Workers, by Peter Kennard
By Alan McGuire
About a year ago, I was struggling to find a home for my poetry, it felt like most of the doors were shut. Rejection after rejection. You think don’t take it personally, but I would take one look at my poetry, and another at the publications I was submitting to and I felt like I just didn’t fit. Culture Matters fit. As did Ink, Sweat and Tears. But other than that everything either felt too upmarket or too niche.
Then I found GRASS. A publication that didn’t just accept working-class art and poetry but celebrated it unapologetically. I sent in a piece and found myself among others whose voices, like mine, weren’t often at home anywhere.
At the heart of GRASS is Tommy Sissons—poet, journalist, and author of the powerful non-fiction polemic A Small Man’s England. I recently had the chance to interview Tommy about where the project began, where it’s headed, and how his work—both creative and critical—continues to challenge class narratives in British culture. What follows is a conversation about building class consciousness, promoting marginalised creativity, and how working-class people have been marginalised.
What motivated you to start GRASS Magazine, and how has its mission changed over time, what’s the plan now?
GRASS Magazine originated from conversations I had with my then-housemate Matt Wilson in 2019. We had been students together at Goldsmiths, University of London and shared a keen interest in class identity. We set up GRASS as a tongue-in-cheek response to the lads’ mag culture we had grown up surrounded by in the noughties. We wanted to create a socialist publication which was proudly working-class, self-assertive and facetious. However, we also wanted to balance this audacious side to the mag with the inclusion of literary, philosophical and analytical pieces to counter the narrative that the working class aren’t ‘well-read’.
That was where GRASS germinated – since then it’s evolved to become a magazine which has published over fifty working-class creatives from across the UK and Ireland, and is now popular with readers both at home and in countries such as Germany, Spain, France and the US.
The plan now is to expand our reach further through several multimedia ventures. We have up until now been a print publication only (I’m an old man at heart) but to keep it that way is perhaps idealistic in our technology-governed world. Therefore, we’ll be advancing the project in the digital sphere too. I can’t say too much on it for now but there are a number of projects we’re working on which should see the light of day soon.
How do you go about curating content that reflects a wide variety of working-class creativity?
Our submissions policy has been very effective. GRASS issues aren’t curated around specific themes. This frees up working-class creatives to participate more – I say this because time is unfortunately a precious and fleeting resource to many of us and therefore I’m aware a lot of potential contributors won’t have the hours spare to create new work on a particular theme so that they can submit. I want to see all work (no matter its discipline or what subject matter it deals with) and I hope this keeps each magazine dynamic and eclectic anyway. There should be something for everyone.
The submissions process has also allowed me to meet a range of creatives whose work I otherwise might not have come across for a while longer. The arts scene in Britain is still very London-centric so I’m always chuffed that we get so many talented contributors from outside the capital.
The visual style of GRASS is striking and modern with an edge. What role does design play in expressing the magazine’s ethos?
Design is central to the magazine’s identity. We sometimes play with logos and typography to nod to shared cultural experiences – for example, the GRASS logo uses a mid-20th century newspaper typeface, but it also echoes the Rizla logo. Many of the visual quirks that make their way into the design draw on recognisable signifiers from British life, whether from advertising, industry, geography, sport, or beyond.
There’s no strict house style beyond the logo. Each issue’s designer is an active collaborator with the freedom to bring their own creative impulses to the fore. They’re encouraged to explore, experiment, and respond to the contributors’ work in a way that reflects their own personality and aesthetic language. It matters that they feel creatively invested in the project – like GRASS is in their blood as much as it is in mine. I think this keeps each issue distinctive and alive. I’ve come to see every new edition as a standalone artwork in its own right.
In A Small Man’s England, you explore working-class identity – how has that work shaped your editorial vision and your own creative practice?
Much of my work is driven by an urge to help revive a sense of collectivist class consciousness. Whilst it’s never disappeared entirely, it’s certainly more fractured today than it was, say, fifty years ago. In A Small Man’s England, I discuss the need for developing a DIY network of mutual support among the working class – an ‘each one teach one’ ethos that could extend into areas like education, housing, healthcare and work, helping to uplift those in disadvantaged communities.
I see this as a way of building a shared, class-conscious culture across the country. The hope is that this might eventually help lay the groundwork for us to collectively back a genuinely socialist candidate, whoever that might be. GRASS plays a part in that project. It contributes to community-building in its own way by spotlighting working-class creativity and fostering connections between artists, writers, and readers who might not otherwise find each other.
What are you working on now, either with GRASS or in your own writing?
GRASS has just been awarded a studio residency at SET Lewisham, so this past week has been about making the space feel like home. We’ll be based there for the meantime as we develop several expansion projects.
In my own work, I’ve recently signed a deal with Broken Sleep Books to publish my next poetry collection, which I’m currently working on. I’ve also just finished writing a play, so I’m now turning my attention to what the production process might look like. It’s an exciting time creatively.
How do you see the role of cultural democracy in relation to working-class representation in the arts? And do you think the cultural world is opening up more to working-class voices – or is it still a lot of tokenism?
I think the literary sphere in the UK was more open to working-class voices in the mid to late 20th century than it is now. At that time class discourse held huge cultural weight, and literature by working-class writers was much more visible – even ubiquitous (think kitchen sink dramas, The Wednesday Play on the BBC etc). Today, as class discourse is increasingly sidelined (in academic institutions; in mainstream politics; and in community organising, where it once served as a galvanising force), stories centred on working-class life are more likely to be overlooked or dismissed.
Tokenism definitely still exists. In the past decade or two, there’s been a noticeable presence of ‘poverty porn’ (both in literature and across other artistic mediums) spreading through the digital sphere. Even the label ‘working-class writer’ can be sometimes used in a tokenising way in the arts industry, pigeonholing the writer as though class is the only lens through which their work should be understood.
A writer should be recognised first and foremost as a writer. Being working-class is part of who a writer may be, but it shouldn’t define everything they do; too often, that’s exactly what happens. At GRASS, while we do use ‘working-class’ as an adjective throughout our copy, I’m keen that we publish working-class creatives who make work about anything they choose, without feeling confined to themes of class alone.
Overall, I’d say there’s less cultural democracy in the arts now than even a decade ago. That’s why I think a project like GRASS is important. It helps keep that democratic impulse alive by providing a platform for perspectives and narratives that are frequently marginalised.
Tommy Sissons is a poet, novelist, playwright and educator based in London. He is the literary editor of GRASS Magazine, a publication specialising in the promotion of working-class creatives. His novel ‘Cautious, A Boat Adrift’ and polemic ‘A Small Man’s England’ were both published by Repeater Books. Sissons’ poetry collection is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books. He has been commissioned to write and perform spoken word poems for clients such as the BBC, Channel 4, VICE and Red Bull.
You can buy issues of GRASS here
