Exploring isms:

An Interview with Archibald Hades

Poetry is often deemed a vehicle for feelings, but how can it carry our philosophies? In this interview, bestselling poet Arch Hades describes how her studies in philosophy, politics, and economics have informed her work. Of an interdisciplinary approach, she says, “you can’t just view people as numbers. There's so much more to be understood: at our core, we're all very similar. We all have the same wants and needs—to be treated with dignity and respect. We all want to be understood. We all have emotions that we need to access.” Through her work, which reaches a broad audience through Instagram, we also learn about her journey as a Russian refugee growing up in England where poetry became her rebellion. This journey bred wisdom as well—about feminism, absurdism, and existentialism—that she shares with her readers now to help us live more bravely.

Roger Robinson said in a recent interview that poems are like “empathy machines”—they teach us about collective feelings, identities, traumas, and interpersonal relationships. We feel that your work embodies this assertion, especially on a digital platform like Instagram. Could you share more about your experience establishing and now connecting with a virtual poetry community?

I love that you quoted Roger Robinson because I'm quite a big fan of his—congratulations to him on his TS Eliot prize. I completely agree with the sentiment he put forward that poetry is a vehicle of empathy. To me, that's what poetry is really about. It’s there to explore our public identities and our private thoughts. Then, it's up to the poet to dissect these emotions in order to explore and explain something to the reader in a way that resonates with them. In this way, poetry is there to reveal something about ourselves and, hopefully, maybe even inspire us towards community. Because empathy is poetry’s focus, I don't think it matters at all what kind of medium it's presented in: whether it's posted on social media or written in a book, its message is far more important.

Recently in the 2010s, there's been a resurgence of poetry—in fact, poetry reading surged up a remarkable 76%, to 28 million people in 2017, with the numbers especially strong among Gen Z. The share of 18-to-24-year-olds who read poetry more than doubled between 2012 and 2017. So many more people have been eager to engage with poetry which is lovely, therefore it’s important to find your audience online because that's where everyone is—let's be honest. Facebook has over a billion users, Instagram has pretty much the same so if the audience is already there, why not take your work to your audience? Of course, I'm also in print a lot, so on Instagram I only post around 20% of my work to develop an engagement. Then, if they want to buy a book that's great, because though I love giving away lots of work for free, I've got to pay my bills and I have a dog to support. I'm really grateful for poets who also share their work on digital platforms—Rupi Kaur walked so people like me could run afterwards.

I started out on Instagram when, after getting one of my first books published, I found that my publisher was not particularly helpful in terms of gaining a wider reach. They suggested that I promote myself on social media which I also felt was a good idea. Soon after, I was pleased to find that a lot of my messages resonated with an audience and after a while, it became easier to build up that audience. Again, I'm entirely grateful for these poets who came before me on social media to make it an established norm—I think a lot of us are grateful.

Your grandfather was also a poet, and we’re curious about how he has influenced your work. How did your own poetry practice begin, and how do you feel it has evolved?

Unfortunately, because I moved from Russia when I was about eight years old, I actually can't say that my grandfather inspired my poetry because I can no longer read Russian. In fact, I didn't know I had a grandfather until I was about 16 years old which was difficult. We have sort of a don't-ask-don't-tell policy within my family when it comes to other family members, so unless somebody's been around since birth you assume they're dead. I was born three months after the collapse of communism in St Petersburg, and of course communism killed 65 million people. Given the fact that the population of Russia is 140 million the odds are not good—some people have estimated that the horrors of communism actually took something like 100 million lives. So, if somebody wasn't around from childhood, you don't want to bring up any past tragedy and trauma.

Because I was sent to an all-girls boarding school where my heritage was drummed out of me, I don’t have a firm grasp of the Russian language anymore. People were very snobby and xenophobic, and I was under a lot of pressure to absorb the English culture and language. Another thing that really frustrated me about growing up in that quite elitist environment, not just at boarding school but also when I went forward to an elitist British university to study politics, philosophy and economics, was that a lot of my classmates and even my professors lauded communism. Their praise always made my blood boil because they had no idea; their knowledge and understanding weren’t really rooted in history because not only did communism kill 65 million people including my ancestors, it killed the country economically. So, it was always a bit of a difficult environment for me then.

Circling back to your initial question of how I got involved in poetry, I was really struck by the Russian poets who, unfortunately, I’ve only read in their English translations so my experience hasn't been entirely authentic. I would count Joseph Brodsky, for example, as a big influence of mine. He was a huge critic of Communism and Russia, so I always felt a certain resonance with him and his poetry. When I was growing up in a boarding school, which means that you're only allowed home maybe one weekend a month, the only privacy and quiet time that I got was on Saturday evenings when most of the people used to watch a film together. That was my time of rebellion when I could do what I wanted which was to go down to library and read poetry. Because it wasn't on the curriculum and it wasn't tied to any exams or school projects, it felt like a revolt. I also used to read the Romantics—Byron and Shelley and Keats and Wordsworth—and that's when my poetic journey really started. I realized that these people laid out their emotions, unfurling them so delicately and so decisively. Isn't that the point of art?

I felt understood by these guys who’d died two centuries ago. But their emotional resonance was so striking and so pure that it touched me. When I was about 16, I wanted to be like my heroes, I wanted to be a part of that kind of community. Unfortunately, my mother greatly discouraged me going into poetry and/or philosophy, my other great passion. She used to tell me that women aren't brave enough to be poets, and women don't share their feelings in an honest way. As she'd internalized misogyny, it was a very difficult atmosphere growing up. So I only wrote poetry for myself and I was discouraged from sharing it with anybody else. Then, when it came time to go to university, I wanted to apply for pure philosophy, which to me, is the most magical thing. In fact, I like to think that I use my poetry as a vehicle for my philosophy: that's the main purpose of my poetry. But, of course, people are entitled to interpret my poetry however they want.

But, my mother discouraged philosophy as well because she told me that women couldn’t be philosophers because they lacked the necessary logic and reasoning. Since she wanted me to go into a career that was more financially viable, I had to take philosophy with politics, which was fine because I find politics interesting, especially given my family background. But during my time at university, I kept writing little poems just to myself, just to indulge that creativity which is so important to finding our individuality.

I’m very grateful for my time at university because that's when I got to know the existentialists who left an important impression on me, especially the big French three: Simone de Beauvoir the feminist, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus for, if not his writing, his absurdism. I believe that absurdism and stoicism are two sides of the same coin.

Absurdism entails that there is no meaning to life, and that it's enough just to exist and find pleasure in little things, which relates to what Epictetus taught us. It’s enough just to have lovely friendships and spend your days philosophizing and having nice wine.

Through your poetry’s discerning voice, we as readers have felt carried through your journeys of self-discovery. How has poetry become a tool or outlet throughout your path so far?

Feminism was the other theme that I was very keen on. I believe that a lot of these power dynamics that we see higher up in the world start at the level of individual relationships—can you imagine what a different world we'd be living in if more women stopped settling for the bare minimum. Can you imagine if collectively, we said no, we need to stop letting so much slide? That’s what I try to get across in my work, so the first two books (Fool's Gold and High Tide) were about trying to urge people to reflect on their own relationships, and to also urge women to reject this norm of absorbing their partner’s dysfunction. You know, if a man experienced trauma you're not their therapist, it’s not your job to ‘fix’ them. Of course you should provide a supportive environment for them to seek help, but it's not your job to absorb that dysfunction. If a man can't cook and clean, it’s not your job to do those things for them, those are adult skills that everyone should have.

I want to urge people to not raise their partners because my number one thing as an existentialist is to hold people accountable for their actions, to make sure every single person is responsible for whatever they do. Though kindness is wonderful, we have to understand where to set a boundary. I always find that talking about these messages very plainly, like I am right now, may sound a little harsher, a little black and white, so I find that moving these messages through poetry is more palatable. Poems prompt the reader to self-reflect.

We’d love to learn more about your interdisciplinary work, from politics to photography. How have these different disciplines and experiences influenced your poetry?

After graduating, I worked for five years in politics, which was exhausting and absurd but also interesting, so I’m not too negative about it. Then, when I finally realized I could do what I wanted most, I knew I wanted to be creative again. As I’ve mentioned, poetry is one of the ways I’ve channelled my political and philosophical thoughts, and photography has been an extension of those messages.

To speak about interdisciplinary work more generally, after industrialization the world has been such that we’re compelled to choose very specific careers. But we’re much more holistic people than that structure assumes. I think it's so important to develop a person's empathy and compassion and understanding, and nowhere does that resonate more clearly than within my own family. My brother is a pure economist and he only reads books about economics. So he sees the world through this very grated, statistical lens that indulges heavily in stereotypes, because in terms of economics it's much easier to filter people that way. But it also misses the humanity of a person. We have so many arguments, mainly about the roots of feminism.

I encourage him and others to take an interdisciplinary approach to life because it's not that simple, you can’t just view people as numbers. There's so much more to be understood: at our core, we're all very similar. We all have the same wants and needs—to be treated with dignity and respect. We all want to be understood. We all have emotions that we need to access. I think that's a really important point that feminism is trying to advance—that we should be in touch with our emotions and we should be able to understand them and decipher them and use them in constructive ways and know how to communicate them properly. That’s where I think poetry can really help.

Following in the footsteps of de Beauvoir and other female literary figures, I think it's important in this battle of ideas to tackle things like toxic masculinity. It’s a cultural concept, that discourages compassion and empathy because they're seen as unmasculine and undesirable. But these traits should be encouraged, especially in men which, as a group, have higher rates of suicide, substance abuse and depression, all these devastating things. If men start to see things from a different perspective, I think we can really improve society which is why it's so important to read widely as a start, because a lot of these changes can come for free. You can educate your sons, you can introduce them to all these concepts, you can destigmatize a man reading poetry. It's so important to just listen and absorb sometimes instead of talking in a dominant or extroverted way. I think an interdisciplinary approach can really help unpack those kinds of norms, so I would really encourage it—I think you guys are doing great work here.

Those are powerful points, and we feel the same! Speaking of photography, we admire your beautiful postcard poetry—a project that captures moments like taxidermic memories. What has been the inspiration behind this project and how did you come to choose this medium through which to communicate?

I really echo what you said about trying to make words more accessible. I remember when I was younger, I read more protean and emotional poetry along the lines of Anne Sexton and Mary Oliver. So often, they described the things that I felt but couldn't quite put into words. That ability has always been a huge aspiration to me as a writer, to be able to help somebody younger go through something that might be draining or confusing them; to be able to crystallize those emotions in words that help clarify their situation and give them peace of mind.

In regards to photography, I'm afraid I might have a slightly underwhelming answer. I wish to be an all-around artist, but apart from poetry, I'm not very good at anything else. But I so want to combine a visual element with my poetry because not only is it a wonderful creative expression, but getting out into nature also compresses the ego. In my books, I write these postcards that I take photographs for, so it's an added personalization of the work as well. Through these photos, the reader can see the exact view that I was looking at when I was writing that postcard.

I was also inspired to get more involved in photography through Arthur Schopenhauer who, though depressing, is one of my favorite philosophers. He evolved a philosophy to overcome nihilism, saying that we need to embrace struggle, self-ownership, passion, art and that's how we bring meaning to our lives, which again is the foundational point of existentialism that I look to in all my work, even photography, as I continue to get better.

We’re excited for the future work you’ll share. What is next on your poetic—and cross-creative—journey?

Finally, I feel secure and established enough within the world of poetry to start writing about my true passions, philosophy and existentialism. This may not be a particularly commercially viable project, but I’m still going to do it. Right now, I have three projects going because lockdown has been so boring—all you can do is work, so your work/life balance is completely shattered, but it's been very productive so I don't mind. First of all, I'm almost finished with my first novel which I’m so eager to put out into the world, although it might be a couple of years since publishing takes ages. This delay can be exhausting since I find that as soon as one of my anthologies gets published, after dealing with imposter syndrome I also feel a disconnect to the work because I wrote it so long ago. I’m also excited about my third volume of poetry.

But the project that I’m most excited about is a collaboration with one of my closest friends, the Grammy award-winning artist/musician called RAC (his name is Andre). After being a big fan of his since 2012, I think of him as a creative genius so I was overwhelmed when I first met him and we clicked. We've been working on a lot of spoken word poetry, including a project for Diplo and Joseph Gordon Levitt. Andre was the first person to take a deep interest in my work and to be supportive and encouraging, which was amazing because I've never had that. My other friends are supportive, but they're not very into poetry so they’ve been passively supportive.

RAC and I are working on another project together right now. Whether it’s successful or not, the true beauty is the sense of purpose we feel when creating. It's already been a magnificent journey, and I'm eternally grateful to him and his wonderful friendship. What an amazing thing it is to find someone who supports both your dreams and your mental wellbeing.