#SeasonalSonnets 2019: 5th December

Hello my lovely readers

A shorter, and slightly sweeter, post than last night for today's entry. Partly because we've been very busy, but mostly because the subject matter was just there, and needs much less explanation. Today is the sixth anniversary of Tata Madiba (Nelson Mandela's) death. I think of it every year, and in fact wrote a Seasonal Sonnets entry about it in 2017. But being back in SA, after so long, makes this year feel extra poignant. Not least because we were living here when he was inaugurated in 1994, and this trip now is involving revisiting so much of that early part of my childhood. So I've written a short musing on personal history and legacy. Hopefully Tata would approve.

5th December 2019

Tonight I'm thinking lots about my history

within the place which forms part of my heritage

and how so much of mem'ry is a mystery

that makes it seem so crucial that we cherish it.

Such cherishing is helped along by figures

to whom we might ascribe significance

due to the impact of the hope they give us

beyond their globally bestowed magnificence.

This kind of human was 'Tata Madiba'

whose story, as a child, filled me with strength.

I try to emulate his kind demeanour

and make sure all my actions are well-meant.

With full awareness of my own white priv'lege,

I hope he'd not consider it sacrilege.

#SeasonalSonnets 2019: 4th December

Hello my lovely readers

Today's post returns from the political to the more personal - although it is also sort of activist. This week is the first ever National Grief Awareness Week in the UK, from 2nd-8th December. I am participating, despite being away in South Africa until January, because one of the reasons I needed to take a break right now is the intensity of emotion around Christmas.

Those of you who read my longer poem for Children's Grief Awareness Day (and those of you who went to primary school with me) will likely be unsurprised that my ten-year-old self is particularly present at this time of year. It's my dear friend Gemma's eighteenth anniversary next Monday (on the 9th). I'll write about that on the day. However, it isn't just her I miss around now, but everyone, because grief has a funny way of melding and mixing. And frankly not making any sense, at the same time as making perfect sense. So, as it's National Grief Awareness Week back home, they all feel important to acknowledge. The Good Grief Trust are asking for posts on Instagram with the names of people being remembered, and I'm going to do that too, but I wanted to mark it as part of this series. 

So here is today's sonnet. It references a speech by Leonato in Much Ado about Nothing, where he gets frustrated by platitudes. It's beautiful. There are a couple of caveats here of course. Firstly, I would never presume to know a parent's pain after the death of a child. Secondly, Hero doesn't actually die, and the mixed emotions I feel about death and grief being part of an elaborate disguise are too complex to put into words. Nevertheless, I find the play helpful because it depicts young people mourning another young person, and Leonato's aforementioned speech is really one of the most accurate assessments of the experience of bereavement I have so far discovered. There's no picture below the poem this time, in hopes it will be self-sufficient.

4th December 2019

This verse is penned to honour seventeen

(the number marking those I have now 'lost').

It explores several things that that may mean;

how much it might be gain as well as cost.

I do not do what's scorned by Leonato

and try to patch grief with poetic proverbs.
That does ring true for me, at least in part, though -
I do indeed seek solace in rhymed words.
How else, pray, might I hope t'articulate
the fact that all their mem'ries spur me on?
Yet (if I were to open the floodgates)
I'd fear all moderation would be gone.
If I'm always to be the one surviving
I feel I've a duty to keep thriving.

#SeasonalSonnets 2019: 3rd December

Hello my lovely readers

This third entry is simultaneously just as personal as the previous two in this series and a little more general. It marks the UN's International Disabled People's Day (officially the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and language is a complex issue in the community, but either way around uses the same acronym - IDPD).

It also happens to be the day that we are making some modifications to help me access our surrounding area a bit more simply. Thus far on our trip, I've been staying in Jenny's garage, which has an accessible bedroom, bathroom and shower. To get inside the main house, I've had to be carried, then plonked in my not so comfy (albeit serviceable) manual chair and propped up with pillows. So, now we're back from McGregor, we're testing out ways to get my powered chair inside.

A ramp is being built. It combines an actual metal ramp borrowed from a friend with an old door to make the gradient manageable. It's not perfect, or pretty, and requires some wheelchair parkour on my part - but it works. And it can be moved so I can access anywhere in the house. As the theme for IDPD 2019 is 'participation',  that seemed an apt subject for a sonnet.

Below the poem is a collage of two photos of me trying out the first stage of the ramp. One is taken from the top of the inital step and pointing downwards into the front yard, where I sit waiting in my chair at the bottom. The other is taken from behind me and shows the upward incline of the ramp into a patch of earth. That will soon have a platform over it.

3rd December 2019

Today it is IDPD '19

(about which I have written here before)

and this year I am pond'ring what it means

when access lit'rally depends on doors.

We all refer to them as something figurative,

imbued with such potential when they're open,

but closing them can really be restrictive

and exclude some from dreaming (even hoping).

How funny, then, that, when there's nothing else

around to help me make my way inside,

we've found a fix within a door itself

which lets me join the fun instead of hide.

It shows solutions need not be elusive

in efforts to make our world more inclusive.

#SeasonalSonnets 2019: 2nd December

Hello my lovely readers

With gratitude for the kind responses to yesterday's entry, today's continues the theme of the past emerging in (and merging into) the present. It is about one of the people, beyond my immediate family, who was crucial to my childhood development and remains important now - my godmother Jenny.

We are staying with her in Cape Town, to where we've just returned after a long drive from McGregor. So I apologise (both to her and to you) if this isn't my finest example of a poem. But I didn't want to miss a day so soon into this series; nor a chance to cherish this awesome feminist activist who is so kindly opening up her home for the majority of our time in South Africa. Below the poem is a selfie she took of us in the sunshine outside Pony Cottage, where we stayed this weekend.

2nd December 2019

Today I write an ode to my dear Jenny
who has, since my young years, been an example.
It's nigh impossible to list how many
things she has taught me - and yet the number's ample.
I learnt from her to love Joan Armatrading
and how to navigate the world online.
She showed me ways to begin arbitrating
between opinions and start forming mine.
She even offers space for us to argue,
by teasing out exactly what we mean,
and (though, sometimes, we might find it quite hard to!)
a kindred spirit she has always been.
For, above all, we share a sense of humour
and her laugh's cheekier than any rumour.

#SeasonalSonnets 2019: 1st December

Hello my lovely readers

Now that it is the start of December, we're also at the beginning of this year's Seasonal Sonnets series, which is in turn the first part of the project I have planned - to write a poem for the next 365 days.

This opening entry, and indeed this year's entire series, might be perceived by some as decidedly unseasonable. I'm writing it from South Africa, where it's summer. However, as I spent my earliest childhood over here, to me it seems exactly the right way around. That sentiment is the substance of this sonnet, since we're staying with old friends in the mountainous Western Cape village of McGregor. Last night we went to a gig by yet more old friends, the awesome Edi Niederlander Trio, and today we're just chilling in nature (in the shade). Below the poem is a picture of the surrounding countryside.

1st December 2019

This year's a homage to much younger me,
who finds relief and safety in warm weather
and really thinks festivity should be
in summer, like Christmases she remembers.
I'm thrilled now we have made it home at last
and grateful that my body lets me travel.
Revisiting some places from my past
is helping me catch threads which have unravelled.
Shy hopes are building for my future too,
inspired by the chance to be in nature
which is at once familiar and new -
I feel that 'young me' may now mature.
For scenes to mark the start of this December,
I'm glad to have the beauty of McGregor.

Children's Grief Awareness Day 2019

Hello my lovely readers

This post is perhaps earlier than expected. It is neither December, nor the start of my Seasonal Sonnets series, and it isn't the beginning of my poem a day project.

It is, however, a poem. Today is the global Children's Grief Awareness Day, and the end of Children's Grief Awareness Week in the UK. The theme this year is 'Lost for words'. That struck a chord with me. Not only did I find it difficult to talk about my grief growing up, but I used poetry as a private and more abstract outlet. And those of you who have been reading this blog a while might remember how scared I was when that coping mechanism, which I've used since I was very young, seemed to disappear entirely in the summer of 2017. Along with all other creative writing forms.

But, thanks to a combination of factors, from therapy sessions to the support of the bereavement buddies I've met through groups like Let's Talk About Loss and The Grief Network, my young adult self is finally getting brave enough to process my experiences properly. And, with that talking, my writing seems to have reappeared as well. So I wrote this poem last week, in honour of my child selves, and in solidarity with kids who are going through grief. I'm rather terrified about posting, but if it helps one other child (or adult), then it's worth it. Please know you aren't alone, and your feelings are okay and allowed.

Here, shared with love, is my perspective:

This is a note for little me

in plural; who wrote poetry,

at ten, eleven, twelve, fourteen,

and all the ages after then.

We wrote to cope in 2001

when Gemma, first, was suddenly gone

and kept it up throughout our teens

‘til five in a year made seventeen.

It was easier to write than talk

for otherwise our brains would baulk

and shout the screams inside our heads

when yet another friend was dead.

But, with five almost at once,

we could not find the write response

nor could we find the words to say

and so our minds were shut away.

I felt lost for what to do

but now I know that’s okay too.

Sometimes words just won’t describe

the feelings that we hold inside.

And sometimes, though aged twenty-seven,

we need rhymes that sound like we’re eleven

or younger even, perhaps ten,

since that’s the age we ‘lost’ dear Gem.

And that’s the age I revert to,

when there’s the news of someone new,

transported, body, mind and soul;

fresh grief reminds me I’m not whole.

And then I’m sliced in two once more

as teenage me lets out a roar;

an ever present adolescent,

lip wobbling after younger precedent.

These foundations were what built my twenties

as the numbers grew aplenty

and piled up the paradox

that, needing them, my words were lost.

My mind became not one but many:

I had no proper hold on any.

But, though I have felt split apart,

my nearly thirty-year-old heart

is learning to connect the halves

that make up all my little selves.

Voicing, together, that we grieve,

we’re finding some mutual relief.

Tasks of talking through our pain

have sparked our writing up again.

Though I still reel from the hurt,

I’m glad to put it into words.

World Cerebral Palsy Day 2019

Hello my lovely readers

So, I've submitted my PhD, and had planned to be writing a poem a day from the beginning of this month. That hasn't happened yet...because I didn't bank on quite how exhausted I'd be. Not just intellectually but physically. I've therefore decided to postpone the start of the poetry project until December. I'll be writing Seasonal Sonnets then, anyway; albeit from a summery South Africa.

I would usually be sad about the delay - but this post is to convey the opposite emotion. Because today is World Cerebral Palsy Day. And, if there's one fundamental thing I learnt through all parts of my PhD process, it's that the effects of CP are often surprising. This is true even of my still-upcoming viva (where I have to defend my thesis), because that kind of oral exam is in some ways more accessible to me than six hours sitting beside a scribe. Although public speaking as myself remains terrifying, the energy required to have what is essentially an academic conversation is less than I personally need to maintain focus in a more traditional exam environment.

And that's the point of this post. For me, CP nominally and most obviously results in physical impairments like muscle spasms - but it also affects my sensory processing abilities, my energy, and my sense of self as I exist in the world. Literally. Sometimes it feels as though parts of my body have disappeared.

Whilst I was finishing off my thesis, the level of focus required meant that I locked away some of those other symptoms, causing them to manifest more in tightness of muscles and ligaments than fog or processing issues. Now it's done, I've regained some of the relaxation I've been aiming to maintain over the last few years - but the fog and difficulty with processing has seeped back. Because I'm tired.

But I'm proud, too. I PhDid it. And now I need some time to recuperate before embarking on another project which is similarly ambitious in both scope and length. But that's okay. It's life alongside CP. Without which I wouldn't have written my particular PhD, nor probably have developed such a love of poetry.

So, on that note, happy World CP Day, and love and spoons until December.

Jx