Poetry at Boiling Point: Interview with Si Griffiths Debone & Fold, Labour, Violence, and the Brutality of Fine Dining

Si Griffiths’ debut pamphlet, Debone & Fold, doesn’t just describe labour, it makes you feel it. The poems are visceral, steeped in the heat, blood, and exhaustion of the professional kitchen, where violence is lived. From butcher’s knots to Michelin-starred illusions, Griffiths dismantles the romance of fine dining, exposing the physical and ethical costs behind every plated dish. In this interview, he discusses the brutal realities of food preparation, the intersections of labour and power, and the poetry of work in a system that demands both submission and survival.

AP: Your poetry doesn’t just depict work—it lives in the body. Heat, blood, exhaustion, repetition. What does it mean to you to write about labour in a way that isn’t metaphorical, but physically felt? ‘I ready myself, I steady myself, I want to, I don’t want to. I can, I can’t.’ (Zero Hours +/-)  That moment of hesitation before pain—before stepping into the fire—carries through much of the collection. Is this just about the kitchen, or is it something deeper?

SG: Yeah, I suppose there’s two aspects to this, one being that in workshops and tutorials we so often have a big emphasis placed on bringing poems alive through our bodies and senses, which feels fair enough, with the other being that kitchens and food are both very sensual, full on experiences, so basically, as I began to write and explore this subject, it quickly became obvious that to do it justice the poems would need to be visceral and fully embodied, both for me as the poet, but then, also, hopefully for the reader.

I hadn’t actually thought about it that way, but I can see why you’ve picked up on it and it makes a lot of sense! I suppose in some ways I’m writing about the human condition, and indirectly where we find ourselves in terms of late capitalism and climate collapse. The exploitation we see at so many levels of our society, but especially embodied in our denial and objectification of the animals we breed, kill and eat, seems emblematic for all of the relationship problems we’ve caused for ourselves and the wider ecologies of the Earth. And food’s such a big, but under looked part of the story of both our species and our civilisation.

AP: Butcher’s knots, mussels boiled alive, lambs stolen from their mothers—the violence in Debone & Fold is visceral. What drew you to the brutality of food preparation as a poetic lens? You dismantle the romance of the Michelin star world (Michelin), exposing its underbelly. Do you think people truly understand the cost of fine dining, or do they choose to look away?

SG: Again, I think the reality of working in kitchens, at times while I was a vegetarian myself, made such practices and realities stand out to me. The things I was either prepared to do, or had to do, as part of my job, but which I wouldn’t have chosen to do, if I hadn’t needed the money the job paid.

No, I don’t think people do truly understand such costs. I also don’t think there’s any reason why we should assume that they would, given the extractive, detached nature of our economic system – whereby such costs are deliberately removed from view in order to make the end products more palatable. I believe this is true in so many cases, not just fine dining, but also in terms of say conflict minerals, like coltan, which both bankroll armed conflict and are essential for the manufacture of our mobile phones, or the palm oil that’s in most processed foods, or the way so many of our technological advances come from the military industrial complex.

So yeah, there’s an aspect of complicity, and looking away, but our economic system also makes that a pretty easy task, given that it does it’s damnedest to hide such toxic by-products and side effects in it’s pursuit of profit. All in all though, as I see it, we still need to take responsibility for our choices and actions, even if that’s just making the decision to look away.

AP: You don’t give us the cosy, predictable ‘love and food’ narrative. Domestic life here is fraught—knives in hands, tension at the table (Separation, Hors D’Oeuvres). What makes food such a potent site for power struggles and reckoning? Long Term Love is presented as a recipe, but it reads like a warning. Is love, like cooking, something that always carries the risk of burning, curdling, or being under-seasoned?

SG: Maybe it’s the dinner table, the fact that we’re so often facing each other?! Not to mention the nature of coming together to share a source of sustenance that our lives ultimately depend on, and which, as such, also comes with a variety of values and power dynamics attached. I think we often forget how primal food is, how much it tends to become entwined with our identity, and so I suppose that’s bound to have an impact upon our intimate relationships.

Yeah, definitely, like all things, given the baggage that most of us carry, there can’t be any guarantees when it comes to love, and nor should there be. I know that I have to work hard to make relationships succeed, and when I don’t put that work in, then in my experience, disillusionment and misunderstanding often follow. Both on a personal level, and when it comes to those of friends and family, I don’t know of any relationships that’ve been long term successful without putting in the hard graft of deep and honest communication.

AP: Your writing borrows the structure of menus, recipes, kitchen slang. What does this language do for you poetically? Does it create order, or does it expose chaos? The brigade system of the professional kitchen is deeply hierarchical—almost militaristic (Regimental Anarchy). Do you see poetry as operating under similar rules of discipline and submission?

SG: I suppose that was something I decided to play with fairly early on, and once begun it was just a matter of being open to that way of thinking, seeing what inspiration came along and experimenting with it to see if and where it worked. I think I see it more in terms of lending a certain structure rather than exposing chaos.

Ha, I could write many thousands of words about this, as it’s something I’m currently working on for my next book/project! But in short, it seems our society is deeply effected by the way war configures our relationships. Poetry and writing are without doubt embroiled within that, from Gilgamesh, to the Celtic warrior elites, the role of the poet or bard is so often to support the established order, to sing their praises and memorialise them. So in this sense, I suppose our lineage has a lot to answer for, and maybe we’re due a reckoning?!

In terms of discipline and submission, I suppose it depends if you decide to write in form, and then if you do, the form you actually choose. I’m currently doing a Bardic Craft workshop series with Gwilym Morus-Baird at Celtic Source (https://celticsource.online/). We’re learning and attempting to write English versions of the strict Welsh metre form Cynghanedd, where the consonants in the first half of a seven syllable line have to mirror, to varying degrees, those in the second half. At this stage it doesn’t feel easy or natural, in fact it’s rather painful! However, Gwilym speaks of his own learning process, and how with time and effort you can find a fluency and fluidity within such formal rules, so we’ll see, ask me in a year!

AP: You don’t shy away from cruelty—economic, physical, emotional. What was the hardest truth to put on the page in Debone & Fold? The collection asks the reader to look at things they might rather ignore—wage exploitation, animal slaughter, gender dynamics in restaurant culture. What’s been the strongest reaction you’ve had to the work?

Thanks, and yeah, I don’t think it would’ve been honest or true to depict such a world without showing such things.

The stuff about patriarchy felt close to the bone. As with the poems focused on animals and meat. In some ways these felt hard to write, but in other ways absolutely necessary. So I suppose it was about trying to find the right balance, approaching them from a point of view where I’m also, to a greater or lesser extent, complicit within these structures of domination and control, as a man living in a patriarchal world, as a sometime vegetarian cooking and serving cheap, processed meat.

And yeah, I think the final three poems are the most personal, and potentially most exposing, with Sterilized being the hardest personal truth, Split Shift offering a different, perhaps hopeful tone, and then Apron Strings, which wasn’t actually hard to write, from memories of cooking with my Mom when young, but which is obviously deeply personal, given that she died eleven years ago, and would have so loved to have read this pamphlet.

I’ve only really received positive reactions so far, but obviously the pamphlet hasn’t gone out into the world yet, so that could well change! Meat and food are such essential aspects of our identity that I’d expect there to be some strong and perhaps defensive reactions, but hopefully people will be able to appreciate that I’m coming at these things from a perspective where the poems see themselves as entangled within the problems, as opposed to taking the kind of stance that feels holier than thou.

AP: Many of these poems feel like a reckoning with personal history (Apron Strings, Separation). How much of Debone & Fold is about your own past, and how much is an interrogation of something bigger? If this collection were a dish—something complex, layered, possibly a little dangerous—what would it be?

SG: Yeah, it’s definitely a reflection on and exploration of my own experiences and my past, but to be honest, this feels more like a distillation of such thought and reflection, rather than an interrogation that happened during the writing itself. Although the writing did obviously hone those thoughts and bring them together, I feel that kind of approach to the world is one that I’ve always tended to take.

And as I said in my first answer, the themes of Debone & Fold seem to be pretty intrinsic to the places we find ourselves as a society that’s potentially on the precipice. Hierarchy, patriarchy, objectification, one-upmanship, human exceptionalism, as far as I can see, they’ve all played a massive and influential role in bringing us to this point of crisis in our journey.

Haha, not sure, and I’m also hesitant to answer this, as in asking other poets for a couple of sentences talking about the pamphlet, I seem to have kick started a food/cooking metaphor craze relating to the pamphlet, which while wonderful, could also have a tendency to verge into cheesier pastures! That said, perhaps it’d be one of my favourites, a lemon tart, slightly sweet, very sharp, topped with a dimple burn, dusted in icing sugar and served with cream and a blackcurrant coulis.