Words & Origins: Haley Wooning and The Poetic Expression of Intangible Pain

As morbidly uncomfortable a topic as it can often be, trauma is something I am endlessly fascinated by. As a writer, I am often trying to find new ways of expressing it - as an affliction, a haunting ghost, a set of goosebumps that caution us from moving forward. Each time, there is always something new to learn about the act of representing something intangible and that’s why it’s always a pleasure to find a new piece of someone else’s work that manages it so well. I was recently sent an A.R.C. of Willows Wake and Walk Away, the upcoming sophomore book release from poet and teacher, Haley Wooning, that tackles this exact topic. I adored its ability to remain in touch with its deepest roots and tell a story that is stubbornly defiant, emotionally transcendent and symbolically representative of something so frequently impossible to accurately describe.

For the third instalment of my interview series ‘Words and Origins’, this is Haley Wooning:

Liam Xavier: Willows Wake and Walk Away is not a regular collection of poems; it's very much an interconnected narrative of untitled but intentional, mixed-format poetry and prose. Did this come about by writing the poetry first and moulding the narrative around it, or did you have a strict plotline with which to guide the creation of poetry?

Haley Wooning: Oh, I love this question; it reminds me of what a wonderfully chaotic process the beginning of this project was. I wrote the first draft incredibly quickly, in just a few weeks, and although it eventually included a narrative, it began as a collection of poetry that all shared a similar “theme” and speaker. That early draft was nearly 300 pages of poems with no real structure. After that, I tried stitching in long passages of prose around anchor quotes to create a sense of movement or foundation, but none of it felt right. I went through quite a few iterations, throwing things out, reorganizing, experimenting with different shapes, before the narrative finally began to surface through the constant revision. At one point, I had given up on the prose pieces all together (it has never been my comfort place when writing). But the poetry felt … too untethered without them, and I found that the narrator demanded a bit more clarity. And I have to give loads and loads of credit to my editor, Dani from the Half Mystic team, who was instrumental in helping shape the later stages of the book and guiding the process of turning the collection into a cohesive narrative.

LX: I kept thinking how it often felt refreshing in its ability to speak in symbolism and complex literary expression - when poets and artists are often encouraged to dilute their work for an online audience, how important was it to stay authentic to your style and trust the audience to engage and understand it?

HW: Oh, it is absolutely crucial to me to write the way I write and to trust the audience. In truth, I do not write with an audience in mind. I write because I love writing, because I write every day, and because I do not want to do anything except write. When I have a project, my motto is to “throw it to the wind” and see where, if anywhere, it lands. I have a natural trust in my own feelings and in the belief that my experiences are universal enough that someone, somewhere, may resonate with language in the same way I do. Oftentimes, my work goes out and finds nowhere to nest itself. Sometimes it lands somewhere and someone finds it and enjoys it and, like in this case, gives me the incredible honor of believing in it. So there is this innate trust in the process and audience. As a reader, I need to be trusted. I do not like feeling as if my hand is being held, and this applies to all forms of art I love: film, visual art, literature, poetry, even music. It is that sense of trust between reader and writer that, for me, creates a real connection across time and space or opens one’s perspective to new lives, sights, and experiences. I am notorious for setting down a book or movie if I feel “talked down to” in any way. To me, symbols lose all magic when explained. A favorite poet of mine, Alejandra Pizarnik, once said something about how we “make sense of symbols a poet forges in private.” We do not need to understand the exact intention or method behind every motif or symbol an author employs; what matters is the emotional undercurrent that becomes the reader’s as well, that shared experience complex language can evoke even when it is not met in the mind with absolute similarity.

Wooning’s reference to her favourite poet and this refusal to dumb down her writing for the sake of an assumed or perceived need from an audience for something with higher clarity and less cloaked in clouded imagery is a delight to hear. As a fan of many of the artists and creators she mentions later in the interview, I have often struggled with my own approach to writing and it is only in trusting my audience’s ability to interpret and to investigate poetry in the way all good poetry deserves, that good work is created.

LX: These are mythical, forest and moonlight-laden visuals, almost like a gothic fae combination - why did you choose this approach to represent the journey to trauma recovery?

HW: I know it is silly to answer in such a way, but I will be honest: I write about them because I love exploring those visuals. In art, film, music, and literature, I am drawn to these fascinations again and again. In college, I took as many gothic literature classes as I could, and to this day I harvest and hold close any art or media that touches on that love. I also find a simplicity in using such imagery because we collectively and inherently understand the symbolism it carries. And perhaps it is obvious to say, but I am deeply inspired by the works of Guillermo Del Toro. Pan’s Labyrinth is one of my favorite films of all time, and I see the protagonist’s journey as both a metaphorical movement through trauma and recovery and a literal journey through forests, gothic landscapes, and eventually the underworld. I study folklore types and motifs, and I find a comforting rhythm in the structure of a fairytale or folklore: someone begins safe at home, then an event forces their hand, and they must venture into the dark forest where they emerge (if they survive) wiser, more experienced, and more capable. There was never a question of where to begin or even what exact approach I wanted to use to represent trauma-recovery, it started in the forest, and I wrote from there.

LX: Perhaps an unanswerable question, but do you think trauma can ever accurately be represented by realist art?

HW: Perhaps an unanswerable question, but a fun and important one to ask regardless. In my personal opinion, I do not think that trauma can ever be accurately represented by realist art. If only because the simplicity in which strong feelings and sensations present themselves are degraded by the simplicity of language which fails to accurately reflect their weight. Facets of trauma can be accurately portrayed, yes. But perhaps not the whole, and not for the sheer length of time suffering and trauma demands. Art can struggle in reflecting the weight of time, as well. Does Roland Barthes’ Mourning Diaries accurately represent grief and the trauma of losing a loved one? In my mind, it is the closest one to doing it. But it is a rare occasion, and even there the scope of suffering and its duration is not captured in its entirety. I suppose the command term “represented” is pulling at a lot of threads here. And I am not saying anything new, either. Parts of trauma can be represented, but only parts. Absolute representation, I think, is impossible. That is the beauty of collective works and communities and shared creative outlets, though. Perhaps all of our powers and works combined, we start to make a sense of a whole from each of our disparate parts.

LX: There's a clear sense of melancholy and pain in this journey, but with a tinge - a hue, even - of defiance and strength, as if never truly defeated - how did you weave this into even some of the darkest lines?

HW: Hah, I think I wove it in out of my own defiance and stubbornness. It certainly bled into the narrator, as for the narrator, the act of survival itself is defiant, no matter what feelings surround it or come after. Recovery and healing move in every direction, often in waves that shift from absolute suffering to mild or disbelieving suffering, with a few small joys thrown in for good measure. Her strength and obstinance are present from the beginning, even if the narrator is unaware of them. In my real life, I am a wretched optimist. I love life, and I love to love life and everyone I encounter within it. The narrator has that spark, too. And it is an odd, discomfiting thing to love life while feeling oneself drowning in fear and dread and doubt. How can these things coexist? I know they can reside together, and that was something I explored while writing in the narrator’s space: I am suffering right now, but I still see the sweetness of the grass on the hill in the wind. Something horrible and life-altering and unspeakable has happened, yet the sun still rises, there is still a forest somewhere, and the heart still beats. I know the project is weighty, it is, after all, a book about trauma, but it is also about celebration and triumph. Survival is enough, and then time passes as it always does, and the moon remains present and beautiful.

LX: For anyone new to your writing, how would you define your style and would you say it remains consistent across projects?

HW: While my style and writing remain consistent across projects, I struggle to define it. What comes to mind first is a kind of mental checklist drawn from Edward Hirsch’s Poet’s Glossary. Free verse? Check. Lyrical? Yup. Like many poets, I have read Lagenbach’s The Art of the Poetic Line, the prose poetry of the French surrealists, and T. S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” yet I still struggle to identify with any particular genre, form, or formlessness. I may acknowledge the bits and bobs of style I pick up from everything I read or experience, but the work of definition still eludes me. I know what inspires me, and I know whose work I return to again and again. I love the confessional style of Plath and the acute sense of meaning Oliver embodies. I am pulled into the wordiness and complexity of Lorca, Lispector, and Pessoa, and into the imagery and imagination of Lucie Brock-Broido. The list goes on and on, and I will stop myself here.What I mean to say is that while my writing has naturally evolved over time, an amalgamation of everything I experience and consume, I like to believe my voice has remained unaltered. My inspirations form the foundation, and they remain constant. It is therefore easier for me to define or identify my style through the work of others rather than by attaching a name or genre to it, which I know most poets struggle with to some degree.

LX: Dare I mention every writer's new enemy - AI - but, with such a personal, human and fundamentally traditional collection in the intentionality of its creation, does the rise of digital and automated creativity ever occupy a space in the back of your mind when publishing these works?

HW: Oh absolutely. I am a High School English teacher, and I am only too aware of AI. I see first hand, every day, its impact on young learners, how it kills creativity and critical thinking, how it snuffs out the beautiful endurance of laboring over language and tending to literature. I am so inundated, like anyone else, with this new world of AI that I avoid social media and the internet as much as possible just to carve out a few areas of my life where it does not reside. I see it taking over classrooms, art, and the inner worlds of my students. But this is not the space for a long soapbox vent about my fear or hatred of AI in the classroom or in art. It is a space for a small celebration: the idea that my work is regarded as human and personal and traditional by anyone at all is a staggering honor, and I hold that closely. Thank you for saying so, and thank you for this question.While the rise of digital and automated creativity often occupies far too much of my mind, I find real comfort in writing in my own small corner of the world and then meeting other writers and community members who are making things in and with the dirt, so to speak.

LX: You mentioned this started in 2021 and you created it as a means of catharsis but through someone else's skin - how did that process feel across 4 years, and how did it feel in 2021 vs 2025?

HW: Like I am reading the work of someone else entirely. I recognize it as mine, of course, but I have almost no coherent memory of sitting down to write it. As a method of catharsis, it did wonders. It was more comfortable for me to address my own life by speaking as someone else, giving myself a degree of separation so I could parse the harder topics without feeling too vulnerable or exposed. Then, as I wrote, the narrator took on a life of her own, and I began to understand the ways in which we could be different, and should be different, even as we both clawed at the denser muck of recovery.I am in an entirely different place from where I was when I wrote the book, and because the book spans a year, the narrator changes a great deal in that time as well. I am not the self I was when I created her, and she is not the same self she was when first penned. The passage of time was absolutely essential for this project to work. I let it sit for a couple of years, and by the time I returned to it for revisions, I had a much clearer sense of what it was trying to say or grapple with. I could approach the collection’s harder parts from a place of stability and comfort. In short, the project in 2021 felt rushed and heated and messy and terrifying. As both the narrator and I grew and found stability, new homes, new grounding, it became more comfortable, more balanced, and more celebratory.

To conclude, I return to Haley’s belief in a common approach to representation, a bandying together of creative forces to bring to life - for cathartic and healing purposes - the words and evocations of the seemingly indescribable facets of our lives. This, along with a belief that real creativity, drawn from the heart and beating with blood, still matters to our everyday existence, is a power to remember in a world of dilution and socially curated blockers. Art still matters.

Willows Wake and Walk Away is being released on Tuesday 18th November 2025 by Half Mystic Press, you can pre-order here: https://www.halfmystic.com/bookshop/willows?srsltid=AfmBOop-bAy3a29Ydm_sXELxJEYURnxPlYO6vY0PLaNCZDpE0f5knQzv

Stay tuned for more!