Decade - Anna Jordan Interview

Decade is Anna Jordan’s debut poetry collection published by Broken Sleep Books. The poems chart a turbulent ten years - exploring maternal loss, miscarriage, having a child, separation and falling in love. Order Decade here.

We sat down and chatted to Anna about Decade.

You’ve spent years writing voices for stage and screen -characters like those in Yen who have their own distinct armour. In Decade, the armour is off. Did you find it harder to be honest as yourself than it was to be honest through a fictional character?
The armour is off – is a great way of putting it! I don’t think I ever began writing poems with the intention of publishing them, or even of anyone else reading them – so it’s been a very different process. For me poems – or at least most of the poems in Decade – are a way of clarifying feeling into the leanest most economical expression possible. It’s quite a challenge. So yes it’s hard – but in a different way.

Writing a poem ten years ago is a very different act than publishing it today. When you revisited your older poems for Decade, did you feel like you were collaborating with a stranger, or did that 'past version' of Anna Jordan still feel like the one holding the pen?
Oh yeah definitely. There’s plenty of poems I know I would write completely differently now, and I’ve had to make the call to leave them as is because they are an expression of something very specific at a very specific time of my life. Then there have been ones I’ve tinkered with, and newer poems I’ve written as a much more accomplished (hopefully) poet. It didn’t feel like collaborating with a stranger – but the experiences felt like a long, long time ago.

Your father wrote a poem a day for 25 years. Decade covers ten years of your own life. How did his daily approach to love and grief influence your decision to finally curate your own tumultuous years into this collection?
Yes - my dad, Peter Gordon, is a great poet in his own right. He wrote my mum a poem every day for 25 years and put it under her pillow. And he continues to write for since she has died. It’s how way keeps their love alive. My sister and I created a website with the best 300 (out of 8000!) called A Love In Verse. There was a discipline and commitment to his writing them which is definitely inspiring. And in some ways I’m continuing the tradition as a lot of the poems I’ve written are to my mum (the book is dedicated to her - Allie Rose).

I was also inspired by my partner, Henry Widdicombe, who turned a traumatic, life-changing experience into some amazing art with his comic “How to Survive An Affair – A Practical Guide.” 

Being close to someone using their pain to create something was really galvanising. I’m lucky to have such creative people around me.

You use very specific, mundane settings - like a Premier Inn or a childhood kitchen - to host massive emotional events. Why are those unremarkable spaces the best containers for remarkable grief or love?
These are just the places that my life has happened really! The kitchen was the heart of my home growing up – a place of great warmth and love but also trauma and tension. Because of various shows I was doing I ended up staying in lots of Premier Inns around the time my life began unravelling through grief and multiple miscarriages – so that’s why Premier Inn features. Remarkable things happen in very ordinary spaces and I’m drawn to exploring that.

You’ve said your poems hold comedy and despair in the same breath. Is that a stylistic choice, or is that simply how you survive the 'tribulations' of life—by looking for the joke in the wreckage? 

That’s what the blurb says! I didn’t write that - it was written by the publisher – Broken Sleep Books. I’m still learning loads about the poetry world but I’ve been aware of their amazing work for ages and I still can’t believe they’re publishing my first collection! But the comedy and despair comment is a huge compliment to me – because that’s the sort of work I love to read or watch. I hope blending dark humour with emotional depth is my key style / vibe! It’s been said about my work in the past and I don’t think I could be paid a higher compliment. It’s not a conscious thing though. I think it reflects real life. Even in the saddest of situations there’s usually some laughter and to be found and the situations that make us laugh the most often have an element of sadness. In fact in very dark, traumatic situations often humour is a safety valve, just relieving a bit of tension.

It's inevitable that this would come out in my poems; the last ten years has been hellish but also amazing in many ways and, at times, very funny. Yeah – life is too short, and hard, not to laugh.

As a director and playwright, do you see your poems on a stage or screen as you write them, or is poetry the one place where you allow the words to stay flat on the page without needing a performance?
This is a great question. I recently (nervously) did my first open mic night. And for the first time I realised that I might write poetry that I intended to perform differently than poetry I am writing with a view to being published and read.

How the words look on the page is very important to me, but I’m not confident enough yet to be really experimental and playful with how the words appear on the page. I’m hoping that comes with time, like recently I’ve got more confident with line breaks. It’s so exciting to be learning new stuff all the time!
I think I always imagine the poem being spoken out loud – maybe not performed – as such.

Your work is often described as 'fierce.' When you’re writing for high-stakes TV (like your work for HBO or the BBC), how do you fight to keep those sudden moments of tenderness that often get lost in big-budget productions?
Well, if the tender moments are small details they’ll often appear for the first time in my first draft of the script and provide depth or respite or something. If they’re impactful and work in the way I want them to then hopefully I shouldn’t have to fight for them – because whoever is reading them will like it! That’s a bit assumption though.

Tenderness is everything though – especially when you’re writing dark, traumatic stuff. I hope that I’ve been brought onto a show to write because I enjoy playing with those moments of tenderness – so usually don’t really have to fight for them. Although - sometimes if I do I’ll let it go! Being part of a writing team is all about being flexible and not being precious.

Looking back at the success of Yen, what is the one thing about your writing style that has remained completely unchanged, despite the shift from the fringe stage to global streaming platforms?
Oh gosh – I hope there is at least one thing! I think it’s so much easy to be braver when you are new to writing – when the stakes are lower. I really dared myself with that play – really challenged myself – and it changed my career. I’d like to think that blending humour and sadness / drama remains unchanged, and also I think the rhythm of dialogue and of the piece as a whole is always key to my work.

Anna Jordan

In Decade, you tackle miscarriages and maternal loss. These are themes that often carry a heavy silence. How does your experience in drama help you find the direct language needed to speak about things people usually whisper about?
Well, when writing drama you are constantly creating little ripples of suspense. They key is to make sure the audience always want to know what’s going to happen next – I know that sounds obvious. That doesn’t have to be on a huge scale, it can be small and detailed – but these storytelling principles still apply when you’re writing about difficult / sensitive subjects.

The key is honesty really. One in four women will experience a miscarriage – so why are we so quiet about the truth of it? The humiliation, the shame – sometimes the sheer body horror of it. I don’t find it hard to write about, and even if I hadn’t experienced it I would still endeavour to write about it as accurately, honestly and boldly as I could.

If you were directing a play based on Decade, which poem would be the opening scene?
This is such a great question! Funnily enough of the poems proved to be “seeds” for the play Lost Atoms which I made with Frantic Assembly and which toured over the last nine months. I’m not sure I would have written the play as it is if the poems hadn’t come first. That play follows the course of a life-changing relationship – so I guess the equivalent first scene poem would be How To Live In The Secret World – which explores what it’s like when you’re falling in love and feel like you’re the only two people alive.

Your forthcoming work is a an adaption of Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children at Shakespeare's Globe. The Globe is a space where there is nowhere to hide - the audience is visible, and the performance is exposed. You’ve mentioned that this 'honesty' of the space elevated your understanding of Brecht. How did you approach adapting this work?
It’s a really interesting process for somebody who writes in chaos, and lives in some of the time. There is order and method to translating and adapting that you don’t get when you write a play of your own. 

You get a literal translation and then work from that. The creative team have conversations about where are we, when are we, and what does the world look like, and what are the rules of the world. After that, you’re imagining the world that you’re operating in, bringing yourself to the characters.

The Globe is the perfect space for it. As you say it’s exposed – there Is nowhere to hide. The show is a performance and the audience are complicit.

In Mother Courage, we see a woman who 'haggles with life and death' to keep her children alive in a money-making machine of war. In Decade, you write about maternal loss and the daily negotiations of parenting. Do you see Mother Courage’s fierce, sometimes 'disturbing' survivalism as a distant mirror to the quiet, domestic battles you describe in your poetry?
Not really. There are parallels but there’s a big difference. Mother Courage is experiencing war first hand. You could imagine war as a metaphor for many of the battles and traumas we experience in our lives – but when war is so monstrous and prevalent in so many places in the world it doesn’t feel right to me.

Why do you feel now is the right time for this adaptation of the play?
I mean – you only have to watch the news to know why this is the right time.

Which medium feels most like home right now?
Theatre is always home, but poetry feels like a fun, new and possibly low stakes place to be. A holiday let, maybe. Screen is home too ––and it pays the bills.

When the world feels chaotic, do you reach for a script layout, a blank stanza, or a director's viewfinder?
A blank stanza! Love that question.

When writing for TV shows like Succession Killing Eve, One Day or Film Club. What is the process like?
The process varies wildly from show to show. Succession was a five month writers room, Killing Eve was ten weeks, One Day was a week and with Film Club we didn’t have a room. You’re generally “breaking” the story with another team of writers, or with just you and the showrunner, you go away knowing the “beats” for the episode – then you write an outline which is approved and then you are sent to script. There’s always lots of drafts and often your work gets overwritten quite a bit which is hard at first but you get used to it.

How do you reflect on your career to date?
Often, with huge gratitude and often a bit of bewilderment. I really always wanted to support myself with my writing and I’ve been able to do that for quite a few years now. I’m so thrilled about that. But there’s lots more I want to do too.

What was the first piece of theatre you remember having a major impact on you?
Probably either a production of Road or Two by Jim Cartwright. His work was a big influence on me – the domestic element, the imagery, the humour, the heart.

What keeps you inspired?

My seven year old son and his chat, which is really bloody funny. My partner and how interesting I find him even after four years. Couples Therapy (The show.) My therapy (my actual therapy). My garden. Listening to someone arguing on their phone – love imagining the other side. My female friends – in fact women in general. Reading poetry. Painting. Oh and MUSIC.

What would you hope someone takes away from reading any of Decade?
That there’s hope. Sometimes hope goes away, then it comes back again if you can just hold on.

Decade by Anna Jordan is released on 30th April - Published by Broken Sleep Books. You can pre-order / order here.

Broken Sleep Books are having an online launch of the six April releases where poets will be reading from their collections. (Including Decade). It’s Pay What You Can, 8pm, 29th April. You can book here.