From the Subterranean Murmurs of her Sister Soul

Gemma June Howell’s debut novel The Crazy Truth is a hybrid poetry novel following the story of valleys poet, Girlo Wolf. Set in post-industrial Britain, spanning four decades, this novel follows Girlo’s journey as she battles with mental health and childhood trauma. Through her experiences and those of her working-class community, Girlo discovers that her words are a path to survivourhood. 

The Crazy Truth began as my PhD research in Creative and Critical Writing. Initially envisioned as a künstlerroman, it evolved to include a broader narrative with multiple voices. This egalitarian work draws on the lives of those disenfranchised by mainstream society, portraying the collective struggles and triumphs of working-class lives in contemporary Britain. It challenges societal norms, amplifies marginalised voices, and explores the complexities of post-industrial neoliberal society. As an emancipatory work of auto-fiction, The Crazy Truth aims to uncover discrepancies between social ontology and historical realism. Contributing to feminist epistemology, it highlights the lives of working-class women and underscores the transformative power of storytelling.

The transformative power of storytelling

While tracing the creative becoming of emerging ‘Chavette’ poet, Girlo Wolf, the story brings to life five generations of familial relationships and is an exploration of the rich and diverse lived experiences of working-class people, illuminating the past origins and present conditions of discrimination, marginalisation and subjugation of women. Audre Lorde states, “poetry is the way we give name to the nameless,” emphasising its profound ability to unveil the unseen. In my novel, the intention is to raise consciousness and shed light on hidden truths. Adrienne Rich similarly envisions poetry as a collective consciousness-raising necessity, in ‘The Dream of a Common Language,’ delving into new connections between consciousness and nature. 

“Poetry is the way we give name to the nameless.”

In the context of The Crazy Truth, the evolving relationships among characters mirror the shift from a once-fertile land to the harsh realities of the post-industrial landscape. In Sister Outsider (1984), Lorde speaks of poetry as illumination in her chapter, ‘Poetry is Not a Luxury,’ where it is “a vital necessity of our existence.” She states that “the farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives” (ibid). Like Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Lorde takes a psychoanalytical approach, where she states that for each of us “there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing, our true spirit rises” (ibid p.25) … it is here where consciousness is formed; not in the restrictive, phallic- centric world, where “within living structures defined by profit, by linear-power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive” (1984, p. 28).

In favour of a life authentically lived

Author of The Women who Run with Wolves (1992), Clarrissa Pinkola Estés uses the metaphor of a gilded carriage to describe the many traps of patriarchy, claiming that repressed states of being create “a devalued life” (1992, p.223). She urges us all to cast off the illusions of the “gilded carriage” (ibid) in favour of a life authentically lived, beyond the shackles of ideological constraints. Lorde directly addresses: “the white fathers told us: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ The Black Mother within each of us – the poet – whispers in our dreams: ‘I feel, therefore I can be free,’” (Lorde, A. 1984, p.27). Such deep psyche connections to poetry are fundamental to transcendence and Lorde speaks of poetry as a form of distillation, “not the sterile wordplay that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean – to covert a desperate wish for imagination without insight” (ibid p. 26).

Collective action and an imposing of will upon the world

Within The Crazy Truth, there is the persistent reminder that women are weaker than men. The society in which Girlo grows up is defined by the needs and actions of men, who make the rules, write the books, set the agenda and control discourse. However, within these constraints, Girlo makes it her mission to take ownership of her past, present and future, dismantling the mechanisms of oppression with critical thinking, independent learning and writing. She understands that emancipation takes collective action and an imposing of will upon the world. Her inspiration does not come from the words of those who dictate from their ivory towers, but from lived experience, her sacred fount … from the subterranean murmurs of her sister soul. Through a distillation of life through many lenses, she can free herself and others from the chains of power. It is through the act of writing that she becomes neither master nor slave, but an autonomous being in a constant state of transcendence.

Short extract from chapter ‘Valleys Poet’ 

She didn’t choose this existence; she’d been born into it. A toxic patriarchal world order in which her subjectivity had been severed, leaving her feeling devalued as a human being. Just like the Bonobo, she was second-class, a poor relation. She took out her notepad where she’d scribbled a quote by Sartre: “A man is always a teller of tales. He is surrounded by his stories and the stories of other men.” Beneath it she wrote: What of the stories of women, or, more precisely, the stories of my women? 

The Crazy Truth was published by Seren Books in May 2024 and is available to buy online https://www.serenbooks.com/book/the-crazy-truth/ and from all good bookshops. 

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Dr Gemma June Howell is a multi-talented writer, poet, activist, academic and editor. She is Desk Editor at Honno, Welsh Women’s Press, Director of Women Publishing Wales – Menywod Cyhoeddi Cymru, and Associate Editor at Culture Matters. Her work has mainly appeared in the Red Poets, with her dialect poetry featuring in ‘Yer Ower Voices’ (2023). She has also been published by Bloodaxe Books (2015), The London Magazine (2020) and has featured on Tongue & Talk for BBC R4 (2021).
In 2010 Gemma was a finalist for The John Tripp Award for Spoken Word. She published a volume of poetry, Rock Life (2014) and a collection of short stories Inside the Treacle Well with Hafan Books (2009). She has a PhD in Creative & Critical Writing from Swansea University. Her research focused on the disparities between social ontology and historical realism from a proletarian, feminist standpoint and led to The Crazy Truth (Seren, 2024). Her work could be described as transgressional fiction which delves into the complexities of working-class identity in post-industrial Britain. She is an advocate for equality, representation and social equality in politics, publishing and the arts.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing