Dean Atta on There Is (Still) Love Here

There is (Still) Love Here, Dean Atta’s new collection, is a meditation on love in its many forms: not just love for family, partners and friends, but also love for culture, heritage, and home. Many of the poems were written in lockdown while Dean and his partner – a person who appears in many of the poems as a figure of much-loved domesticity and adventure – were living in Glasgow. During that time, Atta found himself not only writing his second novel, but also returning to his poetry pen, gifting his readers with this collection on love, identity, sorrow, and so much more.

"The collection has a kind of story to it," Dean remarks. "[These poems are] reflecting on times throughout my life…The fact that I moved home, moved from London to Glasgow. It’s also about my connection through my mum’s family to Cyprus. It’s also about being Black and queer and in a long-term relationship."

Having read the collection, it is easy to see the narrative drive which Atta refers to. The reader is with him as he holds his friend’s hand as she loses her fight with cancer, we celebrate finding community at Category Is Books in Glasgow, and we long to watch the Thames flow past the Southbank Centre. But at the heart of the collection, the thing that binds the narrative together, Dean says, is the "celebration of love, lots of kinds of love; family love, friendship love, romantic love, and self-love."

It’s this myriad of interpretations of love which makes There is (Still) Love Here so engaging, so easy to empathise with. It would be nearly impossible to read the collection without finding a poem which speaks directly to an experience which you have yourself had. When asked what he would like people to take away from the collection, Atta says; "Just for people to appreciate what’s already there in their lives. I don't think we need to look very far to find a lot of love in our lives. I think that's what I want to tell people."

And that’s a very clear and beautiful message within the collection, but that’s not to say this is an easy or wholly comfortable read. Atta talks about the more challenging side of the collection: his grief and homesickness, and the horrendous treatment and murder of LGBTQIA+ people across the world.

"My poem, Pulse, was written after the Orlando shootings at Pulse night club. And that was a very angry response. It might not even come across as an angry poem, but I felt very angry about so many things. Not being American, sometimes you can try and distance yourself from gun violence, but if it’s happening anywhere it’s a thing to be angry about."

There are many moments like this throughout the collection, where Atta shares his anger or pain, punctuating the narrative with times of grief and crisis. He reflects that writing these poems is an important, valid way of marking moments in time. That, for example, although the laws around gay men donating blood have changed, its previous illegality should still be remembered as abhorrent; something that reminds us to keep progression alive and inclusive. Poetry, as Atta exemplifies in his poem Sanctuary, is the perfect artform to undertake this work.

But poetry can be comforting too. "I was part of Hannah Lavery’s Writers of Colour group and we met throughout the pandemic on Zoom, every Friday. It was just amazing, Friday lunchtimes were the highlight of the week, so a lot of these poems came from that workshop."

While creating poetry is at the heart of those workshops, Atta also talks at length about how important those groups were to him from a personal, community-building perspective. "When you weren't allowed to be close to people physically, you could get really close to people emotionally by sharing rough poems, like first drafts and giving each other feedback or just encouragement.

"My main connection with people was writing workshops and it's just a really lovely, privileged position to be in, to hold that space for people. I definitely felt like poetry in its rawest form, the poetry workshop, was really what gave me a sense of community during these times."

Although Atta talks about – both in the interview and in There is (Still) Love Here – London as his home, his poetry gives such a warm sense of how welcome he has felt in Glasgow and, more widely, Scotland. With this new collection shining with empathy, generosity, and solidarity in grief, Scotland will be sad to see him move back down South. But, it can safely be said, there will (still) be love here for one of the UK’s fastest rising poetry stars.

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Nine Arches Press, 8 Sep, £10.99