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Interview 8
Hollie McNish is an author based between Cambridge and Glasgow. She won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for her poetic parenting memoir – Nobody Told Me - of which The Scotsman stated ‘The World Needs this Book’. She has published four further collections of poetry – Papers, Cherry Pie, Plum and her most recent poetic memoir Slug...and other things I’ve been told to hate, which covers topics from grief to otters, grandmothers to masturbation and Finnish saunas and is a Sunday Times Bestseller. With fellow poet Sabrina Mahfouz, she co-wrote Offside , a play relating the history of UK women’s football, and has just completed a re-imagining of Sophocles’ Greek Tragedy Antigone, published in October 2021 with Hachette.
Hollie is a big fan of literary accessibility. Her online poetry videos have garnered millions of views worldwide. She is the first poet to have recorded an album at Abbey Road Studios, London and tours extensively. Her poetry has been translated into German, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Japanese and French. She reads in English, French and German. She is a patron of Baby Milk Action.
She really loves writing.
[Photo by Helmi Okbara, questions by Amy Norton]
Do you consider yourself a feminist? If so, what led you to realise?
Yes I do. I realised it when one of my mates said to me ‘for f-sake Hollie, stop being such an @£!*hole , it’s not an embarrassing word and you are one, so just admit it.’ Then she sent me an article about what feminism had done for me and I slowly got used to saying the word in my thirties. Before that, I’d ask any journalist writing about my poetry not to use the word feminist about me. It was a long process to get rid of the stigma that had been wrongly associated with that word all my life.
Name a woman who has significantly influenced your life and how.
My mum. She has had the most influence in both mental and practical ways. She’s a nurse and taught me from a very young age to be bloody grateful and to stop moaning and worrying about shit that doesn’t matter. I still obviously spent a lot of time still doing that but a lot less than I would have I think! I guess when you spend your day with people who have all sorts of problems, you are a bit more aware of that sort of thing. She also helped massively when I had my baby, driving three hours every week in between work shifts to take my baby away from me so I can rest.
Share a pivotal moment in your career.
When one of my books got the most scathing review in an established poetry journal, to the point that the reviewer refused to call it poetry, and I had to learn how to deal with that sort of level of personal criticism and still enjoy writing poetry. Poetry has been my way to work things out since I was a teen and I love writing it, so I was worried that such a nasty – as well as criticising the writing it was pretty personal – review would stop me enjoying the main artform I’d loved for years. It didn’t, so all good.
Could you talk about an incident in your career where you felt you were treated differently because of your sex?
Someone booked me for a gig when I was eight months pregnant. The gig was taking place when my baby would be 8 weeks old. I said I wasn’t sure (as I’d never had a baby before) but agreed to do it. The gig went well. I fed her about half an hour before I went on stage and my mum walked her round the streets while I was on stage. It all went great. Then afterwards, the organiser WHO HAD BOOKED ME WHEN I WAS PREGNANT told me it wasn’t very professional what I had done (ie bringing the baby and feeding it in the backstage room) and that I shouldn’t have come if I couldn’t cope. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted to hit someone so badly. Instead, I took it personally, went home and cried. I wish I could go back to that gig and tell him to go f himself. Or something more eloquent.
If you could have dinner with three women (alive or dead), who would it be and why?
There’s no women I’d like to have dinner with more than my grandmas again. And then I’d invite my mum ‘cos if she found out I’d managed to bring my grandmas back to life for a night and hadn’t invited her she’d kill me. Ah, and my daughter, I’d sneak her in.
What's the book that you always recommend to people and why?
It totally depends on the person. For kids, I’d say a book called So Much by Trish Cooke is a great one. But there are so many. For adults, yeah it depends. I wish I could force people to read certain books, but I can’t. The book which I feel has left the biggest imprint on my skin is Glue by Irvine Welsh. I cried for hours after finishing that and still can’t quite get over it.
Tell us about something that makes you angry.
Big thing: When people who don’t have the experience of something say ‘surely not’ when somebody tries to tell them about that experience. I’ve had that a lot from guys or other women too when I try to talk about things that happen to me as a woman ie being followed, being grabbed, having threats online etc and I’ve heard it a lot from white people about experiences of people of colour. Surely not here! Surely not now! Are you sure? It’s like, yes, I’m sure, just listen. Also, I need to learn to do that more too.
Small thing: when people sit on the aisle seat on a train when it’s full and then put their briefcase on the window seat to make it intimidating to ask them to move. When I turned 30 I made a list of things I wouldn’t do anymore. One of them was not to be intimidated by people like that and now I see it as a sort of game and love asking them politely to move their bag. Still get nervous though, which is very annoying.
Share with us your favourite album and why?
Honestly, I tend to listen to playlists rather than whole albums. My favourite current songs on repeat are Dolly Parton’s 9-5, which I think is very underrated as a political protest song, Good-4-U by Olivia Rodrigo because I’ve never heard sarcasm sung so bloody well (and my kid plays it on repeat so I now know every word) and also Slumber Party by Ashnikko, not because it’s my favourite or because I love everything about it but because I am excited that there’s so much more mainstream music with reference to cunnilingus in them to balance out the ongoing sort of macho ‘I’m gonna shag your sister’ sex that still permeates radio and has done since I was little. I also like the rap song that starts ‘I don’t give girls flowers, I give you good wood though’ because it gives me a lot of jokes in my car doing parodies of it with my daughter because it literally sounds like the worst dating video I’ve ever heard. I often sing it in a sort of classical music style just to accentuate the lyrics or pretend that he’s turning up on the girl’s doorstep to meet her mum. Honestly WTF.
Could you give us an example of everyday sexism you have faced recently?
I was followed by a guy when I was walking from the tube to my mate’s house. He kept slowing down in front of me and then, once we turned down the alley you have to go through to get to the houses, he hid obviously in the bush staring at me to show me he was waiting for me. There are about twenty of those examples. Oh, and before Sat Nav was invented and I was touring with just, you know, paper maps and people’s help, I had to stop and ask directions and the guy instead pushed his face and body into the car and grabbed my tits. I am a fan of sat nav, even if it means I’m being tracked through outer space.
Is there an issue facing women today that you feel most concerned about?
There are a lot. Obviously, sex trafficking, child marriage, rape, anti-abortion laws... I think on a local level, the increase in this sort of ‘girls love being choked’ shit. I think it’s really dangerous. Not for those who are sensibly in the kink scene and know their preferences and are in control, but for young inexperienced kids now growing up in a world where this stuff’s being normalised without any of the sexual maturity. I watched a film the other day – a comedy – We’re the Millers – and there was a scene about teaching the boy to kiss for the first time. It started pretty funny and was all like ‘oh use the tongue a bit’ but there was this bit, like, and now you choke her a bit, like that was just standard. And then there’s this same shit with oral sex – the idea that this just consists of a girl being choked by a penis. At my kids school, boys are walking around making joking gagging blow job noises to girls. Boys that have no idea about sex or anything, I generally hate that we still don’t talk openly about sex to young people despite all the other stuff that they’re bombarded with. Young people are seeing really crappy sex on tv still, some horrendous sex in porn ( I don’t blame porn because I think there are also great things you can learn from some porn) and we as adults are still faffing about whether we can use the word vulva or talk about masturbation to school kids. It’s utter bullshit and it’s really dangerous. So yeah, that I think. Well, that’s at least what I’ve dedicated my time to trying to help with for the last two years. One thing at a time.
What advice would you give to your eighteen-year-old self?
Your orgasms are as important as the boys’. Seriously. You need to realise this. You know how to cum. Tell them. Also, keep working, you’re doing well. Also, report your boss to the police, don’t just quit the job. Also, stop worrying about your small tits. Also, you don’t need to giggle at what every older man says. Also, buy that fluffy cardigan from Miss Selfridge because you’re still gonna be thinking about it in twenty years time.
Tell us something few people know about you.
My little toenail basically grows vertically up. Lush.
I'd like to say a huge thankyou to Hollie for her brilliant answers. I would really recommend checking out her poetry, which you can find on her social media (@holliepoetry) and website https://holliepoetry.com/
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