Milena Williamson is from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. She is a PhD candidate, writing and studying poetry at The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. In 2021, she won an Eric Gregory Award for her unpublished manuscript The Red Trapeze, which went on to be published as Charm for Catching a Train by Green Bottle Press. We caught up with her to discuss her experience of winning and the journey her collection took from manuscript to publication, ahead of our 2023 Awards on 29 June.

Having an unpublished manuscript submitted to the Eric Gregory is unlike submitting to a usual award in that you are not necessarily offering up the definitive version of your work. What was your experience of this? Was there freedom in knowing this wasn’t the end of the creative journey for your text? 

Milena Williamson: When I assembled my unpublished Eric Gregory manuscript, The Red Trapeze, it felt far from definite. In that moment, I was just trying to create a strong portfolio of work. I felt less pressure when creating the manuscript because I knew that publication was not part of the award. This allowed me to have more fun and freedom when it came to organizing the poems and titling the work. I called the manuscript The Red Trapeze because it was an arresting image of fertility and danger, after a line from ‘An Irish Woman Travels to England.‘ Because it was my first year submitting to this award, I also had little to no expectations. When I look back now, assembling the Eric Gregory manuscript felt like the beginning of a creative journey.

The Red Trapeze consisted of work from both your MA and PhD. Now your debut poetry pamphlet has been published, based on the winning manuscript, as Charm for Catching a Train (Green Bottle Press). Can you tell us a bit about how the work evolved?

Milena Williamson: The Red Trapeze is such a lovely time capsule. It included work that had been workshopped and revised during the MA in Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast in 2017-2018. ‘On Our Last Night in Lancaster, Pennsylvania‘ was the first poem I workshopped in the MA and ‘When We Meet’ was the first poem I workshopped with Ciaran Carson and his Friday afternoon group. Both of these poems still exist, much as they were in The Red Trapeze, in Charm for Catching a Train. The Red Trapeze also included new work that I had written in the first year and or so of my PhD, also at the Seamus Heaney Centre. Some of these poems from the PhD were revised, possibly even while the manuscript was still being considered by the judges. One of the poems from The Red Trapeze, a longer piece about the bat bombs of World War II, did not make it into Charm for Catching a Train, and is only now going to be published in 2023! Jennifer Grigg, the editor of Green Bottle Press, and I had so many fascinating conversations about the pamphlet title before we finally chose Charm for Catching a Train. I felt this title reflected the number of journeys in the pamphlet: by plane and car in ‘Terminal Six’; the horse and buggy in ‘On Our Last Night in Lancaster, Pennsylvania’; the boat that brought my family to America in ‘The Wolf’ and of course the train in the title poem.

Did winning the Eric Gregory dictate the final product in any way?  

Milena Williamson: It was an absolute thrill to receive the Eric Gregory Award in the summer of 2021! Of course, I wanted Charm for Catching a Train to reflect the original manuscript which received the award. But Charm for Catching a Train was published in the autumn of 2022, around a year and a half later. I was writing different things and developing as a poet, so I think my experiences shaped the final, published version of the work more so than the prize itself. The prize gave the confidence and the opportunities to keep writing and revising, which in turn, was integral to the final product. I wrote about how Charm for Catching a Train consists of a five-year span of work, from first poem to final publication, in a piece on poems, process and time for The Honest Ulsterman.

The judges for that year were Andrew McMillan, Jamie McKendrick, Roger Robinson, Sarah Howe, and Anthony Vahni Capildeo. How did it feel to be chosen by them among the winners? 

Milena Williamson: It was incredible to receive the Eric Gregory Award from such talented, prolific poets. It’s lovely to know the judges likely responded to different poems, ideas, forms etc. but that they all fundamentally appreciated the work. After Charm for Catching a Train was published, I actually wrote to the Society of Authors and asked them to forward on an email thank-you letter to all of the judges. I should have done this sooner after receiving the award in 2021, but we were still very much in the height of the pandemic. At the time, I was focussed on traveling to America and being reunited with my family. To this day, I consider the Eric Gregory Award one of my proudest achievements in poetry.

Every new author’s greatest ambition is to see their work published. How did it feel when you achieved this? 

Milena Williamson: When I finally saw my pamphlet, I felt excited, anxious, proud and grateful. It was such a rush! My author copies arrived just as I was leaving the house, so I ended up opening the package in a carpark of a services between Belfast and Dublin. I read my partner the acknowledgements and we were both a little emotional. Seeing my pamphlet in No Alibis in Belfast was also really meaningful, especially since this bookshop is like my home away from home. As I was signing copies, a stranger came up to me to see what I was doing and bought one!

What would your advice be to writers who feel that they have an exciting manuscript on their hands and who want to deliver it to the world? 

Milena Williamson: I would say, writing a manuscript (pamphlet or book) is a long process! Try to enjoy the work you’re doing now. In particular, I would encourage people to join a workshop, maybe through a university course, Arvon or Poetry School. It really helps to have a community of poets who can offer you feedback on your work. I would also advise people just to submit and see what happens! Working with a good editor who is invested in you and your poetry is a valuable experience that allows you to see your own manuscript from a new perspective.

Your collection is in print now… is that the end of its journey? What are you working on now? 

Milena Williamson: Yes and no! I’m so proud of Charm for Catching a Train and the adventure it has taken me on. I have read from the pamphlet in Belfast and London. There were some generous and thoughtful reviews of the work in Poetry Ireland Review and Sphinx (HappenStance Press). One day, I would love to see some of these poems appear in the world again as part of a book! I have a (more or less finished) book-length poetry collection that I wrote for my PhD, which explores my father’s journal, photographs and reports from 1966-1967, during which time he was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. Right now, I’m in the final stages of revising and reordering another project that I have been working on since 2018. It’s nearly done and I’m excited when I can finally say more about it!

The winners of the 2023 Eric Gregory award will be announced on 29 June at Southwark Cathedral. The awards ceremony will be presented by Joanne Harris and keynote speaker Val McDermid. The event will be livestreamed. Online attendance is free with RSVP available via this link.

The SoA, in collaboration with the Poetry and Spoken Word Group, will also be hosting a Postive Poetry Party with a selection of this year’s Eric Gregory and Cholmondeley award winners on 12 July. Reserve your free place here.