What kind of a year has 2023 been for you?
Honestly, 2023 has been a completely wild year for me, with very high highs and low lows. I had a fairly major MS relapse in January. At the same time, all the seeds I planted over the last few years were starting to bloom, and I had some very exciting career opportunities. In March, Book of Hours, my self-published collection of poetry and lyric essays, won the Barbellion Prize. Later in the year, I was commissioned by the Bronte Parsonage Museum to make new work that launched at the Bronte Festival of Women’s Writing. I also had days when it felt like a massive achievement to get my socks on.
What has changed for the better?
I’m embracing new ways of working. At the start of the year, when I was having my relapse, it was obvious quite quickly that I would need to completely rethink how I was doing things. I was struggling with vertigo, and I had to think, so right now, I can’t travel further than my armchair. What can I make in my armchair? I started experimenting with iPad drawings. I had this idea to make mock-ups of large-scale public art installations. I’ve always wanted to work with light art but never had a clue how you would ever make that happen, so I just started drawing them and posting them on Instagram. Someone sent me an opportunity to make new work for BD is Lit, the lighting festival here in the Bradford District, and I was commissioned to make the work into a reality. It’s currently on display in the district.
Also, I developed a script in 2022 for a live show about MS and Vikings called Fishing Net Soul, that I was so excited to keep working on this year. After my relapse, this became impossible, so I decided to rework it as an audio piece. I’ve just received Arts Council funding to explore the project with an amazing team of people.
I feel like, as a disabled artist, I’ve always been under pressure to work in a system that isn’t built for me, but in 2023, I couldn’t do that, so I had to do things on my own terms, and things have been shockingly possible. Hopefully, my health will be more stable in 2024, but I’d like to take these changes into the new year with me
What do you wish had happened this year but didn’t?
In January 2023, my first solo show, ‘Anchorage’, had just closed at Attenborough Arts Centre. I would have loved the opportunity to tour ‘Anchorage’. I would have really liked to figure out how to make Book of Hours into an audiobook.
I’m always hoping I’ll get better at the planning and organisation side of my career; I often feel like three cats in a trench coat pretending to be an artist, and my aim is to have a year where the cats are productively collaborating inside the trench coat and not trying to run in different directions after a laser pointer. But then it’s good to have some things left undone at the end of the year. That way, you know what you’re aiming for next year.
Letty McHugh, Book of Hours pages
What would you say has been your major achievement this year and why?
It’s got to be winning the Barbellion Prize with Book of Hours. I was honestly so honoured that my self-published artist’s book made the long list, along with traditionally published titles. To be on the same list as people like Alice Wong and Polly Atkin. It still doesn’t feel real that I won, and everything that happened after it was all so surreal. I talked about The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on BBC Front Row because I mentioned the show in my book. My print run, the biggest one I’ve ever done, sold out in 24 hours. Then it’s me and my Mum getting everything packed and labelled, then putting all the books in this Christmas sack because it’s the only bag big enough. I caused absolute chaos at the post office, and the man behind the counter was furious with me. I had no idea what I was doing.
It’s only really sinking in now what an unlikely thing it was for me to win the Barbellion award at this point in my career. It’s taken a while, but I’m starting to feel proud instead of just stunned.
Letty McHugh, You Still Have The Sky, 2023, iPad drawing
Is there anything you’d like to have done this year but haven’t?
This is daft, but I really wanted to go to Heysham. In Fishing Net Soul, there’s this line about how if I didn’t have MS, I would go to exotic, glamorous places like Heysham in Lancashire. That’s sort of a joke because Heysham is not exotic or glamorous, but it’s also not a joke because living with disability adds all these layers of complication into a theoretically easy trip like that.
They have all this interesting history in Heysham, really good burial mounds and these connections with Saint Patrick. It would just make my weird, geeky little heart so happy to go, and this year, it just didn’t work out. 2024, though, Heysham or bust.
What would make 2024 a better year than 2023?
Mostly not having an MS relapse. In the last few months of the year, I’ve been trying to focus on how to balance being chronically ill and pretty ambitious. How do you care for a sick body and make big, exciting work? Making more progress on untangling that conundrum would make next year better, I think.
Embracing collaboration is going to be important next year. It’s easy to feel like I need to do everything myself, but I’m starting to learn; it’s not just that I can’t keep working like that, but it’s that I don’t actually want to. My 2024 is going to be connecting with other creative people and trusting them enough to ask for the help I need.
