions:
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Shauna Gilligan Writer 