Iona Zajac: Red Corn Poppies

The Skinny interviewed Iona Zajac last year when Red Corn Poppies was released as her second single:

Your new single Red Corn Poppies is beautiful. What’s it about?

Everything is dry and dead and unclean
And love spits for information’
(Hannah Sullivan, Three Poems)

I kept returning to Hannah Sullivan’s collection when I was living in Woodlands, Glasgow in November 2018. The streets were a mass of wet cardboard and browning curtains, getting anywhere felt like trudging through wet wool. 

One evening I went into a local fruit and veg shop after a very long day, to find everything inside had gone off, just filled with mouldy vegetables and wilting flowers. But for some reason I couldn’t leave without buying something – I think I salvaged a single plum. 

Red Corn Poppies is about the thing that wills you forward when all you want to do is sit down on the pavement, and let it all go.