Spotlight: Ryan Ormonde & Ruby Lawrence
One of the greatest privileges of publishing Gutter, is being able to connect with writers familiar and new. Each issue, we’ll shine a spotlight on some of our contributors, to discover more about what inspires them, and where they hope their writing takes them next. Today, it’s our pleasure to speak to Issue 28 contributors, Ryan Ormonde & Ruby Lawrence.
RYAN ORMONDE
Instagram: @ryanopoet
What was the inspiration behind 'Generation'?
I was thinking about the global digital archive. I was actually thinking about the bemusing yet inevitable success of the soft drink Prime and how this 'taste of a generation' might be archived for posterity. This poem emerges further along that train of thought, wondering at the implications of biological and familial inheritance. In the poem I write 'hopefully analogue' but in the original composition this phrase came out of 'hopefully digital' referring to the questionable optimism of global digital storage, a dream that has now been extended to the lunar codex.
What would be your ideal set-up for writing - do you swear by any writing rituals or routines?
I do have a bit of a ritual now. I keep set hours and I write outside if the weather allows. Pencil and paper. I always read a poem by someone else before I write one of my own. I don't keep a notebook, I prefer to trust my memory and what it holds on to (or unexpectedly recalls) in the moment of writing.
Are you working on anything exciting or challenging at the moment?
I have written a poetic script for a 30-minute film about collective action that will hopefully be made next year, to be directed by Madalina Zaharia. Our previous collaboration was a short film based around four of my poems which was selected for the wonderful SQIFF (Scottish Queer International Film Festival) and screened at CCA Glasgow.
Is there anything else you want our readers to know about you and your writing?
I would love to give a shout out to Karenjit Sandhu, Nisha Ramayya and Sejal Chad. Poetry can be responsible for great friendships! I was also part of a lovely group participating in a short residency on Lismore and we are still in touch five years on.
RUBY LAWRENCE
Insta: @ruby_lawrence_o
www.rubylawrencewriter.wordpress.com
What was the inspiration behind ‘Folded calf’?
A recent experience in adult life prompted me to remember a scene from my childhood involving a calf, and I wrote the poem because I think I was (unknowingly) attempting to surface what ties these two experiences together, in my embodied memory.
Who would you most like to write to, or for, and what would you say to them?
Anyone whose thought, work or life has influenced me and helped to shape my ethics/artistic practice. In some pieces of writing (or any medium of art), it is possible to say ‘I see you’ – meaning my writing is in a relationship with your work, and there can be care and renewal and continuation involved in that, which I’m into. I’m quite a messy and responsive writer, rather than a novelist or a world-builder with real staying-power for one piece, so a lot of what I write is a short response to other writing, theory, art, etc.
Are you working on anything exciting or challenging at the moment?
I’m working on a patchwork kind-of-autobiography made up of essays and memories, communicated via letters to a living famous actor. The work will function (I hope) as an act of feminist deconstruction, analysing various performative ways in which male perpetrators of harm are protected and narrativized. It’s dark and tricky to write, but I’m also making myself laugh a lot with it.
Which three guests, living or dead, would you invite to a literary salon, and why?
It would be unreal to have N.K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin in the same room. Mainly because I think that they would have tremendous respect and love for one another, which would be palpable and infectious, and we would all buzz off of it, and the dialogue between them would be useful to us in facing things like the climate crisis, resurgent fascism, the atomisation of society, and so on. Ideally, we would have a party after the salon.