[music]
Sarah Wendell: Hello there! Welcome to episode number 612 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and my guest today is Len Pennie. Len Pennie’s book of Scots poetry, titled poyums, is out in the US this week, and you might have seen my post about her book launch earlier on Smart Bitches. Len is my guest today, and we are going to talk about poetry. We’re also going to talk about healing from abuse and trauma and using humor to overcome the “cultural hangover of linguistic oppression,” so, you know, light stuff and heavy stuff. Plus she reads one of my favorites of her poems, and I was practically levitating out of my desk chair.
You can find the transcript, links to the books that we talk about, the performances that we talk about, and more at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 612.
I do want to offer a general HEADS UP about this episode: we are going to be talking about intimate partner violence, domestic abuse, depression, and stalking as part of this conversation, so if that is not something you can put in your eardrums, I completely understand.
I want to say hello and thank you to the Patreon community, especially to Paris L., who is one of the newest members of the Patreon. Hello! Thank you! If you are supporting the show, I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it. You are keeping me going, you’re making sure that every episode has a marvelously artisan-crafted transcript from garlicknitter – hey, garlicknitter! [Hello! – gk] – and if what we do here with this show is to your liking and you would like to join the Patreon, it’s the most wonderful community. Have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at a dollar, and among the benefits are the full PDF scans of the Romantic Times magazines, and these are beefy, chonky scans, y’all; they’re very large. We also have a wonderful Patreon Discord, and there’s bonus episodes. So thank you for considering your support, and thank you to the Patreon community for being so wonderful.
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All right, let’s do this podcast. On with my conversation with Len Pennie about poyums.
[music]
Len Pennie: Hello; I am Len Pennie. I am a poet; I write in the Scots language. I also tend to write about topics which affect me like misogyny, the patriarchy, and domestic abuse.
Sarah: Hardly any topics for discussion. So congrats on the US release of poyums. I just need to tell you how many times I went round with my own autocorrect, because it – and I’m, like, writing up the questions for the interview, and I had to keep going back over because it kept autocorrecting them to poems, and I’m like, That’s not the word! I understand that you think I speak American English, ‘cause I do! But that’s the word I meant. Me and autocorrect, we had like three rounds about this.
Len: Imagine me writing the book –
Sarah: Oh my gosh!
Len: – and having every, every single word.
Sarah: Little red line?
Len: When I write them on my – my phone will autocorrect, which is really helpful in English, because I cannae spell, but see when I’m trying to write Scots. Scot autocorrect is just, is the bane of my existence, because it will not, it will not believe me –
Sarah: No.
Len: – when I say, This is a valid word. This is a valid – please, please believe me. So I put it this way: you know that Add to Dictionary function? I have worn that out.
Sarah: What, is there even a Scots language autocorrect option? I’m going to guess not.
Len: There is!
Sarah: There is now!
Len: On phone…F-key options, there’s a Scots language thing –
Sarah: Ah –
Len: – which I did have on my last one. The only issue with that is it’s set to a specific dialect of Scots or a specific orthography?
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: Which if, I mean, anyone knows anything about Scots, we don’t have a standardized orthography, so basically, unless you want to compromise in your own spelling, you have to kind of match with that, so if you want to be a bit avant garde like I do when it comes to spelling and take a more hands-off approach, you have to make up your own, your own rules.
Sarah: Yeah. I imagine your dictionary is quite robust at this time.
Len: That’s it. I mean, see, me and the Dictionary of the Scots Language online, we’re like that.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: My, my phone…open up, it’s like, Hello, you’re back for the DSL again? Hello, welcome. Welcome home.
[Laughter]
Sarah: So for readers who are not familiar with your work, what will people find inside this book of poetry?
Len: A lot of pain.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Len: Genuinely. A lot of it, like, I, I was reading it back the other day, and I got quite emotional, because I was, I, I obviously have been therapized to the hilt now, but when I wrote the book it was, I started writing it directly after leaving an abusive relationship, so I was in this really dark, horrible, scary, sad, lonely place, looking out from that, that deep pit of, of depression. And so what people will find in the book is not a journey from, from the pit to getting out of the pit, but a journey where you become okay sometimes with being in the pit, and you, you continue to look out with the pit. So for me poyums is a book about connection. It’s, it’s connection to the self, because when you’ve been abused you lose that connection. It’s about connection to family and friends that you lose. It’s, it’s connections you don’t even want. You know, connections to oppressive structures or oppressive people. So for me, poyums is a book about the, the many ways that we are connected to each other, whether we like it or not.
Sarah: I definitely found that to be true, and congrats on being able to read the audiobook. That must have been some cathartic recording.
Len: Ohhh, that was, ‘cause what we did – okay. An amazing little studio in Edinburgh, right, and it had like twenty million steps, and my knees are absolutely gobbed, so by the time I got up there I’m like –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Len: And then he was like, Right. I said, Is there, is there an order you want me to do? He’s like, No, just start and work your way through it, and if you’ve read the book you’ll know I deliberately didn’t put happy at the start, happy at the end. It’s all the way – ‘cause progress isn’t linear, so for me, what I did was I juxtaposed the happy and the sad, so I would start reading the audiobook and go straight from screaming and shouting and, and swearing to be like, Hello, my sweet darling.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Len: Welcome to – and also, you read the titles before you read the poyums, but the title’s not supposed to reflect the poems; it’s purely for admin purposes. So I’d be like, for example, there’s a, there’s a piece – can I swear?
Sarah: As much as you want.
Len: So I would start and be like, Morning, fucker.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Len: You are then fuck – and, like, and, like, see, the, just honestly, it became a meme by the end, because I was just having so mu- – and I hope that comes across.
Sarah: It does.
Len: Even though it’s really intense and cathartic, it was so, it was such a privilege, because, for me, I’m a performance poet. I had to be convinced to write the stuff down, because for me it lives in the moment –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – and I’m a control freak. So to be able to audiobook was me just, like, letting go and doing it in an ideal performance. It was, it was so – it got to the point where, you know, if I messed up, usually they want you to back up and drop straight back in? I would be like, I want to go straight to beginning again –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – because I can’t do this take again. It has to be in the moment.
Sarah: Yes.
Len: And always advocate, if you’re reading the book, read it out loud! Have a go! People say to me, When you write in Scots, nobody’ll understand you. Who’s nobody? Because my parents will understand me. My friends will understand me. Scots speakers’ll understand me. What they’re, what that actually saying to me is, I don’t value Scots readers. So for me, what I wanted to do was use Scots in a way that was accessible to people who didn’t speak it beforehand, but also make sure that I was honoring the community, the linguistic community that I came from.
Sarah: And it’s also a very colonist, colonialist attitude to say, Well, I don’t have access to this, so therefore it’s wrong.
Len: It’s almost, you know what, you know when toddlers think that their experiences are universal.
Sarah: Oh, of course! Yes!
Len: They skin their knees, so the world has just fallen down around them.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: I think it, it, there’s something quite primal about selfishness, and I think a lot of people need to understand that accessibility helps us all?
Sarah: Mm-hmm!
Len: You know, it, it’s like, you, you might not, you might not need a certain feature of accessibility right now, but you may need it in the future –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – and even if you never need it, you know, with a rising tide lifts all boats, we’re all, we’re all benefited by accessibility, and that’s, that’s, you know, that can be applied to languages, but it can also be applied to things like subtitles. I subtitle all my videos, and I always have done, because even though someone might not need it, I need it sometimes.
Sarah: Oh yeah. I, I study with, I struggle with auditory processing on Netflix. If it’s a random American show, I got my su- – I can’t hear without my subtitles!
[Laughter]
Len: That’s it, that’s it! But also there’s, there’s areas of accessibility you don’t even know you’re reaching.
Sarah: Yes.
Len: There was a woman who commented saying that she was a breastfeeding mother, and she didn’t want to wake the baby up when she was scrolling through TikTok while she was breastfeeding –
Sarah: Fair!
Len: – so what she was…volume off. You know, it’s, it’s, for me, accessibility can only improve situations. You’re never taking accessibility away from other people by making other people more, you know, welcome and invited.
Sarah: Now, I’m going to skip ahead in my question list because I love learning about endangered and persecuted language like Scots, Manx? I went to the Isle of Man, and that was ammmazing, because everything, everything is in both languages, and there are schools where they do the whole school day in Manx, and then there’s Welsh and Galego and all of these languages that were at one point banned or attempted to be eradicated, and that’s really important work to keep a language alive, because, like you said, it’s part-, partially it is the performance of it, the existence of it when it’s happening, not, like, writing down the rules of it but actually using it. And one of the things that I love about your, your, your videos and especially on, on Instagram and on TikTok is that you’re trying to teach a marginalized and persecuted language while also including all of the comp-, concepts of identity and context, and yet, you don’t have a lot of time; it’s a little video. [Laughs] They’re very short! How, how do you select the words and then try to distill all of that stuff into such a small space? Like, that is itself quite a, quite an accomplishment. For example, I really appreciated your video about hurkle-durkle –
Len: Hmm!
Sarah: – as a term that’s removed from context, and I think, and I think I commented this on the, on Instagram, that it’s a lot like hygge, where it’s been extracted from –
Len: Yeah.
Sarah: – from Scandi culture as a reason for consumption. And, and it’s been recap-, repackaged for consumption and, like, marketability rather than im-, like, inserted into its context.
Len: Absolutely. So it’s the commodification of culture.
Sarah: Yes, that’s the word I was trying to look for. Thank you for giving it to me. [Laughs]
Len: …it’s, it’s a, it’s surreal to me, because I have joined the Scots language community online. It was, it pre-, pre-dated me, but –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – I joined it, and it was a struggle. It was a struggle to engage people in Scots language because they didn’t perceive it as being cool; they didn’t perceive it as being something that was worthwhile to do, so for me to then see people who did not have a vested interest in Scots and weren’t Scots speakers repackaging Scots for an audience that didn’t care about the origins, and a lot of the culture that people assume Scotland has and holds dear has itself been commodified culture. So things like clan tartans, that is an invented tradition. That is a Victorian thing; that is something that was designed to sell an idea. And what that has led to is ethnonationalism. It has led to gatekeeping and exclusion of Scottish people themselves, and it has created this false idea of what Scottish culture looks like. So what I want to do with my channel is to present authentic Scottish culture. Yes, the words that I cover might not be used every day, but they once were. Every word that I cover has historical research going into it. I know people think I just turn on a camera and, and, you know, open my mouth and let my belly rumble, but there is research gone into it so that it is authentic culture.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: And, and in my mind, people who say hurkle-durkle is a Gallic word, or they say hurkle-durkle is a cool English word, that’s not cultural appropriation; that’s cultural erasure.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: Because what they’re doing isn’t, it’s, it’s not appropriation; it’s, basically, it’s using the culture in the right way, because the word does mean that, but it’s the reason it has today, and it’s the reason the cultural context of that word, because in the comments of every single hurkle-durkle video there’ll be Scottish people saying, This isn’t a real word. I don’t know this word; I’ve never heard this word. Now, those experiences are based not on a lack of knowledge about Scots, but on a lack of exposure to Scots based on a cultural hangover of linguistic oppression.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: So it’s people getting involved in a conversation they don’t know the context of?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Len: And for me that’s why it’s annoying because if, you know, it always ends up going viral. It always ends up going viral, this word hurkle-durkle, because it’s hilarious. It’s bed rotting, basically. It’s this current cultural phenomenon of I’m lazy, but there’s a word to describe it and we’re all in community, or I don’t want to get out of bed, and I want to say – which I do all the time. There’s nothing wrong with it; I love a good hurkle-durkle. But the word itself cannot be divorced from the context and the culture. Obviously, as a linguist, I want people to use these words. I want people to share them, but one of the biggest sort of tenets of my entire, you know, channel and my entire page, my entire platform, is Scottish culture should be shared authentically.
Sarah: Yeah. And that’s one of the larger contexts of the videos that I think work and why some of yours go viral, although I will be honest and say the hair helps.
Len: It does! And that anons me, annoys me so much, ‘cause I know if I take my hair down the video’s going to get two times the amount of views, but I’m also cognizant of the fact that people listen to me when it comes to Scottish culture because I’m a wee white lassie with ginger hair, because my peers who are, who are Glaswegian, who are, who are from the borders, who are from Shetland, and who are people of color will make the same or similar content talking about Scottish culture and language and will be told in no uncertain terms that they are not qualified to do that –
Sarah: Oh for –
Len: – based on their appearance, their background, their, their ethnicity. So a lot of videos I end up making are bursting people’s bubble.
Sarah: A little bit –
Len: It really is, it really does…and I, I’m more than happy to. Scottish culture is open to all. You know, it’s, it’s good if you have a granny who’s Scottish or you’ve got a great-granny who’s Scottish. You don’t need it; it’s not a prerequisite.
Sarah: No.
Len: And, and what I am always careful to say to people is, They want to assume that I’m a hundred percent Scottish, whatever that means, but I’m not. My dad’s not even Scottish. So even by the metric of the people who want to be racist or who want to espouse racist rhetoric, I’m not as Scottish as they want me to be, but they don’t know that because, I guess, white people don’t need to prove their Scottish identity.
Sarah: No. Now, you have had what I have, what I would call a truly tumultuous book launch for your book in the UK. A few things happened. So first of all, I hope that your US book launch is extremely successful but extremely boring. I would like it to be mellow –
Len: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and chill and, like, utterly not tumultuous and, and ups and downs of emotion. I want it to be the most chill, boring book launch; successful! But chill.
Len: Yeah.
Sarah: Do you have any events planned for the US launch? Are you coming over? Can we show you around?
Len: It’s so expensive. I will be appearing virtually on everyone’s screens every day, but I think I’m a wee bit far – maybe book two they’ll be able to, to shoot me over. [Laughs] I’ve been to America, and I thought it was absolutely gorgeous, but for me, I’m terrified of flying, so.
Sarah: Well, that presents a problem.
Len: I mean, it’s, it’s – if youse were closer, I’d be there the now.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Len: You know, if, if you were, if you were next door I’d be over all the time. But the book launch was, it was a lot.
Sarah: It was a lot.
Len: It was – I think I could have handled it better if it were all the highs or all the lows.
Sarah: Not up –
Len: But it was the ju-, it was the juxtaposition of the two, and it was, it was surreal. It was so – I don’t think I’ve ever had a time where I felt guilty about success more than the book launch.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: Because I’d be on stage every night talking to crowds who were amazing, wonderful; I had such a good time; and then I would come back to the hotel room and have to reconcile that with the fact that all of this information that wasn’t within my control was being exposed all over the internet, so it was, it was, it was a strange situation where I felt safest and most relaxed on stage!
Sarah: Oh! I’m actually really glad to hear that, because one of the things I was wondering as you were going through this was whether or not you felt safe in a, in a crowded room. Now, are you okay to talk about what happened at your book launch and everything? I, I should have asked that first, and I apologize for not making sure. But from what I saw, your, your book came out, and you’re doing events, and you’re traveling around, and a documentary that you’d been part of for several years launched on the BBC while your book launch was happening. Which sounds great! Like, hey! My face is everywhere! Except that it was a book about navigating the domestic violence laws in the courts of Scotland because you had survived a domestic abuse situation, and so this incredibly painful part of your life is now public and being consumed at the same time as you’re like, And also a book that I would like you to consume, please, too? What – oooh, that’s a lot.
Len: I need to know, how do you promote yourself?
Sarah: Yeah!
Len: How, how do you? ‘Cause that’s it! ‘Cause I, I’m, I’m perhaps too averse to “capitalizing on my trauma,” which sounds ridiculous, ‘cause my book is a lot about trauma, but I wanted to completely divorce the two things.
Sarah: Yeah!
Len: And it, and then, you know, new, the news were getting in touch, there were articles being written, you know, and, and it went from being Scots poet’s on the bestseller list to Scots poet reveals four-year domestic abuse horror. How do you, how do – and then I had a Guardian article where I was writing about domestic abuse, and at the bottom there’s a little bit about the poyums, and I was just thinking, People are going to think that I – and then someone did; quite a few people did, actually, accuse me of orchestrating the domestic abuse in order to sell books. No. Not to blow my own horn, but I feel as if I could confidently and competently write about a bunch of topics. Do you know what I mean? It’s not like I thought when I was seventeen, do you know what, do you know what would be great for a book? I’ll just get myself in an abusive relationship so I’ll have some great writing material. Like, I just, it, it made me feel as though I were wa-, I was watching myself from above –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – and I could see holistically how it looked to the outside world, and it was completely different to how it felt, because for me, all I wanted to do was sit in the joy of it?
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: But it’s, it’s sort of a perfect example, a perfect representation of how trauma feels?
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: Because just as you’re reaching that point of success, just as you’re with that new person or in that new situation with the new happy you, there comes the trauma to, to kick the feet out from under you. So for me it was a very humbling experience, but it was also a very good learning experience –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – because I need to schedule things better!
[Laughter]
Len: I need to learn how to say no. I need to learn how to say no. And that’s why having the Canongate team behind me and my agent, and all my, my people on my team now has been amazing, because at the start of this sort of career, if you want to call it that, I was saying yes to everything.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: Everything. And I –
Sarah: And you’re in –
Len: – burning and burning, burning.
Sarah: If you’re a new writer, you, you feel like you have to take every opportunity; you have to take every opportunity. That’s part of the job, and it’s like, Wait, whoa. One of the things you said when you were doing videos about, about this whole situation, and I, I cannot believe – I mean, I can believe, but knowing as much as I do about publishing, the idea of your publicists at your, and, and you, as the writer, for your book of poems just ringing up the BBC and be like, Listen, we need you to launch this documentary like right in these datelines. You think you guys could do that for me? Like, that doesn’t happen! That’s, that’s absurd! But of course people are going to think that.
Len: They didn’t even know – that’s, that’s the worst thing about me is that I am so good at compartmentalizing that I forget to inform all the parties that…on. So they, I, and I phoned my publicist; I was like, Hey, quick question. Em, there’s this documentary I’ve been doing. Do you think this’ll clash with…and she was like –
Sarah: What?
Len: – …right this part matters! ‘Cause I didn’t tell them!
Sarah: [Dismayed noise]
Len: In my head, they were so separate, ‘cause I wanted to be anonymous in the documentary at the start, because I thought, There’s no way this isn’t going to look like some sort of Hey, I’m Len Pennie, a poet. Here’s my trauma. Consume it for money. But, you know, I, at the start, wanted to be anonymous. I wanted to divorce it from my work, but then as the process went on it became clear that my platform could help inform as many people as possible about what domestic abuse looked like, and also what domestic abuse can look like when you’re in a job where you can’t tell everyone what’s going on.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: So I was like, Right, I’ll use my face, I’ll use my image, I’ll use my platform to the boost the, the, the documentary, which was good, but then it meant that, hey, we’ve got this book coming out at the same time. How are we going to make this, first of all, not look like some sort of little, grubby, rubbing-hands-together money trip, but also how are we going to mitigate the fallout from literally every single iota of trauma being spread across the news, the newspapers, the tabloids, ‘cause the Sun got involved. Like, you know, how, how –
Sarah: Oh, not the Sun, nooo!
Len: Like, and the thing is, like, there’s so many style guides when it comes to writing about domestic abuse. Like, there’s certain things that you should say and you shouldn’t say, and one of the things is you shouldn’t sensationalize it. So for me to read articles by journalists who were just like, Oh, famous person’s being domestically abused? This is going to, this is going to really slap, and, and for me it was, it was so, I don’t want to say violating, but it was exposing.
Sarah: Yes!
Len: It was definitely exposing. ‘Cause I wasn’t at home, either. I was in hotels.
Sarah: Yeah. I was worried, I was genuinely worried about you. I don’t mean to sound all parasocial and weird, but I was, genuinely worried about you.
Len: I think everyone, everyone was, I mean, my, I was so lucky that my, my partner got to come with me –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – on tour. So he, he was there, but there’s only so much other people can do, because see, when you’re sitting on your own and you’re thinking, This is my life – and, and don’t get me wrong: I love my life, I love my job, I love what I do, but God, I really wish I hadn’t been abused! [Laughs] It seems really, I sent, do you know what I mean?
Sarah: Yeah!
Len: How, how much mentally, how much more mental fortitude would I have had, had I been allowed to mature without that obstacle –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – because I’ve had to heal around it –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – and now I feel like, I feel sometimes like my life happens to me.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: You know?
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.
Len: And, and so for me the tour was very much a case of I need to lean on everyone around me in order to facilitate that, because if I’d been left up to my own devices I would have called every single person and said, I can’t do this.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: But I needed people around me to say, You can do this. You don’t have to, but you can; you have the capacity if you want to.
Sarah: Yeah. Now, I noticed around, around the time that all of this was happening and you were posting about it and then the, the, the documentary came out, I also noticed that for a time you mentioned in, I think it was The Guardian – I don’t have the quote in front of me, but I think it was The Guardian – that the police had told you to go dark on social media, to take down all – ‘cause you were, I think you were still on Twitter at this point – to take down what you were doing on social media and to go dark for a time. And I noticed that it was written up on r/Scotland on Reddit that you had left Twitter. They were talking about it.
Len: It was so surreal.
Together: So surreal!
Sarah: [Laughs] Like, wait! You, you people know who I am?
Len: Yeah! That’s the thing, is I didn’t!
Sarah: You didn’t? You didn’t do that!
Len: No! I had my final exams for uni, and people were being arseholes on Twitter, and I thought, do you know what –
Sarah: What? On Twitter!
Len: I know! I was like, I was, I can’t, I can’t do this right now. I’m going to leave so I don’t get myself really mentally ill. I took like two days off, handed the reins to my account to a pal, and there was like multiple newspaper articles about it!
Sarah: [Laughs]
Len: And…I was like, Look, why the fuck, why do you care? Like, not, not about me, and not like, why do you care about me? But why are you, a journalist, writing about someone taking a break off Twitter, because all that’s doing is adding fuel to the fire.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Len: Because it was always done in a sort of misogynistic, she’s been hounded, she’s been – there was even one who said, She wilted, and then this male celebrity had sort of given me some support, and he had brought, he’d revived me. He brought me back from the brink. Like –
Sarah: What?
Len: – come on! What are we doing here? Because I would read all this stuff being like, What? I’ve been hounded off Twitter? I’ve closed down my account? No, I haven’t! And then I went on private, not because of anything the trolls were saying to me, but because I was being actively stalked and I was trying to mitigate that.
Sarah: That’s what I was thinking, that that had all corresponded, especially around when r/Scotland was writing about it, that you had gone dark to protect yourself.
Len: It was a combination of people mishearing, misunderstanding, misinterpreting, just making stuff up, because for people to say that I left Twitter because of trolls is just, it annoys me because I couldn’t come out and say, Actually, I’ve left Twitter because of this one specific troll that I was in a relationship with, and he’s –
Sarah: Yeah!
Len: – refused to let me go. So for me, it was a bit about not being able to control my own narrative. I was having to sort of step back and let half truths and assumptions be made about me, and I, I really don’t like not being able to tell the truth.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: So having to keep that sort of to – ‘cause I, I didn’t want to talk about it before the court case was concluded –
Sarah: No, you probably couldn’t!
Len: – partially because I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to impact the court case, but also, I didn’t want to stoke the flames!
Sarah: No!
Len: I didn’t want to give this person any reason to, to, you know, any reason to think about me or talk about me or, or, you know, contribute to that, that fire that was engulfing me, so for me, I had to sort of take a step back and not control the narrative, which is awful for me, because I’m a massive control freak. I want everybody to know everything –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – about a situation in order for them to make informed decisions, so for me to have to step back and hear these things being said about me was very difficult. It was very difficult.
Sarah: I, I am familiar with this problem. Yeah. Because I am a reviewer and there’s a very big Be Nice culture in romance; I’ve noticed that there’s a very big culture of Well, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, You Shouldn’t Say Anything at All, and I’m like, You’re making a product for entertainment that I’ve paid for, and I’m going to state my opinion loudly, because I can. That, they, the, the narrative is that I’m very mean, that I’m very mean-spirited, and I’m like, Really? I don’t think so, but okay. Yeah, I’m very familiar with not having control of your narrative, and it’s very frustrating, ‘cause you want to tell people, but then, then I have to think, well, how much energy can I devote to correcting someone else’s narrative that I had nothing to do with forming in the first place? That’s really hard to let go of. [Laughs]
Len: It is. I used to, I used to stay up till one, two, three in the morning responding to, like, Scots isn’t a language! You’re a slag! You’re ugly! You know, I would, I would, I would knock my pan in trying desperately to inform, ‘cause at that point I was thinking, These people just don’t understand!
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: If they knew Scots was a language, if they knew the history of – if I just talk to them, you know, on, on, in good faith, ‘cause I had such a hard time, and I still do, identifying when people are acting in bad faith.
Sarah: Me too!
Len: So for me –
Sarah: Yes!
Len: ‘Cause, ‘cause you, you think, I wouldn’t do that! So, you know, the only reason I must be in this situation would be if I didn’t have enough information, so I’m going to get them the information; then they’ll be nice to me! I’ll educate the billies out of hating me. But it doesn’t work like that, so a lot of the learning journey, ironically, the more I, the more educational content I make, the more I educate myself on how to put boundaries in place, but also to understand some people are just arseholes?
Sarah: [Laughs] Yes, some people –
Len: And that’s okay.
Sarah: – just suck.
Len: That’s okay. You can…I mean, also, because I have received some negative criticism of the book, and that’s been very, that’s been so difficult, which is, I’m glad I’m talking to you, ‘cause as a reviewer you’ll be able to, to understand with the other side of that.
Sarah: Oh, absolutely! I’m also an author, and I’ve gotten negative reviews of my work, so I completely understand both sides of it. I will give you my, my nutshell view of how to interact with reviews as both a person who writes reviews and an author who has received them: the review is always not for the author? You’re done! Like, I can’t change any of the book; it’s published! It’s out; it’s done; it’s done; it’s done. But the review is about that person’s experience with the book, which, again, is hard to let go of, but I have no control over that narrative. And sometimes a review is about someone who just didn’t connect with it and had problems with it, and sometimes criticisms are, you know, valid! I’ve received reviews where I’m like, Oh, you’re right! I did screw that up! Shit! That sucks! Can’t change it! But also –
Len: That’s it! It’s the not being able to –
Sarah: Yeah, I can’t change it! There’s nothing I can do! I used to give a whole workshop about how to interact with reviews an author, and the thing that I would say over and over is, If the reviewer said the name of your book and maybe even said your name, possibly even spelled it correctly, you’re good. You’re absolutely good. You ever, you ever go to the fridge and you find something a little furry in the fridge, and you open the container and you’re like – [sniffs] – Oh, this smells bad! And you had it to someone? They’re a hundred percent going to lean in to see if it smells bad, right? That’s it. If I’m like, Oh, this smells good! Someone’s going to be like, All right. You know, glad, I’m glad the strawberry jam smells like strawberry jam! That’s great! But if you, if you, if you say to somebody, Oh, does this smell bad? Is this smell gone off? They’re going to be like – [sniffs] – Okay. Everyone wants to know where everyone else’s line of bad is. If I ever sold reviews as a romance novel reviewer, if I ever decided that I was going to make money by selling reviews, I would just sell reviews that say, This book had too much sex in it – one star. Because –
Len: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – that review would sell so many books to the people who are like –
Len: Yeah.
Sarah: – I’m sorry; there’s no such thing as too much sex. Please give me this book right now; put it in my hands. So everyone wants to know where everyone else’s line of bad is so they can see whether that line aligns with their own. And I’ve never seen a review where someone’s like, I didn’t like this book because this heroine said that, and this happened in the book, and have somebody go, Well, gosh, that’s, that person’s career is tanked forever. No one has that power! They can’t actually do that much. They’re just identifying their line of good and bad, and it, ultimately reviews become a dialogue of Do I agree with this person? Are our lines of bad the same? Or are they different, because if they’re different, then that person’s review is completely irrelevant to my life experience.
Len: Oh yeah.
Sarah: I’m so glad it’s helpful! I have received so many email messages from people, ‘cause the site is almost twenty years old now –
Len: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – and I’ve received so many email messages from people who are like, Sarah! I love everything you hate! Keep up the good work.
Len: [Laughs]
Sarah: Which is like, Wait, is my taste weird? Am I wrong? If you like what I hate – but no, it’s just that our lines of bad are in different places, and if I’m like, I don’t like insta-love and I don’t like danger boner, which is in a romantic suspense novel, when the couple are being chased by the bad guy and they’re in a stairwell and suddenly they must go to Bone Town!
Len: Don’t worry; I know what danger boner is. [Laughs]
Sarah: Right? Like, so –
Len: I’m –
Sarah: – I don’t like danger boner! Someone else is like, I love it when they get down in the stairwell and the bad guy’s outside! That’s my, that’s my thing! So everyone is just looking to identify where their line of good and bad – but mostly bad – is, to see where it lines up. ‘Cause we’re all looking for something to read in an endless sea of stuff. So it’s hard not to take it personally? But it’s really not about you at all. You’re done. And if they said your name, you win!
Len: I, I love that! That’s, that, you should honestly –
Sarah: Cheers!
Len: – you should package that. Package that and give it to any insecure young writer, ‘cause I –
Sarah: [Laughs]
Len: – needed to hear that!
Sarah: Excellent! I’m really glad.
Len: For me it’s like when I put something out and I look at the people who don’t like it, and I think, Fwut do you like? Listen, what is that quote from where it’s like, it’s The Simpsons, but it’s like, Your, your boos mean nothing; I’ve seen what makes you cheer. I have a horrible feeling it’s Rick and Morty.
Sarah: It might be! It might be.
Len: But it’s like, I look at what they like, ‘cause if someone’s, if someone’s act-, you know, calling me awful and I look at their page and it’s like, you know, Christian nationalism, you know, anti-women, anti- –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – like, for me, I’m like –
Sarah: Ohhh!
Len: – I’m okay! I’m okay if you don’t like me. I’m okay.
Sarah: Better, better that you don’t! ‘Cause if you did, I’d be concerned. That’s my favorite thing on Reddit, when someone posts on Am I the Asshole? And all of the people –
Len: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: – who are telling them that they’re not the asshole are then espousing things that are truly terrible, and the original asker goes, Wait a minute, if everyone thinks that I’m right is terrible, then I think I was wrong.
Len: Did you know that I got my start, the, the, the neb-, the very first part of my career, the very inception of me on social media was I was a dedicated stan account for Am I the Asshole on Twitter.
Sarah: No way! That’s amazing!
Len: I had notifications on.
Sarah: [Laughs] Oh!
Len: Like, they call me, I’m Miss PunnyPennie came from the fact that I would reply and say the situation was Am I the Asshole? My girlfriend Paige has broken up with me because this, this, and this, and I’d be like, Sounds like you need to turn the page on this relationship. I would be in there within seconds, within seconds of it being posted. I had notifications on, I was on the bus, I was at work, it doesn’t matter where I was, I was in class, and I’d be like, Got to get that pun as quick. I’d be the first, and I was obsessed. I was dedicated. Like, K-pop stans ain’t got nothing on me. I was –
Sarah: This makes me so happy! I love puns! [Laughs]
Len: But that, my publicist followed me. Like, she didn’t know me as a writer; she knew me as the pun-getter on – she followed me, she didn’t even know, she’s like, when, when it came time to, like, you know, putting the book to someone –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – like, which publishing, she said something like, And I followed you when you used to do Reddit posts, and I was like, That one. That one there. She gets me.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: [Laughs] She knows me.
Sarah: That’s the publicist I need.
Len: If you can’t love me at my Am I the Asshole Reddit replies, you don’t deserve me at my poyums; that’s a – [laughs] – fact!
Sarah: Speaking of the feedback that you get, you get an absolutely astonishing amount of sustained and revolting harassment. I hate that you have to put up with that. It sucks being a woman in public. What are things that you do to cope with this level of absolutely wretched behavior, in addition to writing kickass poems about it, which is pretty great?
Len: Thank you. I, I, I do the opposite of what people tell me to do. So people tell me to delete the comments, block and ignore, just put it, just keep it to yourself, just don’t tense, don’t make a big deal about it. What they mean when they say that is Don’t make it my problem.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: Just do it quietly.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: Just endure and go quietly…
Sarah: Don’t complain. Don’t complain! No complaining! What do you have to complain about?
Len: I complain to everyone. I complain to everyone. I screenshot them; I send them to my boyfriend; I send them to friends: Look what this person said to me! And do you know what, it helps, because we’re social animals. We were not designed, first of all, to receive this much feedback –
Sarah: No!
Len: – but second of all, we were not designed to keep things to ourselves. So I make it everybody else’s problem, which people get annoyed at, and they won’t, they say, Oh, you’re giving them attention; you’re giving – do you know, You’re giving them oxygen. Do you know what happens when you give something too much oxygen? It ignites and it burns to death.
Sarah: Sounds great.
Len: So that’s it. I’m, I’m just, I’ll give them oxygen; I’ll keep giving them oxygen. Too much oxygen. All of the oxygen.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: But that’s the thing; when you do that, you’re the villain then, because you are exposing them and, and that’s the funny thing is, for one day that person will receive a fraction of the hate I receive, and they can’t handle it; they never can.
Sarah: Nope, never.
Len: Plus it, it serves a dual purpose as well, because when you are actively, publicly, and loudly disavowing racism –
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: – or sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, what you’re doing is you’re telling other people, This is not tolerated.
Sarah: Yes.
Len: This will not stand, this will not fly, this will not happen in my house or at my kitchen table, so what I want to do is to create a situation that’s so hostile to bigots –
Sarah: Yes!
Len: – so hostile –
Sarah: Yes.
Len: – that they don’t even comment in the first place. I pen, I do the pen of shame; I think that’s amazing, ‘cause what I’m effectively saying is, Have at it.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: There you go. You wanted, you wanted attention; have at it!
Sarah: Yeah, now you’ve got it! I’m sorry to say you will not like it.
Len: I’m looking at you! What do you want? You want me to say, you want me to put you on my stories? Well, you want me to, you know, find the, the little Etsy link in your bio where you make Confederate flag T-shirts? You want me to go there as well? I’ll go there!
Sarah: Yeah, that’s not a problem!
Len: I can dance all night, mate. [Laughs]
Sarah: You should be afraid to say these things out loud. You should be afraid to be taking these actions. You should be afraid to harass somebody who’s just talking about Scots and, like, saying vile things to her. And there are so many people who – and this, you know, overlaps with domestic violence – who don’t see people as people, but see people as possessions to be controlled.
Len: Yeah.
Sarah: And if you’re a possession that’s stepping out of control, then that’s not to be tolerated.
Len: I think it’s, it’s also interesting the amount of self-policing that women do of other women?
Sarah: Oh my God, yes!
Len: They…misogyny.
Sarah: Yeah.
Len: ‘Cause when I, I think I said, it, it wasn’t even me! That’s the thing; it wasn’t me. Someone put up a story saying she so’s fucking great, and I put it on my story being like, Hey, look, guys…Then someone was like, this, this elderly lady was like, You shouldn’t use those words. Why? Fuck off. Why? Like, why? Why shouldn’t I? She was like, It’s not ladylike. Okay, I’ll never find a husband. Okay, I’ll just go and tell my long-term partner that. It’s like, and it’s, it’s always the same people who are like they’ll never, You’ll never, you’ll be alone, you’ll die alone, you’ll cat support, and I’m like, I’d roll over in bed to my partner, and I’m like, Hey, guess what this person just said! [Laughs] It’s so insidious, the way they dehumanize so that they can, they can attack.
Sarah: Now, I was wondering if you would be willing to read something from poyums to give the listeners to this show a little peek into the book. I’m so excited you tossed it in from off camera! Ah! My, my little fangirl heart is joyful!
Len: You are so easily amused. [Laughs]
Sarah: Oh, listen! I am the queen of being easily amused. I started my own podcast!
Len: I love it, because, because you, you can do, like, you can spend days and days and days, like, planning, rehearsing, scripting things. You throw a book in from off screen, oh, it’s like Christmas. I love it! It’s, it’s, it’s the best, the best way for me to bring joy to other people is to do what makes me happy, and what makes me happy is, like, I can catch a book.
Sarah: [Laughs]
Len: Look at that! [Laughs] What do you want to hear?
Sarah: Your favorite is “I’m No Having Children,” right? Or it was your favorite.
Len: It’s, it’s, it’s certainly one of the ones that has the most, it gets a good, it gets a good reaction, and it, it connects with people. So I usually leave it up to the person I’m talking to, because whatever resonates with you is going to resonate with me, so if there’s something that you want to hear, I’ll absolutely do that.
Sarah: All right, I do love “I’m No Having Children.” I love it.
Len: Do you love it? I’ll do “I’m No Having Children.”
Sarah: Thank you.
Len: I put it last in the book for a reason. I put it last because I wanted it to be the most hopeful piece, the most sort of outward-looking. I, I can do “I’m No Having Children” if that’s, if that’s your –
Sarah: Bring it!
Len: – the poison you want to imbibe.
Sarah: Bring it!
Len: I’M NO HAVIN CHILDREN
I’m no havin children, A’m gonnae hae weans;
an ye’ll can ask whit A cry them, no what are their names;
an they’ll be gettin a piece, no a wee packed lunch;
an they’ll be haein a scran, no having a munch;
they’ll fanny aboot, they willnae waste time,
an when they scrieve their wee poyums, A’ll mak sure they rhyme.
A’m no havin children, A’m gonnae hae weans,
who’ll be gowpin an bealin when they’ve goat aches an pains;
an instead of don’t worry, A’ll say dinnae fash;
instead of stand your ground, dinnae take any snash;
ma weans’ll be crabbit, no in a bad mood;
and they’ll greet, no cry, when their day isnae good.
A’m no havin children, A’m gonnae hae weans,
wae a prood ancient language crammed in their wee brains;
an whenever life tells them their English is bad,
A’ll tell them the hassles that their mammy had,
an A’ll say ma maw’s words till the day that A’m deid:
Ye’ll be awright, hen, ye’ve a guid Scots tongue in yer heid.
Sarah: I love it so much! Thank you! Oh, that’s delightful!
Len: [Laughs]
Sarah: Now, I always ask this question: what books are you reading if you, or any books that you have read that you would like to tell people about?
Len: In terms of Scots poetry, I recently read DWAMS by Shane Strachan –
Sarah: Oh!
Len: – who had this ten-, twelve-minute epic poyum about the relationship between gas and oil, the industry, and Aberdeen?
Sarah: Ooh!
Len: So Aberdeen, Aberdeen in Scotland is like an, it’s, it’s a, it’s a place where gas and oil, like, supported, like, a lot of jobs, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of industry, so this is basically like as if the gas and oil industry were sending, like, horny texts…
[Laughter]
Sarah: Well, I mean, the gas industry and the oil industry are pretty horny.
Len: It’s like, R U up? Like, kind of, kind of cheeky, and, and, and to hear it performed in real life, ‘cause, ‘cause Shane supported me on, it was at the Edinburgh date, and to hear that performed in, in real, in real time, in real life, was incredible.
I would also want to just, like, tell you about Grey Crosbie?
Sarah: Yeah!
Len: Who is a phenomenal poet who wrote this piece called “Taboo,” and it sets with me, it stays with me. Like, it lives in my bones now. It’s about period sex, and –
Sarah: Oh-ho-ho!
Len: – oh my God! No, genuinely. I was watching Grey perform it, and I had tears in my eyes ‘cause I was just like, This is so visceral and raw, and it’s just so, such a beautiful grotesqueness to it, not in the sense that it was gross, but in the sense that it was meant to be gross. Like, we’re meant to perceive periods as taboo, as, you know, something that’s shameful or dirty, and the way Grey put it through was like, it was an element of romanticism of it, and oh my God, stunning! Honestly, stunning! If you get the chance to get to hear Grey perform, oh! Oh, it’s delicious! It’s absolutely sublime.
Sarah: That’s wonderful! Thank you!
Where can people find you, if you wish to be found, on the internet? Where can people find you?
Len: People can find me on Instagram. I’m Len Pennie on Instagram. I am @miss_punnypennie on TikTok.
Sarah: Yeah?
Len: I am Lentil Pentil on Twitter. [Laughs] Look, someone commented that and was like, Imagine if you change your name to Lentil Pentil, and I was like, It’s never going back.
Sarah: Done, lads.
Len: It’s never going back.
Sarah: It’s done.
Len: I’m Lentil Pentil till the day I die. Where else? I’m nowhere, I’m nowhere else. There’s a Facebook impersonating me, but that’s not me, so don’t give that bitch any views. Don’t look at my website. Do I look like I have the mental kind of capacity – [laughs] – to be making a website?
Sarah: I mean, it’s a pain in the ass; I won’t lie.
Len: But anyway, I talk enough shit on, on, you know, Instagram and –
Sarah: Socials.
Len: On the socials.
Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this interview. It has been a delight to meet you in person, and I’m so happy that the Instagram algorithm started showing me your content, and I’m so, so excited for your book to come out in the States. Thank you so much for your time today. It has been an utter delight to talk to you.
Len: Oh, it’s been wonderful. Thank you so much for having me.
Sarah: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you for your book.
[music]
Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you very, very much to Len and her publicity team for scheduling this interview and for taking the time to talk to me. It’s really fun for me to talk to people just outside of the romance community who I encounter online, and I’m just really excited to meet and talk to, and it’s always an honor to be told, Oh yes, absolutely; let’s do that interview. ‘Cause some people are like, You run a website about what now? And you’re who? That’s, it’s, it’s really nice!
I have asked for reviews, because that is an important thing for podcasting, and y’all have come through. Thank you so, so much. I want to say a particular thank-you to It, Son of Them, who called this show:
>> the most enjoyable, thoughtful, informative, and all-around listenable romance podcast.
Wow! Thank you! I do work really hard to make it listenable, and I appreciate that very much. Reviews make a massive difference in putting the show in front of other people, so if you have taken the time with your thumbs – or your whole hand; I mean, if you went to the desktop or the laptop for a review, I am not going to stop you, and I’m honored – but if you’ve taken the time to review the show, thank you so much. It makes a massive difference.
I will, of course, have links to everything we talked about, including some performances by the poets that she mentioned, such as Grey Crosbie, and links to some of the other poems and books that she mentioned as well. All of Len’s recs will be in my show notes; do not worry.
As always, I end with a terrible joke, and this joke is a Scots dad joke. I’m really excited about this, and if Len listens – [laughs] – she’s going to be horrified at my attempt here. [Clears throat] Okay, are you ready?
What’s the difference between Bing Crosby and Walt Disney?
Give up? What’s the difference between Bing Crosby and Walt Disney?
Oh, Bing sings, and Walt disnae.
Get it? Walt doesn’t or disnae, disnae, disnae?
[Laughs] Walt – I can’t even say it; it’s so embarrassing! All right, so please, please laugh at me, but I’m going to leave it in.
On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week.
[Laughs] I’m so embarrassed!
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find one embarrassed podcaster and some outstanding podcasts to listen to at frolic.media/podcasts.
It’s really good this is audio-only, because my head is now entirely on fire. Wow. [Laughs] Okay.
[end of music]
