First Fruits

My last post was back in January. That afternoon, as well as blogging about not giving up, I also submitted some poems to a couple of online publications. The very next day, I was astonished to see that one of the editors I'd emailed had already replied, and had offered to publish two of the five poems I'd sent. This was hugely encouraging, and statistically unlikely (I've only had one other thing accepted - with suggestions for improvement - since then).

I didn't share the news right away as there was going to be a bit of a wait before the poems appeared online, one in March and one in April. I planned to write accompanying blog posts for each poem when it was published, and was excited to be able to include links to my 'real' poems for the first time.

By the time we were into March, however, the coronavirus pandemic, and the accompanying anxiety surrounding it, made it a bit hard to concentrate on writing. I kept putting off writing the post about the first poem 'The thin silence', and within a fortnight our family went into self-isolation, three days before the whole country entered lockdown. A month later, when 'Cope' made an appearance, I had not only lost the motivation to write, but also the time and opportunity, having now become a homeschooler, as well as losing the writing desk and laptop to the working-from-home husband.

Anyway. Better late than never. You can read the two poems here:

The thin silence

Cope

'The thin silence' is based on a 2019 sermon by David Campbell of the same title, which was about depression, and the experience of the dejected prophet Elijah hearing the still, small voice of God (1 Kings 19:12). This sermon resonated with my mental and emotional state at the time, and my response was the poem.

'Cope' was written about a year earlier, and is also to do with mental health (as the title might suggest). It came out of my strong dislike for the word 'cope'. I've always felt like it was a silly, weak word, especially when used to talk about people who are struggling. 'She's not coping very well', or worse, 'I can't cope', sound like a completely underwhelming way to describe an overwhelmed state of mind. One day I decided to look up the etymology of 'cope', and I was surprised at the depth of meaning that can actually be found in the word. At the end of writing this poem, I had managed to encourage myself that a) I can cope, and b) this is more of an achievement than I had previously thought.

As I write, we are still in lockdown, writing is still a challenge, but I am trying to make it a priority again.

On not giving up

 A friend asked recently how writing is going. The answer is, not well. Although I am gaining more space and freedom in which to write, I rarely get started, and when I do, I hate what I've written. I don't like to read the raw emotion that spills onto the page, yet it feels hypocritical to write with humour, optimism or hope that I don't currently feel.

A few things have prompted me not to give up, however. Last week I saw in my garden a small plant growing in a pot; it was a pot I'd left outside to be re-used, thinking that the seed I'd planted there had died. Yet it grew, without my help, and is beginning to bud. This reminded me of an attempt I'd made at writing a poem about planting this seed. The poem is a re-write of some verses from Habakkuk in the Old Testament, which I have always been drawn to for its bleak, understated sense of optimism. The same day last week, I heard someone read out the same passage from the Bible in a completely unrelated context. And in the last few days, kindness from my family has encouraged me not to give up. So, this post is on not giving up with writing, and it is my attempt at continuing.

(Proof that there is still a bit of hope in me about my writing is that I have a few things that I think might be eventually publishable, which means I can't share them here... however, this is not one of them: due to its lack of actual poetic merit, here's the Habakkuk 'poem'.)

Habakkuk

Though the fig tree should not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

yet…

yet I planted a seed, left it quiet

on a high shelf near the front door,

I try to remember to water it,

check it during my comings and goings,

before I’m called away again.

It has surely been too long now

to expect anything to come of it,

it must have rotted away,

become one with the soil it sat in.

My heart is a well of grief

for the fruit that never came,

and yet…

yet my feet go on trudging,

stumbling on this mountain side.

Remembrance Day

This morning my four year old told me what they'd learned at school about Remembrance Day. I tried to write down word-for-word what he said. My own feelings about Remembrance are hard to express, so I'll offer his words without further comment.

Remembrance Day

Mummy,
there was a rabbit
chasing a butterfly
on the screen at school.
But then there was a
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
And all the loveliness
cracked into pieces,
and that was the day
that I made my toy robot
at wet playtime and now
he's worried at night time
that there will be a war.
But then the screen cracked
into tiny little pieces
and there was a big red poppy
and it was really strong
and it means that there won't be
another naughty war in the world,
Mummy.

Writing the truth

Recently, there was a National Poetry Day competition with the theme of 'Truth'. Annoyingly, I've just written a poem about truth, too late to send in. But truth remains a weird thing to write poems about. What's the difference between truth/authenticity/sincerity/universality...? Can something in a poem ever be absolutely true?

A few months ago I wrote a poem that I did actually manage to submit somewhere. It was for the Places of Poetry project, where anyone could pin a poem about a place on a digital map of England and Wales. Check it out here https://www.placesofpoetry.org.uk/

My poem, pinned to Seaham on the coast of County Durham, was called Sea Glass. Here it is:

Sea Glass

We ate our sandwiches on the grass

up by the Seaham coastal path

backs to the carpark, wave watching

over the cliffs as the tide splashed in.

Then, down the concrete steps,

nettles reaching for our fingertips,

across the line of sea-turned stones

to the surging water’s edge beyond.

We picked up sea glass from the sand,

frosted white, green, honey-amber,

one small speck of electric blue,

one with rusted wire running through.

We stepped, scanning the length of shore,

and carried home a treasure hoard.

This poem has bothered me a bit with questions about truth. Although the description is literally 'true' - there are concrete steps edged by stinging nettles going down to the beach at Seaham - for me, this poem doesn't communicate the reality of the experience. It is devoid of emotive language, which was perhaps my way of dealing with what had been a difficult day struggling with depression and anxiety. The trip to the beach, at my husband's suggestion, was a welcome break from the darkness I had been inflicting on the family, and turned a bleak day into a happy memory. My poem doesn't really communicate any of this. So today I tried again, drafting a poem called 'The Truth about Sea Glass'. I'm not sure if it's finished yet, and if I do get it to a refined state, I may want to submit it somewhere else, which means I can't post it here (a sad truth about submitting poems for publication). The new one doesn't really rhyme or have a set metrical form (which may make it technically worse?) But, I already like it more, though, perhaps because it seems more 'true'.

The problem of pre-emptive grief

Back when I was still working towards an academic career, my research was beginning to look at particular sub-categories of grief. My postgraduate studies of the elegy, the genre of poetry which mourns a death, were getting refined to include new definitions of grief. This included, in the language of psychiatry, disenfranchised grief. Disenfranchised grief is an umbrella term which covers things like the loss of a pet, the loss of a secret lover, the loss caused by divorce, and many other instances in which the grief suffered might in some ways be seen as ‘taboo’. Or at least, less of an obvious loss than losing a loved person to death. Actually, the example that Freud uses in his work ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, upon which most of the literary theory about elegy has traditionally been based, is that of a jilted bride, which is clearly not a grief caused by death.

An area of disenfranchised grief that I had started to write about was that of anticipatory, or pre-emptive, grief. The grieving that occurs before a tangible, final loss has taken place. The example that I had been working on was the grief connected with dementia. This became more personal to me as I watched both sets of my grandparents, together with my parents, live through this pre-emptive grief; my Grandpa suffering from Alzheimer’s for the final years of his life, and my Grandad succumbing to vascular dementia.

I have been wanting to write poems about my own parents. However, I am finding it hard to begin. One big reason, currently, is that my Dad was recently diagnosed with cancer. It has since been treated with surgery and we await results from that. It turns out that pre-emptive grief is a real phenomenon. It is further nuanced for me because my Dad’s type of cancer is likely to be fully treatable. So there is much hope for recovery. But, there’s still a kind of grief.

From a writing point of view, this is quite hard to process. Any poem written now would feel like an elegy, which I feel reluctant to write. Yet, perhaps all poems about the people we love are elegies in some way – they memorialise that person whether they are still with us or not. Perhaps there is something slightly superstitious in not wanting to mourn for someone while they are still alive and (relatively) well. But then, we often regret that the nicest things said about people are usually at their funerals. Can I re-imagine this problem of writing pre-emptive grief, and consider it as a celebration of life and hope? Might the attempt to do this actually help to generate hope, in myself and others? I hope so.

Morning Meditation

The more serious blog material is still lodged away somewhere in my brain like mental constipation.

So, here is a silly thing from a time when the two minutes that I spent brushing my teeth felt like the only time I ever got to be in a room by myself (on a good day). It's also partly a 'found' poem, as half the lines are taken from a bottle of mouthwash. Found poems are sometimes in danger of being a bit pretentious...

Morning Meditation

Apply toothpaste. Switch on.

Upper left quadrant, thirty seconds.

Macrogoglycerol Hydroxysterate, Sorbitol, Peppermint oil and Water.

Upper right, thirty seconds.

Macrogoglycerol Hydroxystearate may cause skin reactions.

Lower right, thirty seconds.

KEEP OUT OF THE REACH AND SIGHT OF CHILDREN.

Lower left, thirty seconds.

If no improvement after two weeks, please see your doctor.

Toothbrush shudders to a stop.

Somewhere a child is crying.

Toddlerchef

Here's something that got rejected from a food-themed competition last year. 

Toddlerchef

Here’s a cooking show I’d watch on TV:

the judges are aged between two and three –

grown-up food critics are far too easy.

They will eat things like bone-marrow, offal,

steak tartare, frog’s legs, snails, or steamed mussels,

mushroom ketchup, sea-weed, skin, and truffle…

The toddlers are a formidable bunch:

inscrutable, as you bring them their lunch;

fastidious about what they will munch.

Contestant one. Your meal is rejected.

We’re sorry, but we see you’ve neglected

the memo re: greens – the plate’s infected!

Contestant two. You’ve fallen down on sauce.

This meal needs deconstructing, a divorce

between the pasta and red stuff, of course.

Contestant three. Now, this is hard to say.

While we like everything you’ve made today,

you didn’t slice the same way as yesterday.

Those gallant souls who make toddler dinners

that meet with approval are true winners.

All other chefs are simply beginners.