December 8, 2024
Art & Photography
“If nothing else, I hope this gives you authority to laugh in the face of heartbreak.” So reads the message on the back of London-based writer Lauren Bulla’s debut poetry collection, Porcelain Cherries. An introspective ode to early-20s dating narrated by a voice laced with all world-weary love of an eldest sister. (That is to say, love in its toughest, tenderest, most deprecating form; love that might not tell you what you want to hear, but definitely what you need to hear). That makes sense; after all, Lauren was the oldest child in her family and, she says, grew up a sort of matriarch figure to her younger sisters, a motherly presence to match the mother’s voice the collection begins with.
Porcelain Cherries muses, through acerbic aphorism and Notes-apped wisdom, on how to come to terms with the trauma inherent to trying to find love as a woman – and especially as a queer woman – in the modern, phygital world. But instead of being defined by these traumas, Lauren chews on them until they metabolise into anecdotes, jokes, and lessons that refute a self-imposed victimhood, seeking instead her phoenix-like rebirth. Bulla is not interested in the poetic, soft-boy melancholy that we associated with the poetic mode. Rather, in Porcelain Cherries, she is interested in solutions, smiles, and – most importantly – developing her sense of self.
Jude Jones (JJ): One of my favourite things about Porcelain Cherries is the way you write, which feels very gen-Z and online, almost like I’m being told a story – albeit a very poetic one – over text with my mates. I think it’s not something you see a lot in poetry which is a shame, and I thought it was really refreshing to hear, something very original and authentic.
Lauren Bulla (LB): Yeah, thank you. I really like to believe that I write like I talk. I’ve spent a lot of my life stifling who I am to be palatable for other people, and I got so tired of doing that. My poetry follows this process of claiming a sense of self worth, learning how to take up space.
I never had in mind that I was going to be a writer. The first time I tried to have my poetry published I actually got a lot of grief for it. I tried to submit to a journal where I had been writing some academic papers, but the editor was very self righteous and he had a problem with the fact that I wasn’t classically trained. So it became the first poem I published on my Substack instead, because I wasn’t going to let his negative behaviour discourage me.
I try to let my words guide me and then fine-tune after the fact. I let the first thought come and then I chase it up. I think that allows my authentic voice to come through because I’m not trying to deal in big words and heavy narrative, rather it becomes idealisations of normal life. I’m giving my thoughts a place to live as they breathe onto the page. It feels like poetry is my muse, my mistress, and she tells me what to do. As much as I command, the words command me back. And that’s how I write.
JJ: I like how you talk about writing in your author’s note too, as an act of self-
reinvention and reclamation of experience. That really made me think about
Oscar Wilde and his famous mantra in “The Decay of Lying”, that life imitates art more than art imitates life, which is to say that we can often only find beauty in an experience or situation once we have turned it into art, we only found fog and mist beautiful once the Impressionists started painting it. How did writing your romantic experiences allow you to rework them internally and shift how you saw them?
LB: The book is designed to make fun of myself for backing into those not-so-savoury types of connections, and simultaneously give the reader authority to do the same. It looks at patterns in my romantic affiliations as they develop and kind of says, “girl, what are we doing?”. My friend Sydney and I, we often talk about, in life, you have two options: you die, or you figure it out. And, most of the time, these things we grow fearful of, are not going to kill us. So you’re going to have to find a way to figure it out, to overcome those uncomfortable positions, navigate the hurt, the mistreatment, and move it towards something generative. Humour, for me, is always the best way to do that. There are heavier poems in the collection like “Swan Flesh”, but I always try to include a light-hearted note, to be able to say, “nah, things are going to be fine” without minimising the damage done and recognising how amazing it is to be alive.
JJ: That’s something that comes up anytime I speak to creatives, no matter their medium. About creation being a form of therapy, a way of turning trauma into something beautiful and really giving you a new perspective on what you’ve been through.
LB: Absolutely. Writing is one of the most powerful ways to understand yourself because it makes you stop and think, why? I have always kind of tried to be like: this is how I feel, but why is it what I’m thinking? Where’s the root? Let me figure out where the root is.
Writing has allowed me new pathways into understanding why I’ve ended up at this same shut door romantically, over and over again.
"Writing has allowed me new pathways into understanding why I’ve ended up at this same shut door romantically, over and over again"
JJ: But I felt like, when I was reading Porcelain Cherries, that you weren’t necessarily writing for yourself in that self-gratifying, cringy, @beam_me_up_softboi kind of way we talked about earlier. In a lot of places I felt like I was reading a mother or close friend giving advice. Who did you imagine yourself writing for as you were putting the collection together?
LB: I think for me, when I first started writing poetry, it was really this act of purging. Purging up all of this shit that I never dealt with, that I’d never thought about, that I’d never processed. Reading it now, my first writing was insanely dark, and it took me at least five months to purge all these feelings out.
So, when I first started reading my poetry and I had all these people coming up to me and saying, “Wow, this is my experience too,” I started getting frustrated. I would talk to my mom about it and she would tell me, “You’re writing for women, you’re writing for these people with similar social identities to you.” And I would almost get angry, because even my own poetry couldn’t just be mine, my thoughts were always for someone else.
Over time I realised that, actually, I‘ve been platforming myself in a way that other people can relate to. As I envision it, I’m sat on a stage surrounded by a circle of chairs and if other people want to get on that stage with me, they can. It’s so powerful when someone can look at you and know nothing of your personal experience, but relate to your art practice. It’s an incredible feeling to have someone look at me and say, “even though that experience is personal to you, I understand what that feels like in my own way.”
More than anything, I think I’m writing for the version of me that didn’t understand this before, who was being hurt and mistreated. It’s a bonus that my writing is accessible enough that people completely separate from me can relate. I try to navigate from a perspective of radical vulnerability, I believe that you will never be worse off for platforming yourself, even if people don’t reciprocate. I’d rather you see all of me and not want anything to do with it, than lie about who I am.
JJ: It’s so interesting to hear that the original tone of what you were writing was so caught up in darkness, because the tone of this collection is so triumphant, it really throws away that angsty tortured poet archetype we see all the time. Your tone, I get the sense, is genuinely transformational, genuinely positive. Were you trying to write poetry in a way that wasn’t entangled with all those melancholic emotions that the form is usually associated with?
LB: Most of the poems in Porcelain Cherries originated after that purge phase when I needed to get out all my melancholy. Nowadays I find it hard to write really dark stuff. I’m like, OK, that had its moment, but I don’t need to drone on about how the world is trying to make me suffer. That just gets boring after a while. I find that very self-indulgent, to focus on problems without looking for solutions. Although it’s all obviously very circumstantial.
For me, it was about deciding to stop occupying “victim” as an identity category. For ages I just wallowed in that, telling myself “I’m a victim, I’m a victim” – especially in that purge phase – but that wasn’t leading me anywhere. The book is meant to be a way to laugh at some of that, a way for me to laugh at the mistakes I made.
JJ: Like I said at the start, one thing I really liked about this collection is how your voice sounds quite online throughout. And then being online and dating online start to come through as themes in the collection, especially toward the end in poems like “New age dating”. How do you think online spaces have changed the ways we connect?
LB: I’m of two minds about this, because the Internet gives us access to new connection in a way that can be amazing and push us toward people we wouldn’t have met otherwise. But at the same time, we are becoming less and less able to communicate with each other effectively, because we’re used to hiding behind a curated profile. I actually wrote an article talking about all of the ways that social media, and dating apps specifically, have fucked us in many ways. They’ve given us a false sense of abundance, we’ve all become quite emotionally maladapted.
I won’t lie, I am somebody who has made a lot of really meaningful connections online. But, if we’re talking about romantic connections, most, if not all of the people I’ve met through dating apps have ended up being good friends of mine. So the dating apps weren’t really working for me anyways. Though I will say that I’m always screaming that I’d rather have another meaningful friendship than a fleeting romantic or sexual connection.
JJ: I wrote that Porcelain Cherries is a very gustatory poetry collection. Obviously the name, but there’s all this luscious metaphor and imagery about taste and food and lips and mouths. So, imagine Porcelain Cherries was a food: what would it taste like?
LB: That’s really hard. I feel like it would be something unexpected. Maybe similar to an everlasting gobstopper from Willy Wonka, always changing flavor and texture.
Something fruity and sweet…spicy sweet. Something you’d crack your tooth on a little when you bite, but you’d be compelled to keep indulging anyway.
JJ: And on the topic of food, what would your death row meal be?
LB: I used to work at this Italian restaurant called Cucina 24 back in Asheville, North Carolina that did a regional-based tasting menu. The offerings would change every month and a half, so it was always new and exciting. I would never have been able to afford it if I didn’t work there, but they made the most decadent, amazing, multi-layered meals I’ve ever had. So, I would order the tasting menu and wine pairing because the wine list was unreal.
JJ: What would you be on death row for?
LB: That’s such a scary question. I listen to way too much true crime and I’m always
paranoid of getting framed for something I didn’t do. But I studied international human rights law as my Masters, so probably trying to protect human rights in some way. My thing has always been that I don’t care what I do in this life, I just want to be in a position where I can help better the standard of living for people. With the way the world is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up back in those circles, pushing.
You can keep up with Lauren by following her Instagram here, or her Substack page here.
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