National 5 Scottish poetry collection : Video playlist

BRYAN - Let’s talk about influences. Who was it that made you want to write the way that you do?

NADINE - Yeah. So in my poetry, absolutely, I think a turning point for me was when I encountered the work of Andrea Gibson. And so I didn’t encounter their poem on the page and I encountered it through watching them on YouTube because they were a spoken word poet. And I suddenly realised that poetry doesn’t have to be in fancy Shakespearean language, that poetry can be spoken out loud, the poetry can blend what’s in your heart with with clever imagery and powerful expressions. And it felt like when Andrea read their work, it felt like someone was opening a door and saying, “hey, there’s space for your work too.” And if that’s kind of what what I want to do as an author as well, I want to say “there’s space for all of our voices.”

And then in my novel, so I write novels in verse, so both storytelling and poetry, I would say Dean Atta’s The Black Flamingo was was hugely influential on me. It made me realise that you don’t have to write in prose to tell a story, to write a novel. You can do it in verse. You can have language in words moving, literally moving across the page. And it just it feels like freedom when you realise that you’re allowed to write as you are. It feels like freedom.