By Katie Farr, Jess Scaffidi Saggio, Lucy Powell, Iona Fleming and Ayman Sabir
Backalong is Nia Broomhall’s debut poetry collection and winner of the Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Competition in 2023. Since Broomhall’s amazing success in this competition, Bloodaxe Books has formally published Backalong. Broomhall sat down with us to discuss her writing career and what these achievements have meant to her. Backalong was a labour of love for Broomhall, with its publication preceded by a long editing process, which included adding new poems and changing the collection’s title. Broomhall speaks fondly of Backalong’s gorgeous cover, an image of a lone, everlasting flower inspired by her love of “vintage flower prints.” When asked what inspired the strong presence of nature throughout Backalong’s poems, Broomhall responded that it wasn’t an intentional decision, commenting “I don’t think I can avoid it [nature].” Broomhall attributes this to her rural upbringing in and amongst Somerset’s beautiful landscape. To Broomhall, nature features a backdrop to her poetry, rather than directly writing about nature itself: for example, she shared that although her poem Tulips features flowers heavily, it is a discussion of grief.
Broomhall’s childhood in rural Somerset is a strong presence in the collection, with a series of Somerset sonnets placed throughout the pamphlet. In writing about Somerset, Broomhall wanted to represent a place and a background not often represented in literature: “It’s not a place that’s created a lot of poets, not well-known ones.” Much of the representation of working-class life in poetry tends to be urban-focused, while rural poetry is often focused on farming. Coming from a non-farming rural family, Broomhall “didn’t see [her] self-represented” in either of these categories. Growing up, Broomhall didn’t see her upbringing as “something special,” later realising “that’s not everyone’s experience” to see “cows walking past your house every day.” Her poems reflect “what we were like because we lived there.” Somerset is sure to be a theme that will continue in Broomhall’s future work, saying, “I’m loving writing about it, and I’m not done writing about it.”
While initially aiming to write poems full of positivity, the theme of grief was something Broomhall “had no choice” but to confront in the collection. The pamphlet is dedicated to Broomhall’s sister-in-law, Nina, who sadly passed away whilst Broomhall was working on her creative writing MA. After this loss, Tulips was the first poem Broomhall wrote, reflecting that “I knew I had to write something, or I just wouldn’t start again.” This poem also holds significance as being the first poem where Broomhall really “felt it” when it came to discover the natural rhythm of a poem, with short lines as that was “all [she] could manage at the time.” On the other hand, writing poems with a formal structure like the Somerset sonnets, with strict rules to focus on, was often “less scary” to face in a state of grief than free verse. Reflecting on her childhood felt like “a safe place to go back to” when trying to deal with grief, although looking back, Broomhall sees that the sense of loss also seeped into these poems, often represented by the withering of nature. The final and titular poem, Backalong, combines these themes, resting on Nina’s presence in the Somerset landscape.
Broomhall’s poems approach the recent and distant past; these different pasts are intertwined throughout the pamphlet in a reflection of real life and the title Backalong. She explains that the word itself means “you’re trying to keep all of those things [the past] fresh.” “We don’t live our lives [with the recent and distant pasts being so distinct],” she states, but instead “we are products of everything that’s happened to us.” Broomhall explains that this mixture of pasts is one of her favourite things about her current residency at Painshill: there is a garden “full of 18th century follies but then made to look much older,” in other words, “built to be ruined.” She states that she is “fascinated by this malleable, unclear age of things,” the interplay of time and memory, and “the idea that you lose people, and you have to face your mortality.” In her writing around grief, she found it “comforting” that “we’re part of this thing that continues,” and to remember that “things carry on.”
Thinking of advice for other aspiring poets, Broomhall said it’s important to remember that “it’s never too late” to get started. What is important is for poets to “read – and figure out where [they] sit.” Whether that’s reading other poets or theory, she said the “craft is what is important to [her].” Notably, she mentions Twitter and the poetry community as a useful tool for finding other poets, sharing work and finding opportunities, helping with her poetry journey and discovering people she would now consider friends.
“None of these people knew me, none of them had any obligation to help me,” Broomhall said, yet she has found people happy and willing to help and has since been able to advise others, “passing that [knowledge] on.” “Poets are amazing people” she added – and making connections is important; building up her network, skills and practice as a poet was something she’d recommend to poets looking to promote or improve their work.
Broomhall hopes to publish her first full poetry collection, but she doesn’t know what themes her poetry will centre around while writing. Instead, she explains that she has to spend “the next year or so writing a load of poems, and then put them together and see what the themes are,” as was her process with Backalong.
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