Forward Prize for Best First Collection
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The second in this year’s Forward Prizes for Poetry interview series.
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Isabelle Baafi: Hey, how are you, Michael?
Michael Mullen: Good, yeah! I haven’t actually met anyone else on the shortlist so it’s lovely to meet you.
Isabelle: Same here. Congratulations! Can I ask what was the first thought that came into your mind when you found out you’d been shortlisted?
Michael: Oh, God! It was just surprise. First of all because everyone knows about the Forward Prizes who’s even vaguely interested in poetry, so it felt big, but then also because my collection is a mix of Scots and English, you don’t always know if it’s going to be accessible enough, or if it’s a bit too alienating to non-Scots speakers. So, basically, I was buzzing. What about you?
Isabelle: Yeah, it felt surreal. I still can’t really believe it. When you think about how much poetry gets published and how different it all is, and then for a group of people to notice yours among that stack of incredible work, it’s amazing. And in some ways, I was also concerned about whether or not people would resonate with what I was writing about – you know? If my perspective would chime with people. It’s just been amazing to see.
Michael: I love your title. It caught my eye because I’d seen it on social media and in the shop, and I knew it was sort of meme-relevant and like definitely part of a zeitgeist. But then when I was reading it, I saw how it was actually almost a false sense of security, and it was so lyrical and surreal and tactile. So, what made you go for that title?
Isabelle: Originally, I saw it in memes too. I came across the whole D&D/Matrix alignment chart thing and Chaotic Good just stood out to me – for reasons that later became apparent when I was writing the book. I knew that I wanted it to be the title of a poem, and then I wrote this poem about a potential encounter I’d had with a friend at the cinema. It was an instance where I couldn’t tell if it was her, and neither of us brought it up afterwards, and the moment evoked these wider questions of morality for me; what it means to do things your own way, to redefine goodness. When I was writing the other poems, those questions of agency and morality and redefinition were also so prominent that it just made sense.
Michael: Ah, I love that. And the title poem is actually quite a far way into the book, so already you’re getting all those themes of redefining good and morality, and the grey spaces in between, and then the poem arrives at the perfect time to tie things together.
With Scots specifically, even if you don’t understand every word or context, just the sound of the language can create such a profound feeling.
Isabelle: Thank you. And your title poem comes quite early on, in a section where there’s a lot of Scots, and it’s looking at Glasgow and performance. But then you tap into a sense of intimacy and romance in the next section, and follow it by looking at Scottish identity and community in a different way in the third section. Is that fair to say? How did you think about the structure of the book, and what made you realise Goonie was going to be the title? Before you wrote the poem or after?
Michael: It wasn’t even originally going to be called Goonie. At first it was called Lay Down With Dogs, from the phrase: ‘If you lay down with dogs, you’ll rise with fleas.’ It was around this idea that you are beholden and shaped by your community in ways that are conscious and subconscious. Like, you can’t get away from that sense of people forming you and you forming them. But as it went on, I thought it felt maybe a bit too literal, or a kind of confusing aphorism or theme. And honestly, I just didn’t want it getting to the point where people were looking for dogs and they’re not there. So, then I settled on Goonie, because it did that with the themes anyway because it’s a Scots word. I wanted it to feel different, consciously different, to other things, but like titillating, and make people be like, what? What is that? What’s a goonie? You know [laughs].
Isabelle: It’s fascinating, because when I first saw the title, I thought of the film Goonies, which I haven’t actually seen, but I know it’s an ’80s film about a group of kids having some sort of adventure. So, I thought it was maybe about coming of age, and in a way it kind of is. There’s a lot about parents and previous generations, a person finding themselves through community and performance, and grappling with issues in the community and mental health issues. Then there’s a lot about performance, which I know is part of your background. So how did the collection start in terms of you moving from the stage to the page? How did you decide which poems to include, and what was it like transferring them onto printed matter?
Michael: I think in the poetry world, we do get a wee bit too hung up on the idea of the page vs. the stage. To me, it’s very similar. When I was performing lots, I was kind of craving the validation of wanting to be seen as a ‘serious page poet’, but then when I was thinking about the collection, I just wanted to perform, I wanted it to feel immediate in the same way. But I think with Scots specifically, even if you don’t understand every word or context, actually just the sound of the language can create such a profound feeling. I wanted to honour that tradition of performance that Scots has in our culture with Burns’ Night and everything.
I noticed in yours there’s a lot of poems about food. You have the tryptic, ‘Watermelon’, ‘Turkish Delight’ and ‘I found my dad in a can of baked beans’. But then as I read through the collection, I saw how food crops up in so many different ways in the poems, and how its tied to our relationships, it’s so beautiful. Tell me about how you incorporated it.
Isabelle: Food has always served as a really important motif for me. It connects to wider questions around desire and nourishment and care, connection and community. But also servitude and devotion, power and surrender, because we consume things, take them in, and use them to energise ourselves. Plus, it has so much cultural significance. For the ‘Childhood’ section, I wanted there to be even more poems about food, because I was really thinking about how children, especially young children, experience the world through their mouths so much at that age. It’s their way of figuring out what things are, what’s safe and good, and understanding what pleasure is. And the person who is feeding them becomes so important in their lives – I wanted to show all of that. There was a period when I was cooking a lot too, and that really defined my life in a way. All of these things are intertwined. It’s about where we draw power from, so it felt like a constant theme running through my mind.
Michael: It works so well. And through food you then have these beautiful analyses of the domestic and the structures that come with it; how we relate to it as individuals. I just thought it worked so beautifully.
I love the golden shovel form. It’s a great way to be in direct conversation with another writer.
Isabelle: Thank you. One thing that really stood out to me about your collection is how you write about desire. It’s very visceral and embodied, but it also has humour, like in your poem ‘Love Story in Two Parts’. I find it interesting how you start by talking about all the beautiful things in the relationship, and then it shifts to thinking about the challenges and disappointments, but it all sits together so well. It shows how loving can be worthwhile, even when it’s not easy. And in your poem ‘Working’, it’s just such a beautiful depiction of desire and the gaze. There are places where you collapse the boundary between distance and closeness. What’s your approach to writing about desire, and did that approach change while writing the book?
Michael: Yeah, in some ways it changes throughout the book. The middle section is very focused on the idea of desire and coming-of-age desire. A lot of queer poets address desire and sex specifically, in a way that is almost a given part of writing queer poetry, but for me, I wanted to address something that was free from shame and also free from being too overly sexualised. Like, a more classical, old idea of desire, but through a modern Glaswegian perspective. Desire always runs in tandem with my love of words, so I’ll usually try and be more florid when I’m writing about desire to mimic the same sensations. They’re interconnected for me, in a way.
Isabelle: Speaking of being florid, your poem ‘Frigiliana’ is such a lush and lyrical exploration of desire, which interweaves landscape as well, but there’s also a strong sense of loss. Or a sense of the ephemeral; something being reached for but not attained. It’s really beautifully done. Since we’re on the topic of desire, I noticed that in the poem in ‘In Earnest’ there’s a suggestion that the speaker has, like, quite strong feelings about Hemingway. Has his work been impactful for you? Are there any other kind of literary forebears that have influenced you significantly?
Michael: Such a good question. I watched an Ernest Hemingway documentary and they were talking about how queer he was in so many ways. His partners were always quite ‘boyish’ looking, and his mother dressed him as a child in quite feminine clothes because he had this flowing, golden hair. I thought it was so interesting because he’s such a paragon of masculinity, and so I wanted to write a poem, addressed to him in many ways, which plays with the idea of masculinity and him as a symbol of it. This sort of leads me to my next question – you introduced me to the idea of the golden shovel poem. Can you tell me what it is about that form that speaks to you so much?
Isabelle: I love that form. It’s a great way to be in direct conversation with another writer. Originally I started writing them like the one Terrence Hayes created, which responded to poetry. I have one in the book which is a response to a Caleb Femi poem…
Michael: I adore his work, he’s amazing.
Isabelle: Yeah, he’s brilliant. But the first time I encountered the golden shovel form was actually in a workshop, and we were responding to a Lil’ Kim lyric. I love referencing and being in dialogue with other art forms, especially music. As a child, music was so prominent in my household, especially Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston and Celine Dion. All those women. It made sense that in this book, where I was thinking about domesticity and love and intergenerational patterns and womanhood, some of these voices would come through. And so I really enjoyed writing in response to Gladys Knight & the Pips, and there were definitely other golden shovels, some that didn’t make it into the book. I can’t wait to do more of them.
It’s good to be able to be critical of anything, even if it’s something you really believe in.
Michael: I’m so glad you put that on my radar because I’d never heard of it before. You’ve got such a lovely way of bringing in other voices, and then I noticed in your notes that a lot of your poems are after or for other poets, and so there’s this beautiful extra-textual conversation happening as well.
Isabelle: Yeah, it’s something I really enjoy. I think it enriches the book when you can see the ideas you’re drawing from. They have a legacy and their own wider resonance.
Speaking of communities and connections, there’s a line of yours I underlined because I loved it so much. It was in ‘St Anthony’ – you write: ‘The need to sever connection / is sister to the feeling / of needing it.’ I found that so poignant. It taps into one of the collection’s recurring preoccupations about connecting to people who may be troubled or people with whom we may have a complicated relationship. And so I wanted to know what role community played for you in the creation of this book, and how that might have changed over time.
Michael: For me, I wanted to address community in a way that wasn’t so literal. I think as a queer person and also a Scot, there’s this idea that I’m part of the queer community, and then I’m part of the Scottish community, and also part of the community of people who I live around, and then there’s the idea of collective solidarity in political community. I think we use the word community as an umbrella term, which can almost be a bit stifling. And so for me, the interest was more in burrowing down into that actual human connections of how community is displayed and interacted with in a way that isn’t always so obvious. There are drawbacks to every community we’re in, as well as incredibly powerful, beautiful things. What poetry does is give people the scope to simultaneously challenge and champion these ideas. You don’t necessarily need to have a solid answer or definition of them, but it’s good to be able to be critical of anything, even if it’s something you really believe in.
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Isabelle Baafi is a poet, writer, and editor from London. Her collection Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her pamphlet Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020) won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She won First Prize in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2023 and Second Prize in the London Magazine Poetry Prize 2022. Her writing has been published in Granta, the Times Literary Supplement, The Poetry Review, Callaloo, The London Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and an Obsidian Foundation Fellow. She edits at Poetry London, and elsewhere.
Michael Mullen is a queer poet, writer and spoken word artist from Glasgow. Writing in both Scots and Standard English, Mullen’s primary concern is Scotland – its languages and its people. Years of work in hospitality and later as a support worker has put ordinary people at the forefront of their poetry. Whether on the stage or the page, Mullen’s love of character and language champions identity whilst dissecting it. He was the co-winner of the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2023-4 as well as the Scottish National Slam runner up in 2022. He appeared on Life and Rhymes with Benjamin Zephaniah on Sky Arts and his work has been published in various places including Neu! Reekie! #NeuVoices, Bella Caledonia, Paisley Mill Magazine, Rymour Books, Glasgow City of Poets and Seahorse Publications. Goonie is their first collection.
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