Chatting with Emily and Ella

What is it you are both working on? And do you feel it will help give a voice to marginalised youth?

Emily
I’m working on creating a poetry book with themes of mental health, healing, the queer experience, acceptance and self-understanding and I hope it will give a voice to the marginalised. 

I’m a queer female who often feels misrepresented in a lot of media. From over-sexualisation to miseducated representation online. My writing is not just for lesbians. It is for any LGBTQIA+ person or silenced person who has gone through confusing relationships with themselves and with others and with what labels surround us and the spaces we can enter.

Ella

Emily

Ella
I’m illustrating my wonderful friend Emily McChrystal’s poetry book ‘Soul Notes Poetry’. As me and Em are both working class, LGBTQIA+ people from Liverpool, it’s amazing to be a part of the publishing of her work which will deeply resonate with many people who have been through similar things. 

It is rare as an LGBTQIA+ person to find yourself reflected in love poems, and I’m so excited for young queer people to feel their hearts throb as they get to know Em’s work. I’m sure her candid reflections on mental health will also hit home with many people. To hear such vulnerable and truthful accounts of dealing with loss, mental health and other experiences from the perspective of a young person is extremely touching. 

I’ve found comfort in her words many times - knowing there is someone else out there who understands how something feels and has been able to talk about these taboo topics through such beautiful and impactful words. 

Em’s poetry has the magical ability to be both extremely personal - an intimate insight into the workings of her brain, her life and her feelings - while also touching on something so universal. For me, many times I’ve read one of Em’s poems and felt that it’s perfectly put into words a feeling I’ve never quite been able to articulate before. 

Why is it important for marginalised voices to be heard?

Emily
Marginalised voices need to be heard, to ensure that people are educated on matters that they may not experience themselves, but that the people around them may be silently battling. Marginalised people have faced the most hardship, most exclusion, most discrimination. It is with this lived experience that comes passion and insight. 

Marginalised people know the issues of exclusionary systems, and that’s what also makes them the best people to change them. The first step to making this change, is for the marginalised to be heard. 

Ella
It is THE most important thing that marginalised voices are heard! When marginalised voices are heard, that is when we find change, we find community, we find strength and understanding.

“Why poetry?” 

Emily
I find poetry to be my natural way of self-expression. I can really struggle with understanding my emotions. Sometimes I feel I’m on autopilot and can never truly experience a moment, or feel a true emotion. So, I use poetry as a self-reflection method to understand how I actually felt in particular moment or experience. Poetry helps me to process and to come to terms with my own beliefs and sense of self.

I also enjoy the sing-song nature of poetry, it helps me feel soothed. Like when I read Winnie The Pooh and I fall into a simpler time of nostalgia. I also enjoy how accessible poetry is. It can be as short as you like, as silly as you like, and someone, somewhere will interpret and understand it in their own way. It’s personable, adaptable, and accessible. 

 “Why art as your medium?” 

Ella 
I have always expressed myself visually, for me drawing has always been the most immediate and intuitive way to make. Even as a toddler, when I was stressed, happy or sad I would grab the nearest pen and scribble away for hours and hours, using that feeling of putting down marks on paper to express my feelings. But also to better understand and learn more about those feelings, alongside the experiences and stories around me. 

Visual art is an amazing medium as it serves to communicate and to allow people to find their own meanings in the images you share. Illustration is an especially communicative experience, as you are in a conversation with the writing. As an illustrator in this collaboration, I share the visuals from Emily’s words and then going on to share these again with the reader. It feels like a very communal experience of participation and of finding new understandings.

“Why did you both feel this collab between you both is best fit?” 

Emily
Ella expresses her appreciation and gratitude of life through art, just like I do through writing. I first connected to Ella’s art back when I was 16 and I love the romanticised lens she applies to her work. She makes everything seem rose tinted and soft. 

That’s exactly who Ella is as a person too, soft and full of love. I think it’s important that Ella’s self shines through in her art and I love that the book shows both Ella and I in our truest of forms. 

Ella
Illustrating Em’s work has been an incredibly natural and rewarding process. Her poetry is already so visual that long before she asked me to illustrate the book I had lots of beautiful visual ideas attached to her poems. It practically illustrates itself in the gorgeously descriptive language and the way in which it reaches out to you in such a personal way! I was already itching to illustrate her work by the time that she asked me, and it has been a wonderful collaboration, flowing smoothly right from the start!

“What is the importance of the marginal publisher to you and communities as a whole?” 

Emily
Marginal is the catalyst in silenced voices being heard. The change in publications and creations is coming and Marginal is leading the charge. The Marginal publisher is massively important in the drive for marginalised voices to be heard. Me and Ella dreamt of getting our works published and heard, but we are both queer working-class young women from Liverpool, so we always had to be ‘realistic’ about our ambitions and goals. 

But Marginal has meant we don’t have to limit ourselves. We can get our voices out there in the most authentic way possible. Everything about the Marginal Publisher is authentic, there is no lip-service, the team says we will publish a book and boost marginalised youth, and that’s exactly what happens. Marginal means that a whole community of youth gets trained in massively transferable skills that are too many to name. The list is endless on why Marginal is important, from a personal and communal perspective. 

“What are your hopes for the future?”

Emily
With the book, I hope that people read it and feel inspired. I hope that marginalised youth find it, and that it resonates with them so much that they simply KNOW the power they hold. For the future as a whole, I hope it’s full of books written by queer people, black people and POC, disabled youth and anyone who has ever been told this world wasn’t designed for them. 
Because there is always a space for everyone. 

I hope the future has Marginal Publications all over the world. And because of that nobody ever feels alone because, via reading, they now know a person (who they may never meet!) that has felt the exact same way as them. And they’ll take hopefully comfort from the fact that this creator turned out just fine following those feelings and experiences. 

Ella
My hopes for the future are that things change and that marginalised people find the justice that they deserve. That there is an end to austerity, to racism, to homophobia, transphobia, sexism - the lot! 

I hope that the Conservative Party are replaced in power by a socialist party dedicated to protecting the many rather than the few. I hope that marginalised people continue to find strength in community, and that we find solidarity with each other. I hope that as a society we can listen to the voices of the marginalised and do all that we can to educate ourselves, to care and to stand alongside each other in strength!