The woman who made me

Why I write, why I publish books: meet Olga Kenyon.

As we announce the shortlist of the Aryamati Poetry Prize, I wanted to talk about the woman behind it. A woman that we lost very suddenly in a car accident in 2014, the day before I first went off to University. This is a very personal newsletter to you all, about an inspiring woman named Primrose Olga Aryamati Kenyon, or Granny Olga to me.

(Poem by Olga Kenyon)

Olga Kenyon was a Manchester poet and non-fiction writer, who elevated women’s writing throughout the ages, publishing many books of women’s historical letters. She was a firm advocate of Amnesty International and, indeed, a war in another part of the world to which she had not visited, could bring her to tears over a cheese sandwich. Or make her drop a block of cheese near the dog. In short, she was at every cultural and charity event Manchester had to offer. She was quirky, with a very loud laugh, and she certainly made an impression on Manchester’s writing scene.

To me, Olga was the woman who first inspired me to write. I remember how much she laughed at my comics and short stories about the life of nits, and she even sent poems into competitions for me, so that I had a growing selection of young writing anthologies which contained my work. We went to plays at the Royal Exchange, or she came to watch me act in a play at college, or at Buxton Fringe, when I got stuck in my blazer on stage, and ripped right through the lining because the show MUST go on.

She never saw me perform my poetry, or even knew I had aspirations of being a proper writer, though she was always asking if I was writing anything, and showing me her poems for my, often young and brutal, critique. Indeed, it was the sudden nature of her death which made me want to share my poetry, for the first time, with others.

Post university, I went to work in Theatre Marketing in Guildford. It was lonely there, and I found it hard to make real friends, like I had in the North. I went to my first spoken word night, A 1000 Monkeys, hosted by Dempsey and Windle Publishing, and found friends - and found confidence performing there.

When I wasn’t working, I was lonely, and I would write. I started a website, Fly on the Wall Poetry Blog, the same website that the Press exists on today, and I self-published a poetry chapbook, because I wanted to show my work online. I joined Twitter - sorry ‘X’… and found friends there. We read each other’s work, reviewed it on Goodreads, created collaborative international journals… I felt less lonely.

The collaboration felt so brilliant, I wanted to create an anthology, for charity, and raise money for Mind, the UK’s mental health charity. I created a listing on my blog with the call out, and somehow 600 submissions flooded in. Suddenly, a tiny blog had a following, and later, a book, ‘Please Hear What I’m Not Saying’ - and a publishing house started to form.

It seems that so much of what I want to do, and have been able to do, with my life so far has been both inspired and facilitated by Granny Olga. I live in Manchester now, in the heart of the Northern Quarter, and I know she would have been at my flat every week for tea and biscuits, and a trip to the Art Gallery. We run a poetry prize in her name, with the theme of social change and peace, and I know how moved she would be by the winners we select each year - she would, undoubtedly, cry at ‘Warriors’ by Sundra Lawrence, with its backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War, because she loved staying with friends in Sri Lanka, and she would be telling all her friends, strangers on the bus, pigeons and more about Fly on the Wall Press.

So I wanted to tell you about Olga. Because she was very special, and I love her.

You can read one of her poems in the Mancunian Ways anthology with Lemn Sissay and Jackie Hagan - one which was featured on the city’s trams - and I hope, through the prize, and through her books, she will always live on.

Love Isabelle

(I only cried four times writing this!)