Poetry
Poetry means so much to me (writing it, reading it, performing it, watching other people perform it!). It has been a constant in my life since I was a child, helping me through difficult times and shaping me into the person I am today. A poem is something so small that can capture something enormous. That's one of the reasons I love it so much! Oh, and something about how words sound, their rhythms and rhymes, sends a shiver shown my spine. A good kind of shiver!
I used to perform my poetry regularly at Spoken Word nights across London. My poetry has been performed by Stand and Be Counted Theatre (the UK's first Theatre Company of Sanctuary), at Latitude Festival, Camden People's Theatre and a whole host of other venues across the UK.
My poetry has also been used in a number of workshops for people experiencing mental health problems, particularly people going through psychosis. It has also featured on creative writing and performance courses.
In 2017, I won runner up 'best illustrated poem' in the Advocacy Project's mental health and poetry competition for my poem 'No Apology'.
No Apology
She should not apologise
for the trauma
that formed her.
Or the fire that warmed her,
burned her, turned her to ashes
and reignited her in the same breath.
Or for the million lives
and billion deaths she fledged
and shed as feathers.
Or to the divers
whose knees bled on stones.
It's not her loss to console.
Maybe she is not one woman,
but many women.
Maybe the way to understand her
is through her anger.
Her shipwrecked depths
don't require your anchor.
Bear
Limbs spindly and dwindling, she could have snapped them off and made kindling,
but she didn’t of course: negation always wins.
Breath so bated, she could have snared a bear with that pounce in her mouth,
set forests ablaze with those sparks in her bones, sent owls, foxes, wolves
darting from their homes, fur, seeds, trees, burrs alight.
But bears don’t fear flames.
They only stare at blazing trees and
gaze into eyes mirrored in red streams,
recognising these keen gleams.
She thins. Thinner, thinnest, cold,
leaves rustle encircling– gold.
A howl in a locked jaw.
Conkers break apart, acorns fall.
The relationships
of parts to wholes
holds secrets:
something she
cannot know.
The bear nears.
Nearer, nearest,
here, eyes on fur,
paw on face,
breath on ear,
heartbeat on tears.
She is
unwritten,
unspoken,
unsung,
unknown,
untold,
All goose pimples,
cold.
A howl in
a clenched jaw.
Branches snap,
jackdaws call.
Would knowing
the relationship
of parts
to wholes
console
at all?
Grief
I wanted to piece together
each slice of grief
into a complete grief.
A grief which I could reach for
like an apple and
grapple with the
missingness
of you.
Chew the whole orb
even the core,
the pips, the space
within to begin
and end comprehending
this loss as a whole.
Impossible, I know.
This grief is shards of glass
blasted. A window pane
shattered, where every splinter matters
(they always matter).
I will sweep them up and keep them in a jar,
each prism glimmering reflecting light
(moon, stars, fairy, sun-like).
Ocean
I have known the loneliness of the polar bear
alone on the ice floe,
the no hope of the cold ocean,
the capsized boat,
the blue whale,
most gigantic of sorrows,
beached on the shore
with no more tomorrows,
no moisture,
no krill in its baleens,
been ill, known failings,
despair, isolation,
that only the closed-up
oyster knows.
And yet,I have been compelled by euphoric days and nights, propelled love potion-like like a speed boat, like a hammerhead shark cleaving the darkness, like a narwhal who thinks she’s a unicorn, an octopus with more than eight limbs, electric eel can feel things near me that are not me, flying fish, light-up fish, catfish, dog fish, rainbow fish, puffer fish like a helium balloon streaming moonwards.
Until, a time lapse shot of an anemone,
almost still, fingers flickering.
There’s a pause between the tide’s rise and fall
and I’m lying on a bleached floor in agony.
I try to speak of my reality,
but these troubles stream out of my mouth as bubbles.
I’m not human.
I’m not even a patient.
I’m a piece of seaweed,
nameless crustacean,
uninflated buoyancy aid,
lifeboats to the Titanic that were never made,
whelk with entrails trailing,
jellyfish chopped in half with a spade,
shell stuck onto gift shop box,
factory farmed shrimp in a damp sandwich,
wading into a riptide with no one beside me.
I am completely beside myself.
Barnacle suckling on a rock,
harpooned whale flailing red,
fish with its fins cut off,
fish with its gills carved out,
prawn with its eyes pulled out,
swathes of litter beached.
saw someone drowning—
hands didn’t reach.
The moon pulls the tide out.
I pull myself towards you.
I am beside myself.
I want to be beside you.
I am only this moment.
I am only this pain.
I relive that time lapse shot of the anemone
over and over again.
Diver out of oxygen in the Atlantic.
Frantic.
Great Barrier Reef, every creature has left.
Bereft.
Broken coral.
Immoral.
Crying enough to sink Mauritius.
Manatee wondering if itself is fictitious.
Stones round themselves against cliffs. Bones of whales and fish swish shimmering against sand.
Children swim in the heights of summers, then build- for a moment- castles, ice creams in hand.
Seals bask, crabs click clack in rock pools. Divers search timber for treasures they might recover.