In her mid-20s, Len Pennie is already a poetry phenomenon. She became renowned on social media such as TikTok during lockdown for posting a "Scots word of the day" and poetry videos. Her debut collection poyums, which won the Discover category at the British Book Awards, concludes with a poem ‘I’m No Havin Children’ that went viral, and is written in half-Scots, half-English:

 

     A'm no havin children, A’m gonnae hae weans;

    an ye’ll can ask whit A cry them, no what are their names

 

At Morpeth’s Northern Poetry Library on Wednesday evening she explained that the “Scots language was used as much as English in our house”, that she enjoys coming to the north-east because of the “language continuum” between Scots and Geordie, and believes that just as Scots and Gaelic will soon have legal protection as languages, all dialects should have the same recognition, too.

She warned her audience at the start that most of the poems in her book are about domestic abuse, as is the first one she wrote, titled ‘Honey’, after leaving an abusive relationship. Her therapist had suggested she take up a hobby, and after trying cross-stitching, she settled on poetry. She admitted: “It’s difficult to say what your book is about, people short of shrink back. I would like to live in a world where the words ‘domestic abuse’ start conversations, not end them.” ‘Honey’ is entirely in English:

 

     I know that you’re gone but it hurts all the same,

     the bruises have healed but I can’t ease the pain

     of knowing I let you, permitted, relented,

     and the thoughts of your hands leave my body demented.  

 

Pennie loves “the immediacy” of the internet - “I would write a piece, I would post a piece”  - even though it’s hard at times coping with online comments: “I don’t have a thick skin, that’s why I’m a poet.” Another poem, ‘Not All Men’, is a response to some comments: “They tell us it’s not all, but, god, it’s too much / To be always afraid of the next creepy touch.”

She grew up learning and performing the poems of Robert Burns, but now has decidedly mixed feelings about the “misogynist, top shagger”. She said: “I feel I’m the antithesis of what he is all about,” adding that, in reference to the “sanitised” versions of his poems, that “holding him up as the pinnacle of Scots writing is doing him a disservice”, if all the “dirty” bits are left out. She also referred to the “Scottish cringe”, and about avoiding conventional cultural images: “Oh, that’s tartan, that’s twee.”

Her Scots poem ‘Address Tae The Leid’ is partly a response to the Burns poem about the haggis, but aimed at “wee trolls”:

 

     Abuin yer soul the hatred bides;  

     Yer words are nocht but draps ae rain

     Agin ma heid,

     Taks mair than dubs aw filled wae pish,

     Tae droon me deid.

 

In response to an audience question, she said she hated poetry at school. “The people we were studying didn’t speak to me. I hadn’t entered the world of rap battles, slam poetry … the teachers hated poetry as well.” She added that instead, the kind of poetry spoken at north-east open-mic nights should be taught in classrooms.

Strong words, indeed. She revealed that poyums was published at just around the same time as a four-year case against her former partner came to court. She has a second collection due out before the end of the year: “It’s a privilege for me to be able to do this.”

There may only have been half a dozen poems read in the hour-long event. But it was a privilege to hear Len Pennie discuss her work, and to listen to her forthright views, too.  

 

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