I am a mother to two girls, a writer, an artist, and an academic. My creative and academic interests revolve largely around familial relationships, the domestic, mothering, matricentric feminism and matrifocal narratives. My debut pamphlet, Bloodlines was published in 2017 and examines the familial relationship between a daughter and an absent father. In 2020, I completed a PhD in English and Creative Writing in which I wrote a collection of new poems about birth trauma, and an accompanying study on the artistic embodiment of mothering experience in the matrifocal poetry of Vicki Feaver. I am on the editorial board for the Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS). My poetry and prose has been published in a variety of journals, magazines, and anthologies including The London Magazine, Envoi, and Raving Beauties (Bloodaxe), and Thresholds. My art and illustrations can be bought through Etsy at BrockbankArt or through direct commission.
Firstly, please tell us about your creative work.
My most recent work has been the creation of a new collection of matrifocal poems exploring my experience of birth trauma and resulting surgeries. The collection became a personal testimony to my experience of physiological and psychological change during pregnancy, traumatic birth, and the postnatal period. So far, twenty-four of the poems have been published in magazines, journals, and one commended in the Stanza 2019 competition. My creative work is informed by my experience of mothering and scholarly research, particularly into the coercive control of motherhood the institution, medicalisation of birth, and the artistic embodiment of experience using object-centred responses to emotionally-laden objects such as episiotomy scissors.
Where do you work? What does your space look like?
I used to share a writing shed at the end of the garden with plenty of space for my photography equipment, paints, canvases, yarns, and collage papers, but at the start of the pandemic, my husband needed a full time place to work uninterrupted. ‘Well so do you!’, I hear you cry, and you’d be right. I would’ve liked to have kept that island of peace between the trees, shrubs and soft cluck of hens, but I’ve adapted. It was a matter that was much debated but the truth of it was, I could be more flexible with the nature of my work, I didn’t have to hold numerous conference calls or focus on intricate spreadsheets. I set up a desk in the conservatory which provided me with better light for painting and its tiled floor is great for mopping up paint. We also heaved my wardrobe into the corner of my children’s bedroom which made space for a writing desk in our bedroom. Although I am always hesitant about having work spaces in rest spaces, the bedroom was the quietest part in our house, and as my husband jokingly quipped, ‘You’ve now got that artist’s studio flat you’ve always wanted!’. I quickly realised that I liked the busyness of the home, the noise, the smell of cooking, sharing my desk with snoozing cats, and that it was actually pretty darn good.
Is there a creative routine that you swear by?
No. I’ve learnt that keeping a regular routine can be a fraught experience whilst meeting the needs of children. Interruption is part of mothering, constant and inescapable. To get around this, I decided to rethink interruption as simply a minor diversion, and this enabled me to overcome breaks in creative rhythm. I’ll write, collage, and draw whenever the opportunity arises and use whatever is around me: a flour packet, a torn off corner of a utility bill, I even wrote on an egg once with a Sharpie pen. When I have more time, usually in the evening, I’ll collect the fragments, rearrange and stick them (or transcribe them in the case of the egg!) into a scrapbook. Sometimes, I’ll get some interesting arrangements that will open up a whole new and exciting avenue of thought.
What is the best advice you’ve ever been given?
The best advice I found was in historian, Sarah Knott’s book, Mother is a Verb: An Unconventional History where she encourages the ability to ‘pause softly’ (p.116) when interrupted. For me, this involved taking a moment to note my interrupted thought and the direction of the next.
Can you tell us one surprising aspect of your work that changed after you had children?
After a traumatic birth which resulted in corrective surgeries, I became acutely aware that the vocalisation and visualisation of birth, especially traumatic birth, is largely ignored despite birth being a fundamental human experience. In this sense, my lived experience of birth trauma became a centre of creative enquiry and development. In 2017, I began my PhD in English and Creative Writing and successfully applied for a creative residency at The Museum of Motherhood in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. The residency was hugely beneficial to the creation of my new collection of poems as it secured me time to write from the demands of motherwork and allowed me space to appraise my experiences, collate journals and conduct research. As part of the PhD, I had the opportunity to contest the toxic notion that parenthood has a devastating impact on creative pursuits and instead embrace the words of Justine Dymond and Nicole Willey who suggest that, ‘Not only is mothering worthy of expression and representation in art, but multitudinous acts of mothering are art’ (p.17), a statement that has stayed with me and boosts my confidence when writing or creating art about mothering. I also had the chance to investigate and highlight the matrifocal poetry of one of my favourite poets, Vicki Feaver, whose matrifocal poems until this time had received no critical treatment. It was wonderful to explore her matrifocal poems and add to the growth of a matrifocal literary tradition.
Do your children participate in your art and what form does this take? Physical action / inspiration / the subject of your art?
During the first lockdown, I wanted to visually represent the chaos of our domestic setting as we settled into our new routines of homeschooling and motherwork. I created collages using household objects and postal paper to make up paste papers. I observed the children’s use of the home for play and learning. It was fascinating to watch them upend sofa cushions for dens and wear every item of clothing in one afternoon (‘costume changes’) for their numerous plays. A playful and collective creativity grew and spread throughout our household. We must’ve tie-dyed every bedsheet in our possession that summer.
Is there a little voice inside your head that endeavours to knock your confidence as an artist and a mother? How do you silence it?
If you mean doubt, then yes, doubt is always present but it is not necessarily a negative factor in respect of creative endeavour. Doubt can be helpful, encourage us to pause and question our creative decision-making and encourage good editing. Having said that, I’ve experienced times when doubt has become unhelpful and led to brutal self-criticism and self-censorship. These are moments when, if possible, it is important to pause and consider whether the doubt is of the helpful or unhelpful kind, and although I believe doubt cannot be silenced, it can be ignored.
Name one self-imposed distraction that leads to procrastination and tell us how you handle it.
As we have been considering the subject of doubt, I will share with you a current helpful/unhelpful doubt quandary and how I am handling it. My major self-imposed distraction, or as I call it, organised procrastination, is the creation of pros and cons lists. Currently, I am considering whether to submit my collection of new birth trauma poems to a publisher or not. Many have been published separately in journals and magazines, but together they feel emotionally overwhelming. I’m truthfully nervous of baring all, but am I self-censoring of self-protecting? I’m pausing to consider.
Sloes was commended in the Stanza 2019 competition.
Links and references:
Website:www.hannahbrockbank.com
Instagram and Twitter:@hannahbrockbank
Brockbank Art on Etsyhttps://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/BrockbankArt
Museum of Motherhoodhttps://mommuseum.org
Brockbank, Hannah, Bloodlines (Beaworthy: Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2017)
Dymond, Justine & Nicole Willey, Motherhood Memoirs: Mothers Creating/Writing Lives (Bradford, ON: Demeter, 2013)
Knott, Sarah, Mother is a Verb: An Unconventional History (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2019)
