WRITING YOUR SELF

I have just received a copy of the new book by Myra Schneider and John Killick "Writing Your Self" (published by Continuum International), a fascinating book in which several well-known writers consider and illustrate how writing has helped them make sense of traumatic periods of their lives, or great loss, sorrow, difficulty, or occasionally the simple joy of a love affair that others don't necessarily condone.
It is full of examples, and has a valuable section towards the third part of the book on how to begin, and how to explore the minefield of our inner selves.

I myself have three poems in it, two that illustrate the shock and the frustrations of serious illness (I was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer in 2000) and one that illustrates how an ordinary object - scissors - can be a hook on which to hang a poem that explores issues of reality and absence.

I am very pleased to have poems in it, but even more pleased to have a copy of the book. I have only begun to dip in to the chapters, and so far have been very absorbed in what I have read. I will make time later for a much closer read but what the book has recalled for me, in the selection of my 2 poems on illness, is that terrible and abrupt passage from being a well person to a sick person.

It was December 2000; I had not been feeling too well for some time, three years in fact, and had gone back and forth to the doctor's surgery with inconclusive symptoms; no-one picked up that I might be at risk of ovarian cancer, even though my mother had died of it (and her sisters too though this was not in my medical records I believe). In 2000 I had taken up bell-ringing, which I loved, at Eccleston church, just outside Chester. The ringing chamber was approached up a steep flight of spiral stairs, something like 52 steps, though I cannot now remember exactly. Everyone entered the ringing chamber gasping for breath: I do remember that!

So for some time it never occurred to me that there was anything abnormal in my being especially out of breath each time I climbed those steps. Until I began to notice that my abdomen was somewhat swollen; at first I thought I was probably eating too much and needed to lose weight but very rapidly even walking on the flat became such a labour I realised something must be amiss.

My friends were more concerned than I was and under their coercion I went to evening surgery, anxious to be seen, and was. I was given a letter to go to the hospital next morning for an ultrasound scan. Still totally unsuspecting I was planning to drive myself but fortunately a friend insisted on taking me.

It was December the 21st, shortest day of the year, and my father's birthday. I had sent him flowers and of course wanted to hear from him to know they had been received safely. I also, as ever, was behind with writing Christmas cards and wanted to get back from the hospital to finish that task.

I didn't come back from the hospital.

An ultrasound scan was performed; it showed considerable presence of ovarian cancer tumours all through the abdomen,and I was hastily taken to a side ward and admitted there and then.

When I protested I was told that I was "very, very ill".

The impact of shock of course is that you absolutely can't believe what you're told. "No thanks!" I declared as a wheelchair was brought to take me down for further radiology. "I'm perfectly alright - I don't need that. I'll walk!"

Which I did. That was a long time ago. I have been through a lot since then. My father did receive the flowers. Also the shock of knowing his daughter had the same illness as his late wife.

The poem I wrote - "Diagnosis" - still brings all that back so clearly. The utter blankness of shock. It is in my collection "Uncertain Days" (Happenstance Press) and it will appear in my new, full collection "The Plucking Shed" which is due out next year from Cinnamon Press.

I am very, very lucky to be here still to anticipate a new collection. But I am. And I am so grateful.

As I read "Writing Your Self" I shall be asking myself was it the ability to write that helped save me?

HERON

Just realised I too am one of those poets who has added to the ever growing list of poems about the heron (and a few on kingfishers too!). Here's one that was originally published on Nth Position's website:


Heron

Iconic bird, along with kingfisher, swallow,
owl, the lark, the lapwing,
every poet writes of you.They say you're
'hunched by the water,
deep in contemplation,
you raise the extending ladder of your neck,
walk on the talll stilts of your legs'.
Etc, etc.

Enough of all that stuff! You're nothing but
a sword, a spear, lethal harpoon.
As God, or whoever it was, decided
in his wisdom, or whatever it was,
to make you.


(published Nth Position, Dec 2008)


Clearly mine is a half-serious poem. The most beautiful poem I know about the heron is this by the American poet Mary Oliver: "Some Herons" , from her collection Wild Geese, (Bloodaxe). Well worth seeking out if you like herons.

Kingfishers on the River Dee

I was walking with a friend along this stretch of the River Dee just below Farndon when, as I was trying to photograph this tree's reflection in the water, a kingfisher went winging swiftly past. I didn't get it in the picture however; kingfishers are too quick! In fact, despite its striking brilliance of blue and orange it's often by its speedy flight or rapid movement that I pick it out before I register the colour.

I walk regularly in a local nature park, Caldy Valley, and for some time in one recent winter a kingfisher was haunting the small stream there; I had a number of sightings of it. Then it vanished for months. They have very short lives, apparently, so perhaps this one had died. But yesterday I was walking there and had the great luck to see a pair of them, perched on a low branch over the water. I could just make out the narrow stripe of blue down their backs in the gloom beneath the overhanging hawthorns and willows and then they were gone.

I see bullfinches in this park too, and was very pleased to read in Birds magazine that their numbers are recovering somewhat: the bullfinch is now on the amber list, not the red list, of endangered species. When I was a child they were a common sight - gardeners and fruit growers used to be enraged to see them in the orchards or soft fruit beds. How different now: it's a serious and horribly sobering thought that they need protection. As does so much of our wildlife.

I often come across herons too, one stepping out right in front of me as it crossed from one tract of water to another. It's astonishing if you look down lists of titles of poems how many poems there are to the kingfisher and the heron.

The Earth Hums in B Flat

Chester's recent Literature Festival had a series of lunch time spots featuring the work of new writers. I went to hear Mari Strachan speak of her novel The Earth Hums in B Flat, was captivated by what she had to say, bought the book and stayed up half that night reading it.

It's the tender story of young Gwennie, kind, imaginative, dreamy and as yet innocent. She lives in a small Welsh village where everyone knows everyone else's secrets but nobody talks of them. Her best friend Alwenna in particular knows more secrets than anyone else, secrets Gwennie, being more naive, is often slow to find out. But as the novel unfolds, Gwennie learns something of the danger of secrets and finds herself at last in possession of the most horrifying secret of all, one she can never share.

The story is framed round Gwennie's belief that she can fly, and at night in her dreams she does. And in one of these dreamed night-time flights over her village she sees a body floating in the "Baptism pool". Whose this body is and how it got there is revealed by degrees, very subtly and very cleverly. The uncovering of the true facts of this death - for what Gwennie has seen is a real body - parallels the process of Gwennie's growing up and experiencing the unpalatable side of human life.
From the very beginning of the story we are set in time and place very accurately - Gwennie's mother, who longs for a better house with "a proper kitchen and a bathroom", comforts herself with Evening of Paris scent and a blue satin dressing gown. Meanwhile she endures a house with a miserable open wood fire, and a scullery with a dripping tap and mice.
Gwennie is sent by her mother to look after the children of Mrs Evans so that Mrs Evans can go to Price the Dentist who will be in the village that day. But when Gwennie, who has dawdled, arrives she thinks Mrs Evans has already seen Price the Dentist because there is blood everywhere, and although there is a poker is lying on the floor, crockery is broken, and a sticky mess on the floor it never occurs to Gwennie that anything more sinister has happened there. What has actually happened is something we discover much later in the novel, and it's the how it happened that horrifies both us as readers and Gwennie.
I'm not going to disclose the ending here as that might prevent you reading the novel for yourself, something I urge you to do: I thoroughly enjoyed this story, for its cleverly managed storyline, I adored the character of Gwennie, who has that rare courage and audacity that perhaps only the really good and innocent possess and I loved its clear picturing of a small, closely-knit Welsh village in the 1950's, a portrait not unlike Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood". And every bit as lyrical.
A fine, fine novel and an excellent read.