Leanne Moden

1. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.
I started writing poetry as a teenager, but I didn’t start writing professionally until 2012. Since then, I’ve performed my work all around the UK and Europe, and shared poems in some brilliant locations: from canal boats and caves to the Royal Albert Hall! I’ve published two collections of poetry so far, Liaisons with Stewed Rhubarb Press in 2015 and Get Over Yourself with Burning Eye Books in 2020. More recently, I’ve moved into writing for theatre. My first one-woman show debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019, and I’m currently working on a new play, thanks to funding from Arts Council England. I live in Nottingham with my partner and our cat, and I love reading, walking and wild swimming.

2. Has writing always been a focus for you or was it a Plan B?
I have always loved writing, but I really didn’t think I could make it into a career. When I started reading my poetry at open mics in the early 2010s, I really fell in love with writing for performance. After that, I threw myself into the world of spoken word, and I used all my days off from work to do poetry. By the time I was in my early thirties, I’d been commissioned to write for literary organisations, been part of loads of creative projects, and performed poetry all over the country. When the pandemic hit in 2020, it was the final push I needed to quit my admin job, make the leap and become fully freelance. Now, I pay my bills through a combination of teaching, project work, writing and performance, and I couldn’t be happier!

3. How do you explore ideas or find inspiration for your work?
My best inspiration come from interacting with people. It could be a good chat with a friend, meeting someone new for the first time or overhearing conversations on the bus. I’m a bit like a sponge, always soaking up the ideas around me. I think writers need to be keen observers of people, so you’ll often find me, notebook in hand, watching people at the bus stop or down the park. I promise, it’s not as creepy as I’ve just made it sound!

4. What does the process of writing involve for you?
Poems are slippery things, because sometimes they come easily, and sometimes they need to be wrestled onto the page. I often write in a notebook for my first draft, then move onto the computer to give the work some structure. I always find editing really difficult, but my poems are always stronger after an edit (or three!). For writing scripts, I’ve been really lucky to work with actors and directors to rationalise the work, and that
collaborative process has been fantastic. I imagine it’s the same as the relationship between a novelist and their editor, although I have yet to write a novel – maybe one day!

5. And what does writing then also give you in return?
Writing gives me a safe space to develop and untangle my ideas. I also like the sense of discovery that’s inherent in poetry. With narrative work, you really do have to plan it before you start writing, but poems reveal themselves to you as you work. I often find that a finished poem says something I never expected when I started working on the first draft!

6. Has seeing your work in print changed how you view yourself, and also how you view your NoMo status?
I’ve never been prouder of anything in my life! But for me, it’s less about having a physical copy of my work out in the world, and more about the connections you can make with readers as a result. I’m always really pleased when someone tells me how much one of my poems has meant to them. For example, I have a love poem that people have started using as part of their wedding ceremonies, and it feels so wonderful to be able to articulate an emotion for people on their special day. I think that, because I never wanted to have children, I felt like I had to find another role for myself. I come from a fairly working-class background – with lots of aunts, uncles and cousins – so getting married and having children is just what’s expected. There does feel like an external pressure to ‘make something of myself’ because I chose not to be a mother. Despite that, I’m content. I love writing and the community that we have around poetry here in the East Midlands. So I don’t feel like I’m worse off for not having kids.

7. Tell us about the wider reception that you’ve had to sharing your story - has it changed how others have viewed you and your identity as a non-parent?
Not all of my work is explicitly about being childfree, but I’m really lucky to work with Raising the Fifth, a community for writers without children, where we can express ourselves on this subject. My poem 'I Want You To Know' features in the Un(mother) collection and the film of the same name, which you can find on the Raising the Fifth website. Publishing in that collection led me to working with Benny Box, a design studio in Copenhagen that made an animated film, based on my poem. It was just so lovely to be able to contribute to a positive conversation around choosing to be childfree. I’m very proud of how the animation turned out and I’d love to write more on the topic in the future.

8. How do you feel about the current representation of childless and/or childfree people in literature?
I’ve never wanted to have children, but when I tell people that, I always make sure to say, “But I work with young people loads and I do like children.” That caveat stems from how childless / childfree women and femmes are treated in the media and in fiction. I do think it’s getting better, as women choose to delay family planning, but I’ve certainly noticed that, now that I’m in my late thirties, I don’t see many people like me in stories. Let alone happy childfree women in their forties, fifties, sixties and beyond!

9. What would you like the publishing world to know about non-parents, both as writers and readers, and our stories?
That we matter and that our stories also need to be told. I’d like to see more representations of contented childfree women in narratives, as well as more representations of childlessness that are more complicated. All of us, regardless of how we got here, have stories that are important, and that are compelling, and that other people will want to read.

10. What future plans do you have, especially for your writing?
I’m currently in the process of writing a play, called Kingmaker, which we’re hoping to take on tour to rural venues in 2025. It’s a story about a woman who accidentally perpetrates an archaeological hoax and then has to decide whether the truth is worth the pain of losing her new best friend. While it isn’t a story directly about not having children, it does centre on two women who don’t have children, and it also doesn’t revolve around those women looking for romantic relationships either. I wanted to write a story that gave the women in it agency to be fully-rounded characters, without their relationship or childbearing status factoring into the narrative in any way. I’m also in the process of writing a new pamphlet of poetry, all about coming to terms with growing older as a woman, and what that means for your place in society. It’s early days on that al the moment, but I’m hoping to publish in 2026.