Last year’s medical model – depression as part of the human condition

On Saturday I was lucky enough to attend the Annual Spring Conference organised by the Taunton Association for Psychotherapy (TAP). This year’s theme was depression and the day was marketed as ‘Dialogues Around Depression’ –  a title which reflected the different speaker’s approaches to the subject.  It is a Conference open to anyone interested in the human mind and the way in which we relate to the world, and this year there were representatives from across the therapy spectrum – from homeopaths to NHS Nurse Specialists.

And me. I rarely understand any of the jargon the specialist field of psychology can employ, and have only managed to stay for the first hour of the Conference in previous years…

But that is not for want of trying, because I am actually the Administrator for TAP, a role I take as a freelancer to help support my main job as a writer. TAP was founded over 26 years ago and in addition to the conference it offers ‘an annual programme of diverse and stimulating evening talks given by people from a wide professional and geographical field on the theme of psychological understanding.’ They are a grand lot and I recommend you check out the website at www.taplimited.org.uk. But my involvement with them has highlighted to me how wide is the field of psychology and how different are the many approaches to depression and anxiety.

Vivienne Tuffnell

This year the format of the Conference was tweaked allowing time for four ‘vignettes’ to ground the conference in real experience. I had seven minutes to tell my story ‘Mental illness, motherhood and finding the real me’, which went quite well, but I felt very nervous and was glad to have lots of supportive comments afterwards. It is great to be in a room full of people who are committed to working with people with depression and anxiety without judgement. The real star was Viv Tuffnell, who read her piece ‘The Uninvited Guest’ (a moving parable about learning to understand the visitor that is your depression) and then, nearer the end ‘Dandelions and Bad Hair Days’ from the book I edited of the same title. She has written of her own impressions of Saturday in Vine leaves, dandelions and serendipity ~ my thoughts on the TAP conference and there you can see how the impact of what Martin Seager (a clinical psychologist, lecturer, broadcaster and activist on mental health issues) and Dr Christopher Irons (a clinical psychologist who works for a mental health team in East London) stirred up the audience in a way that a conference about depression could hardly hope to achieve. What is ‘compassion focused therapy?’ Is depression genetic? Is it something we ‘just can’t help’? Or is genetic expression so turned off by environmental factors that genetic predisposition theories are largely pointless?

Martin Seager

In fact, Martin Seager could have stormed Westminster by force with the support of eighty therapists by the time he had concluded, arguing that instead of bowing to the pharmaceutical and medical lobby, or hitting on the next ‘big cure’ (at this conference it was mindfulness) Government should  look at psychologically informed policies, organisational cultures, training and support. He focused on the ‘fundamental triad’ of trauma/abuse, neglect/deprivation, loss/absence in childhood as the basis of depression and expressed disappointment that no-one properly questions the ‘medical model’.

We don’t fail to value ourselves because we have a
condition called “depression”, rather we feel
depressed when our lives are not mirrored, valued or
supported – this is the human condition…. 

The presentations are available here if you would like to get a flavour of the kind of challenges the speakers posed to us all.  It was a fascinating day and unlike most conferences, there was not one point at which, even after a great lunch, I felt like falling asleep. And to top things off, TAP allowed me to sell copies of Dandelions and Bad Hair Days to attendees, who could read the twenty plus personal experiences of mental ill-health it contains and take it, and the whole day, back to inform their practice.

I enjoy working for TAP and was so pleased that all our hard work paid off this year with, on a first look, great feedback. In these difficult financial times the cost of the conference (£86) is, to many, hard to justify. But the ideas presented and the ‘dialogues’ they should inspire are SO important, as Government continues to look only at treating the symptoms of depression to ensure the fewest number of working days are lost, instead of examining the wider issues that also lead to a gang culture, the vicious circles associated with some physical and sexual abuse and lives permanently blighted by childhood trauma.

Perhaps a march on Westminster, even a virtual one, is a very good idea…

Vine leaves, dandelions and serendipity ~ my thoughts on the TAP conference

Reblogged from Zen and the art of tightrope walking:

Vine leaves, dandelions and serendipity ~ my thoughts on the TAP conference

There is a woman on the train with two small children. She's beautiful, dressed in stylish clothes, her hair immaculate. The children are boys, one aged about four, the other a baby of about fifteen months, seated in a pushchair. They're well clothed, clean, well-fed. The older boy talks constantly, the air punctuated by “mummy mummy mummy”, and the baby grizzles in that tired way of babies who need a nap, a feed, a cuddle, the grizzling becoming an occasional screaming fit.

Read more… 1,066 more words

I don't usually re-blog posts to this site, but this is a wonderful piece by my friend Viv Tuffnell (author of The Bet, Strangers & Pilgrims and Away with the Fairies) who spoke at the Taunton Association for Psychotherapy conference with me on Saturday. I am going to write my own post on the same subject, as it was an important day for my book 'Dandelions and Bad Hair Days: Untangling lives affected by depression and anxiety' (for which Viv provided the title). We sold a lot on the day and have generated a lot more interest. But importantly, as Viv describes here, we heard some interesting 'dialogues around depression', the theme for the day. Thanks Viv!

On Victorian London, forensics and writing inspiration: a conversation with D.E. Meredith, author of The Devil’s Ribbon

D.E Meredith

Today I am lucky enough to have a guest on my blog – the author D. E. Meredith writer of the historical crime series, The Hatton and Roumande Mysteries featuring the first forensic scientist, Professor Adolphus Hatton, and his trusty French morgue assistant, Albert Roumande.

D.E Meredith studied English at Cambridge, worked in advertising during the late 80s but soon found that world unsatisfying and embarked on a dramatic change of career working as a campaigner for conservation causes, ultimately working in the press office at the British Red Cross. She has witnessed history first hand - Afghanistan just before it fell to the Taliban and Rwanda as it was devastated by the terrible genocide in 1994 for example. Working in a field where injustice was rife and violence part of everyday life inspired her she says, to bring those themes into her crime novels and indeed they run as threads through both The Devil’s Ribbon and the first in the series, Devoured.

Here she talks of Victorian forensic science, inspiration and writing discipline, something I am more than a little short of. So thanks to D.E. Meredith for taking time out to talk to me!

I have read other interviews with you that suggest you have almost become a writer by  accident! The inspiration behind Hatton and Roumande is fascinating. Would you mind telling us again how you felt the urge to tell their story?

I read a travel diary by the great Nineteenth Century naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, called “The Malay Archipelago.” Russel Wallace was Darwin’s alter ego and came up with similar ideas on evolution at the same time as his more famous contemporary but history has not given Wallace the credit he surely deserves. The travelogue was full of amazing detail about taxidermy, specimen collecting, orangutan hunting and life as a Victorian scientist. Fantastic and inspiring stuff and I was sure there was a novel in it. It just so happened that I’d finished a contract for Greenpeace and was between clients, I had builders in the house so it was hard to work anyway and so I simply started to mess about on the computer, thinking why the hell not? I knew if I was ever going to write a book, it would be a murder mystery. I devoured them as a child – no pun intended – especially PD James and Agatha Christie so that’s what I started to write. As the Victorians were at the cutting edge of so much new scientific thinking, forensics seemed an obvious ingredient to add into the mix. And I guess, that’s how I created Professor Adolphus Hatton and his Chief Diener, Monsieur Albert Roumande of St Bart’s

Here I must admit to being a little squeamish…. Some of the episodes in both Devoured and The Devil’s Ribbon are very gory. How easy do you find it to imagine such scenes?

I love writing anatomy scenes. I do a lot of research to try and get them right. Not only in anatomical  terms but also to describe the bodies as a Victorian surgeon would have viewed them. I’ve seen a number of surgical operations when I worked for the Red Cross and was in and out of field hospitals, seeing the impact of war and in particular, land mines on people so I am not shocked by blood and guts. I treated myself to a copy of Grey’s Anatomy. This was the bible for surgeons in the Nineteenth Century and contains exquisite line drawings.   I often flick through my copy not just to check the inner workings of an organ  but also to wallow in the intricacies and beauty of the human body which never fails to astound me. Added to which,   it’s important we see the world through Hatton and Roumande’s eyes. Decomposition and cadavers are hardly an avoidable theme when the books you write concern a pathologist working in a morgue in Victorian England. Dissection and cutting up corpses  is Hatton’s and Roumande’s business. I see no reason to sugar-coat my descriptions. The violence I describe isn’t  gratuitous or titillating though it is macabre. I am very aware I’m writing in a period which gave us the Gothic tradition and the beginnings of the horror genre and  so it feels right that my own writing is imbued with those of sort of blood soaked drama.

The dark and seamy side of Victorian London has become a popular backdrop for new detective fiction.  I think you bring something quite new, and raw, to the environment your characters work in. Scotland Yard detectives are hard to like in your books, for example. Was it difficult to find an original ‘angle’ on Victorian crime?

I didn’t plan to be an author or do much pre-thinking about how I wanted my books to be. I  didn’t look at the genre before I started writing , so I wasn’t looking for any kind of angle and maybe for a new writer that’s liberating. I just set sail, free as the wind and followed the story. It’s only after I had my first book published and reviewers started comparing it to Michael Cox’s work in particular,  that I realised there was a whole plethora of other writers  out there doing “Victorian crime.”   I try not to read it. I don’t want other people’s work influencing mine though I do try and read contemporary thrillers to try understand the issue of pace. The only book I had in my mind when I wrote Devoured was The American Boy by Andrew Taylor , who I now follow on twitter (I love all of his books) but not because I wanted to emulate what he was doing. Taylor is a master of re-creating an authentic voice – in the case of The American Boy – a regency voice and I knew if I couldn’t do it as seamlessly as Taylor, then I didn’t want to do it at all.  I think the raw quality which others have spoken about comes, not just from the subject matter, but from my prose which tends towards the gritty.  Life was hard back then. I think of the Victorian Age as being like  Slumdog Millionaire only with top hats. It was tough and visceral on the mean streets of London. As for the police being corrupt? It went with the job. Many policemen in the 1800s often wore two hats. They worked for the Met but they also did a bit of private work for those who could afford to hire them. Corruption was rife,  so I’ve based my idea of the police force  on what I think was happening at the time.

I thoroughly enjoy your detailed plots and the way in which Hatton and Roumande’s are not only challenged by criminals but by the police. How do you keep track of the clues to ensure your reader is kept guessing to the end?

I love plotting but I do find it a challenge because for all the planning in the world, once you start writing, novels take on a life of their own and it can be hard to keep control. My plots are very intricate and complex, multi-layered with elaborate structures  but that’s how the world is, isn’t it? The world isn’t lateral and neither is the imagination – well,  mine, isn’t. I like to set lots of plates spinning but I don’t want to confuse readers or undermine the pacing. This is all part of the craft of novel writing, something a writer has to learn to do through trial and error. But I think if I can combine tangential scenes and blind alleyways with an overall story which is homogenous, then I’ll deliver something that’s rich and satisfying for the reader. I’m highly organised in life but much more freefall when I write. I  don’t like plans. I do them in advance, on a couple of sheets of paper but  then I nearly always chuck them away when I start to get into the meat of the novel. I feel over planning kills creativity.  I like the fear factor. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff edge when I begin a new chapter. Of course, I think about the characters in advance – who they are, what they look like, how they feel, how they relate to others and so forth.   As to the layering which is so crucial if you’re trying to create  a puzzle, adding or rearranging clues and red herrings can be honed (added in or cut back)  during  the process of  rewriting. The first draft is never the last draft.

I can sense that Hatton and Roumande are the natural predecessors of Sherlock Holmes. Did Mr Holmes’s perspicacity inspire you to go back into the history of his forensic techniques?

Not self consciously although I did get the idea of the tattoo on lady Bessingham’s finger in Devoured from the Holmes story but I can’t remember which one. I wrote it first and then thought – hang on a minute I’ve seen this before so I googled it, found it and decided, hell, it works,  so I’m going to use it  anyway. I hadn’t read much Sherlock Holmes but like everyone else, Holmes is just part of my psyche from a misspent youth in the suburbs  watching too much telly – old B&W films, the brilliant series with Jeremy Brett in the 80s.  And now, of course, I watch the fabulous Cumberbatch version with  my kids. My youngest son is a  big fans of the books, so I’ve got more into Conan Doyle in terms of the actual writing recently. I’ve even been to see Conan Doyle’s  house in Surrey as part of the campaign to save it from the evil hands of developers.  It was rather moving and I felt like I  was walking in the shadow of Doyle. He had an incredible imagination. Hound of the Baskervilles has to  be one of the greatest and spookiest detective stories, ever.  As for my characters, they have some similarities to Watson and Holmes in that they’re a pair working in Victorian London (although Holmes was fin de siècle) but Roumande is more than Hatton’s equal and in terms of intellectual insight. I split perspicacity between the two of them and often it’s their knowledge of the human heart which helps crack the case in the end, not just their knowledge of forensics.

From your research, what do you think (other than DNA) has been the key breakthrough in the field of forensic science and why?

Without a doubt, the invention of the microscope.  All the early microscopists saw quite distorted images due to the low quality of the glass and imperfect shape of their lenses. Little was done to improve the microscope until the middle of the 19th Century  when great strides were made and quality instruments like today’s microscope emerged. Companies in Germany like Zeiss and an American company founded by Charles Spencer began producing instruments which allowed Victorian scientists to see the world in its wonderful minute detail. Both the Zeiss and the Spencer feature as “stars” in my novels. Studying blood samples, smears  of glistening semen, hairs, human skin  or other traces left behind on a cadaver, or at crime scene, would never have been possible without an effective  microscope.

Many people, myself included, can find it hard to find the ideal place to write. Where do you find it easiest to get the word count going in the right direction? Do you write in silence or can you shut out all the background noise, or listen to music?

I wish I could listen to music but for me it has to be silence. I wrote three novels in a tiny corner of the bedroom but I have recently moved house (two weeks ago) and now have an office and so it’s bliss. I’ve already doubled my output because the house is bigger so firstly, the kids can’t track me down quite so easily asking “What is there to eat?” and secondly, I can’t hear the relentless drone of Sky Sport pummeling through the walls, because we’ve put the telly in the basement – along with  my rugby mad teenage boys and their mates. Routine is vital for writers. You have to invent your own structures. Nobody’s going to do it for you. We all have distractions. I’m a mum and I have to juggle all sorts of stuff but I religiously go for a run or a bike ride after my kids have been waved off to school – “Adios amigos!” -  and park my butt on a seat in front of my laptop by 10.00am with a coffee LATEST. I don’t do anything else till the kids get home at three-ish. I don’t meet friends, I don’t have coffee or do lunch. I block the internet out increasingly using the download “Freedom” if I seem to lack focus (hello twitter!) and find that I can do 4 hours good work (ie: actual writing) and then the rest of the day is spent doing general PR, writing features, posts etc  or my favourite bit, the research – there’s a huge amount of research in my books and it all takes time. Writing requires discipline and it doesn’t require you to be a social butterfly. In fact, it demands withdrawal.

Can you tell us a little more about your future writing plans?  Is there another Hatton and Roumande planned for the near future? And will you ever write contemporary fiction?

I am currently writing the next Hatton and Roumande  book called The Butcher of Smithfield (working title) which is  set in 1863, so five years on from The Devil’s Ribbon. It’s been a really interesting challenge picking up the characters and their lives from where I left them. I’m having great fun – though it’s demanding. You’re creating something out of nothing. I spent a long time  researching the Jewish community living in London in the 1860s and the German community which was huge and centred around Whitechapel and Dalston. I’ve also been looking at mind doctoring, early attempts at brain surgery and the beginnings  of neurology along with colonial exploits in Africa and The Crimean War – quite a lot of material but the story is working really well and it’s all coming together. Huzza!

I wrote initial drafts for a contemporary novel set in Rwanda against backdrop of genocide but have put it in a pending tray till later. I found it difficult to write because the material was too  close to the bone but I am more experienced  writer now, and fully intend to go back to this book and deliver a contemporary thriller based on some of my own personal experiences during my time as an aid worker. The material is too good to ignore.  But for the time being I am fully immersed in my Victorian world and will be there for some time, I suspect. And I adore it.

I’ve done a little bit of flash fiction and I really enjoyed it. I don’t have time at the moment to pursue it but for budding writers out there, it’s a really interesting challenge. To tell a story in less than 500 words, means every word counts. This is a good thing to remember even when you are working across say, 100k words which is the usual length of my novels.

In a recent interview I asked author Lynn Shepherd (Tom All Alone’s, A Treacherous Likeness) who she thought should play the part of her detective, Charles Maddox, if we were to be allowed to enjoy the books adapted for television or on the big screen. She sees Tom Hiddleston in the role and has him in her head as she writes.  Who can you see as Hatton? Roumande?

Adolphus Hatton has to be played by Ed Norton just as he appeared  in The Painted Veil. He’s fabulously repressed, quintessentially English, uptight, work obsessed, wiry but sexy as he appears in that film and if we can’t get him,  then James McAvoy would be good. Roumande MUST be played by the uber gorgeous Javier Bardem because he’s the right “look” (big, dark and burly) and all my mates will pay me good money to meet him if he accepts the part which I’m sure is only a matter of time. I’m ever hopeful. And clearly,  completely delusional.

The Devil’s Ribbon is the second book in the acclaimed Hatton & Roumande series, by D E Meredith and is out now in hardback, publishing by Allison & Busby priced £19.99. The first book Devoured is also out now in paperback, price £7.99.

What stops you writing? A tale of two weeks….

Fourteen days ago I was packing up my laptop, articles and library books ready to make the journey home after five days of writing. Well, I had lunch with a mate and went to the cinema to see Life of Pi with my brother-in-law (who had kindly put me up), but other than that – no excuses. No housework, only myself to cook for and a dining table in a quiet house on the edge of Horsham in Sussex to spread out on. I wrote loads, collected my thoughts and did some planning. Shell Shocked Britain, the book I am writing for Pen and Sword Social History benefited hugely from that concentrated attention. Like a toddler, it felt it had me all to itself and with me, it settled into a healthier pattern.

The week that has just evaporated – a vapour trail behind me as I have rushed from one task to another, has been doubly frustrating knowing as I do now how much I can get done away from my home environment. I sit down to undertake some research on the ‘first blitz’ on Britain in WW1, or how the conflict between ‘manliness’ and ‘masculinity’ impacted on the view of those men who broke down in the face of war trauma and the dog will need to go out. My daughter will ring with earache, my son with news from London – I am glad they still turn to me of course, but another 30 minutes will be gone. I start typing away, marveling at the word count as it increases by the minute, and an email will pop up about another job that needs doing NOW. In all likelihood it could wait, but of course it has broken my concentration and suddenly becomes more important than anything else to hand. Sometimes it is very hard to take a deep breath and resist the temptation to email them back and say ‘you aren’t the only person I work for you know!!’ or ‘get to the back of the queue…’, but that is not the way to run a successful writing life and when the spell is broken I find it best to get the ‘emergency’ off my mind. The average word count falls again.

I know quite a few of my readers are also writers, authors, journalists, poets. Wordsmiths all, generally working from home. Many of them find that an opportunity to procrastinate lurks in every corner of their own household. Children are, of course, bound to take your mind off the moment – however creative it might be. ‘Mummy I need a wee’ followed by ‘hang on a minute dear’ can only result in disaster. Even those with older or no children find  the phrase ‘I’ll just do…’ or ‘maybe a cup of coffee before I get started’, come all too readily to their lips. Even the hoovering can sometimes seem more appealing than staring at a blank page. Social media can take over your life, masquerading as it does as ‘raising your profile’, or keeping up to date with your mates. The lowest of the low is, of course, resorting to Bejeweled Blitz or similar online, mindless game. It does reduce stress, honestly. But it also reduces the amount of potentially productive time in the day. I have written before of my mild addiction, and the realization that the score board shows I am up against many of my online writing friends.

Sarah Cruickshank, a writer friend who is also terrific on the administrative and time management side of working from home, gave me some great advice about prioritising my workload and is one person I know who can block out tranches of time in the diary and stick to the plan. I try to follow her example, but have found that the only way to run a diary is to fill it all in with pencil and get used to rubbing stuff out and moving it on to the next day…

I love writing. This blog post for example is really getting the grey cells fired up for more serious work later on this afternoon. Research is part of my way of life, even if it doesn’t relate to work. But I live with my family of non-writer types – a husband and daughter who are athletes, interested in sports and who consider reading as a pastime for those who have nothing better to do. I find myself excluded by virtue of my sedentary job and the need to write when they are chilling, just because I haven’t managed to get myself motivated earlier in the day.

So what stops you from getting creative? How do you divert yourself away from actually getting the work done? Short of leaving home, what do you think is the solution to the writing conundrum? How do you ensure that your time is well spent?  Do you get up early or stay up late? Listen to the radio, music or simply sit in silence? Have you found that holy grail of the freelancer – a 36 hour day?

Let me know your views – I would love to write another post in a few days full of your issues, or tips to keep you on track.

As long as they aren’t ‘don’t write blog posts’……………….

 

Love poems you wish you had written #5 – John Keats

John

On this, the 14th February, I reach the end of my series ‘Love poems you wish you had written’ with one that most who know me would have anticipated from the very beginning.

This poem still offers the John Keats reader much to think about. When was it written? To whom? Does Keats want to be like the star? Or is he rejecting its lonely view of the world, cold and distant and unable to do anything but observe its beauties?

The film ‘Bright Star’ (Jane Campion 2009) brought this sonnet to the attention of a much wider audience, who saw it for what it actually was – a poem for Fanny Brawne, the woman to whom he was, at the end of his life, secretly engaged and who inspired the following exclamation of passionate love:

“I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion—I have shudder’d at it—I shudder no more—I could be martyr’d for my Religion—Love is my religion—I could die for that—I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you its only tenet…”

Some still believe this to be his last poem, written on the boat that took him to Italy in the autumn of 1820. He had just five months to live and his best poetry was behind him then. He found it difficult to write anything and even to think of Fanny caused him  great pain. This sonnet was actually written to Fanny much earlier, when he was in better health, and probably revised on that last voyage. In it he is, I believe, admiring that ‘bright star’ so steadfast, so splendid and spiritual; but rejecting the aloof, eternal view it offers in favour of a reality that allows him the physical contact he so desires and the unchangeable love that is subject only to death.

Bright Star

by John Keats (1795 to 1821)

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death.

Here is the sonnet read by  actor Tom Hiddleston. His voice has for me, after the lovely Ben Wishaw who played Keats in ‘Bright Star’, been one of the best of all those actors who record poetry readings. Some are too theatrical, insufficiently reflective of his London roots and accent. It is still a bit ‘posh’ perhaps (Mr Hiddleston is Eton and Cambridge educated, unlike Keats who always suffered critically for his ‘Cockney’ background)  but he sounds as if he means it!!

And of course, as it is the Big Day itself – St Valentine’s Day – I dedicate the following to Peter. His name means ‘a rock’. He certainly is mine. 25 years this year says much and the last two lines of Anne Bradstreet’s poem speaks for me here.

To My Dear and Loving Husband

by Anne Bradstreet (1612 to 1672)

If ever two were one, then surely we. 
If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee; 
If ever wife was happy in a man, 
Compare with me ye women if you can. 
I prize thy love more then whole Mines of gold, 
Or all the riches that the East doth hold. 
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench, 
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence. 
Thy love is such I can no way repay, 
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray. 
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever, 
That when we live no more, we may live ever. 

I hope the day brings you all the love you seek.

Sneaking in another love poem – ‘Love at First Sight’

For some reason WordPress has published my series of posts ‘Love songs you wish you had written’ in a funny order – Billy Collins at #4 went up before #2 and #3. So, that having happened, I thought – sneak an extra one in. Readers are confused anyway!

I have so enjoyed choosing poetry for this theme and for St Valentine’s Day. There are many great love poems, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the series ‘Tell Me the Truth About Love’ introduced by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy on Radio 4 this week. She has been looking at the tradition of love poetry – from first yearnings to final partings. If you haven’t been able to catch it – it is available on iPlayer and the short programmes are perfect to have on in the background as you sit doing something far less interesting on the PC. (I have been doing boring and very uncreative admin all week so far…)

Wislawa Szymborska

Earlier this week I had a twitter conversation with someone who had read one of the previous posts. They asked for a poem that spoke of love only being for those ‘lucky enough to find it –  *bitter*’ and ‘with a little bit of hope’. I checked through my poetical archive (well those poems I know and love and mark in anthologies – I am not that grand!) and came across a poem I adore and which I think suits that mood exactly.  Valentine’s Day is not universally popular; it is over-commercialised and for some people – those not fully convinced that a single life is for them, or those for whom love is synonymous with pain, hurt and betrayal – it must be hard work. All those red and white cards covered with soppy verses in the shops must make them quite nauseous. Many of the gaudy ones have that effect on me – and I have someone in my life who I want to exchange the sentiments with.

Anyway, for everyone wondering where the right person is hiding, here is a poem in translation that I first read in the wonderful anthology ‘Being Alive’…

Love at First Sight

Wislawa Szymborska

They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they’d never met before, they’re sure
that there’d been nothing between them.
But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways –
perhaps they’ve passed each other a million times?

I want to ask them
if they don’t remember –
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd?
a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?
but I know the answer.
No, they don’t remember
They’d be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.

Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn’t read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood’s thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

(View with a Grain of Sand, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

Wislawa Szymborska was a Polish poet, essayist and translator, She died, aged 89, a year ago this month and was the recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her poetry has inspired films and music  - in her native Poland she was known as the ‘Mozart of Poetry’ and although her fame rests on a relatively small body of work, it is work that includes her experiences of Poland in wartime and Stalinism alongside the essential truths of everyday life. She has been compared to Samuel Beckett and Philip Larkin -but with the possibility of escape from the grim world they depicted. I couldn’t make such a comparison as I know too little about all three poets, but I certainly sense hope in this poem.

This is a poem full of possibilities, full of promise and the line ‘Every beginning/ is only a sequel, after all’ offers every unattached romantic the chance to dream that they have already set their suitcase down next to the person with whom they will share their future…

Love poems you wish you had written #4 – Billy Collins

The Sonnet – William Mulready

Thus far I have taken this series of posts on love poems very seriously, largely because well, love is pretty serious isn’t it? The intensity of the experience and the joy and pain that love brings are hardly a laughing matter most of the time. Don’t misunderstand me; you can have an awful lot of fun being in love. But even in its lighter moments, I think love moves us in a way that goes to the most sensitive and fragile parts of our being. People describe the act of falling in love as ‘scary’, as the act of giving ourselves wholly to someone else makes us so vulnerable that it isn’t something we do lightly.

But the wonderful Julia Copus, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and David Constantine, the poets in my first three posts on this subject, have expressed those moments when love cuts literally to the heart of us so well, that I couldn’t resist something a little more humorous; more of an exercise in writing a love poem.

Billy Collins’ poem ‘Sonnet’ isn’t deeply moving but it is still a ‘love poem’, almost to love poetry itself. He is, in a sense, just entertaining us with a sonnet about the different ways in which the sonnet form has been shifted to suit the poet holding the pen. A poem about writing poetry. However, I also think he is taking a pot shot at poets who strive so hard to write a poem to their love in sonnet form that it becomes a puzzle to be solved -  words slotted in to fit the rhyme scheme or metre, as much as a genuine reflection of feeling.

Anyway, I like it. I hope this video in which you can hear Billy Collins read the poem works on here, as the poet’s voice does add a little something. The vision of Petrarch in his ‘crazy medieval tights’ (although I rather think he was more of a robe man…)  is bit of a giggle for another dreary Monday morning…

Sonnet – Billy Collins

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love’s storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

The last in my series (can I bear to end it? I have loved choosing these poems!) will be a sonnet, an absolutely brilliant one. It will be up on St Valentine’s Day itself.  Lets see if you can guess who it is by…..