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In Conversation with... Heroica.

Words by Angelika May

Photography by Anya Rose


Women, gender minorities, and well-behaved men, welcome to Heroica; a poetry collective, and global storytelling platform hosted at Bar Doña—a space where High Priestesses, Hierophants, and Lovers watch over you with their omniscient gaze. Come, sit, lose yourself in an evening of deep connection. Share laughter, shed tears, reveal those naughty little poems, the sexy ones, the heart wrenching ones that make your voice crack, the mundane ones about the thrill of toast, the elaborate ones, the villanelles that have been growing dust underneath your bed. 


Heroica’s aim is to foster education and empathy through storytelling, learning from the experiences of others: you walk in their shoes, you see through their eyes.


I caught up with Kyra just before the event, over a glass of ginger beer and grenadine (if you haven’t tried it, face your fears and give it a go).



How did Heroica begin?


Kyra It began in London, around four years ago, just as lockdown was starting. I had a background in writing, specifically for newspapers and knew that I wanted to do something for myself. I started publishing my own work on Medium, but noticed there was a gap for stories by and for women and gender minorities. I started a small community blog with friends and after a while we started to take submissions. We had a lot of folks submitting work that I thought was way more vulnerable than what I had been writing about, (work and being a woman at work). These stories that were coming in were about sexuality and relationships, which I thought was more impactful. I decided to create a platform to amplify this, and found Megan (editor), who comes from a publishing background to make it come alive. We wanted to create an uncensored space, as from my experience working in newspapers their way of working was just rinsing stories and everything revolved around what the publication wanted to put out there, but we wanted this to be a platform for everyone. Also we don’t ever edit for content, just for clarity. 



I can imagine you get submissions that express vulnerable topics, have you ever had to consider whether a piece is perhaps appropriate?


Generally we go by what feels interesting or new. A while ago, we had a story that came in where we had to discuss whether it breached our ethics. The title was something along the lines of ‘I Love Being Catcalled’, and even though we don’t state ‘we are a feminist publication’, it’s pretty obvious. It felt somehow like it was going against our value system, even though we are not supposed to be a vacuum of ideas, or censoring work, but when it came in we did have to think, should we caveat it? Catcalling is a form of sexual harassment, so we thought perhaps we would need to put trigger warnings alongside the piece, or not publish it at all because we don’t condone catcalling. We decided in the end to publish it, because it was an interesting point of view, it was well written and it was an and it did have a ‘clickbaity’ title. We allowed it to exist on its own and agreed we wanted to reflect a really diverse set of opinions and not prevent someone from sharing their view. 



I can hear an American accent, so I’m assuming Heroica is global?


K I’m not from the States, but yes, it is global. I’m Ghanaian and German, I grew up predominantly in Germany, in Berlin but with American teachers, which is where I picked up this accent from. Our biggest reader/writer base is here in London and the UK, then the US and Canada and then Germany. We have a lot of contributors and readers from Berlin. 



Is there a specific work of fiction or poetry that profoundly impacted your life?


K Half-Caste by John Agard impacted me when I was really young. It was the first time I had dealt with a poem, it’s a very musical poem. It goes something like; ‘oh look at me, standing on one leg, I’m Half-Caste.’ It plays on the half-ness of being mixed-race, which I am. Growing up in a very white environment, it was the first time I saw someone talking about this specific identity issue, which I had been feeling as a child, but didn’t have the words to talk about or understand, especially so blatantly, I think Half-Caste is a slur, it’s a very uncomfortable word, but it made me think that you can write uncomfortable things and it still mean so much to somebody else.



How do you think it changed your perception of self after reading it?


K I felt really validated, like I had an identity with this ‘non-identity’. It was great to see someone else describe when you feel like you are not enough of one thing, but you’re not enough of the other thing either, so you are pushed into a category of ‘not enough.’ It’s been a long journey, but it began the movement of me moving away from trying to feel black, or white and just feel like a human being without having to ‘code-switch’ constantly.



As a platform that amplifies the voices of women and gender minorities, how have you seen connections form at your events?


K That’s my favourite aspect of these nights (apart from the poetry being awesome). Most people know each other by name now, there have been people who have formed such long-lasting, genuine friendships. For example, there was someone who needed a place to crash, she had come down from Manchester and stayed with someone she had met at the last poetry night. People are making real connections and getting excited about meeting each other. 



What advice would you give to women who want to attend your events but feel nervous about performing their work?


K I would say that they shouldn’t be nervous because of how inviting the environment is. I was even surprised at how open and kind everyone is. I’m not here to shade any other poetry night, but we're not pretentious, all our poets are from different walks of life, at different stages of their careers. We have poets who have written their first piece that day, and decide to perform it that night, we also have poets come and read as a stop off whilst they’re on tour with their work. The space is small, intimate, it’s full of lovely women, and these women are so nice, they’re so welcoming to one another and usually if a poet tells other attendees that they’re nervous, these girls will create a fan club for them and spur them on. 



Where do you think more work is needed to amplify minority voices in the literary world?


K [laughing] Everywhere! 


K Particularly in funding, also community spaces and the backing to get in front of publishers and money to print your manuscripts. It is so expensive to take things to print, every piece needs money around it, whether that’s for taking it to print, or allowing artists to have the time and space to create, especially in big cities that are not always forgiving with young creatives. Also, prioritising minority voices, when I was growing up, all I would notice was magazines with white women on the front cover, so when we choose covers for our prints and for our promo shoots, we always prioritise black women to create some diversity of what you see on the cover. Even in our latest anthology ‘Body Odyssey’, we decided to go for a pink wash over a white wash, because it made the illustration look like a person of colour. Visual representation is very important, even in writing and to see writers that look like you is important. When you enter Heroica, I would like to hope that you feel like you are in the right space. A lot of people are saying that at the moment there feels to be a surge of ‘surface level representation’, but it’s still meaningful, especially to young people even when businesses are just putting a bunch of people of colour on something and ‘now it’s fine’, it still matters to someone. 



What story brings you a sense of nostalgia?


K 'Homegoing’ by Yaa Gyasi, she is an incredible Ghanaian writer. The book follows two sisters in the 1800s, one stays in Ghana and the other one gets moved to the US as a slave, the book follows their generations to come. I moved around a lot as a kid, but one consistency was going to Ghana every year. The way that Gyasi speaks about Ghana and home is very nostalgic, it’s so warming, the story itself is pretty sad but her description of the coastline, the fruits, the weather, the smell of humidity is incredibly reminiscent. 



How did you transition from having this platform online to hosting in-person events?


K We started consistent in-person events in September, we had done the odd in-person event but to make it a regular thing was a no-brainer. Poetry was our overwhelming flow of submissions so we decided to create these monthly events as we felt that poetry really needed to be performed. 



You host your events at Bar Doña?, which seems like a perfect dark feminine fit. Did you have an ideal setting in mind when planning your events?


K Finding Bar Doña was almost like a manifestation. I had just been searching for women owned bars around London, when I saw the photos, I thought it looked like we had branded the place. 



What’s next for Heroica?


K We want to expand our poetry nights so that we have one in North London and one in South London. We’re also releasing our first anthology and multiple iterations of said anthology. What we would really like to do is open up to more writing forms, accept more manuscripts so that we can facilitate writers to get their books published or their plays published. 


 


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