BILLIE MORGAN,

PARADOXIA: A PREDATOR’S DIARY, Lydia Lunch

‘I was lucky enough to grow up at a time of seriously inspiring role models for alienated teenage girls. These flame- and raven-haired tattooed Goddesses blasted into my consciousness through the music press of the early 1980s. From Bradford, West Yorks, and Rochester, New York, respectively, but seemingly locked on the same mission, they combined incendiary spoken word, musical collaborations with some of post-punk’s greatest innovators and a host of poetry, books and publications. Their subject matter simultaneously mined personal experiences at the edges of society and rage about the social and environmental effects of capitalism and the patriarchy. And they both had the effortless ability to take on any rowdy punk rock audience, make them shut up and listen in spellbound silence then leave them drooling for more. Partially this is down to their natural charisma but it also boils down to their innate gift for storytelling – a combination of voracious wit and comic timing, astute observation and boundless compassion for the brutalised – they know because they’ve been there. By watching them in action, getting to know them and eventually having the privilege of working with them both, I learned everything about the construction, delivery, integrity and purpose of literature. I find it impossible to separate them, so offer up a book from each that draws on biographical experience – including Joolz’s teenage marriage to a Satan’s Slave and Lydia’s outwitting of a serial killer – that explains why taking words to the stage was no faze to either.’