Poet as Bridge, Poet as Messenger, Poet as Mouthpiece for the Lost Ones

Reading Liz Berry's The Home Child

In her brilliant collection of essays, Negotiating With the Dead, Margaret Atwood says that all writing:

…is motivated, deep down, by a fear of and fascination with mortality - by a desire to make the risky trip to the Underworld, and to bring something or someone back from the dead.

I feel this is particularly true of poets. I certainly see it in myself. One of my own fascinations, and a theme I return to often, is the way that people are bridges between lost time spans, bridges between historical points; that people are walking archives of history. For example, there were people who survived the sinking of the Titanic, a hugely historical and distant event, who were still alive and giving television interviews in the 1980s and 90s when I was at school and the world was care bears and side pony tails. That I would alive at the same time as a titanic survivor, that my life overlapped history like this is strange to me, amazing, as if the history then become three dimensional, as if these enormous events are within touching distance. I realise now, of course, that I too am now a walking archive. Of care bears and side pony tails, but also of a time when there was no internet, no mobile phones. As an aside, I see low rise jeans are making a come back.

Sometimes it’s difficult to grasp the fact that I am now not really the receiver of history, I am the archive for history. It is a different way of saying I am ageing, and a softer, much more interesting way of looking at ageing: to be a knowledge carrier is a privileged not every one gets. Not everyone gets recorded in history. What happens to the small people, the small lives, to the people who can’t write down their own stories? I’ve kept diaries for years, since I was about twelve years old. A lot of what’s in them is boring mundane day to day stuff, interspersed with existential crisis and career highs and lows, but looking back, I am so grateful I recorded the minutiae of my existence because my dad, who died last August, is alive in those pages, and my daughter too, is alive, briefly, in those pages. For my daughter, who died at birth, I feel i am the guardian of her memory, the proof that she lived. as a poet I have written her story over and over, and I keep her alive as a person by doing that. I’m circling towards a point here, believe it or not, because I have just read Liz Berry’s The Home Child in preparation for the April Books from the Margin.

Books from the Margin April Book: The Home Child by Liz Berry

The book, a novel in verse, follows the story of Eliza Showell, Berry’s great aunt who, as a child in care, was put on a ship and sent to Canada to work on a farm. It is, of course, fictionalised, but fictionalised in the way that in the right hands imagination becomes the sinew between the solid fleshy bits and boney bits provided by archival research. As I was reading it I felt like I was sorting through a suitcase of belongings, each piece being removed forming a person, a child, a teenager, a woman. It is a stunning book, a beautiful and extraordinary book. The language of home is the structure that holds the book together. the way that dialect carries home within it. It’s very difficult to ventriloquise for the dead, but I think this is what poet’s do so well, and this poet, Liz Berry, has done this exceptionally well. There is such tenderness in Eliza’s story, such compassion. Berry becomes the bridge between this girl and her life and the people here, now, left behind, left in the future. Eliza’s voice has been restored, thanks to the creative process, poetry and Liz Berry’s deft skill as a poet. I will also add that the book itself, its physical properties; the perfect blue of the cover, the winding red ribbon and the red inside cover are so well designed, the illustrations, by Gemma Trickey, are gorgeous, perfect for the content and they run through the book, separating the stages of Eliza’s life. There is a photograph of Eliza at the back. She looks capable, fierce. There is also a picture of her headstone. She born in 1895 and died in 1978. I was born in 1978. There’s that feeling again; that feeling of time as stepping stones, people as bridges. I urge You to go and read this book. You can get a 15% discount on it from the Poetry Pharmacy if you sign up for one of the Books from the Margins zoom events.

The First Three Books From the Margin

Next week I’ll have links for the live events, but in the meantime, here are the upcoming titles.

April - Liz Berry -The Home Child

May - Tanya Shadrick -The Cure for Sleep

June - Helen Mort - Black Car Burning

Come Work With Me

Wanna do some writing with me?

The Dawn Chorus is an early morning facilitated writing group, the next sessions start on 3rd April.

In May I have a four week writing challenge: The Religion of Water. The feedback sessions are now sold out but there are plenty of places left on the email only (£25) and the email, zoom and facebook (£50) options. To find out more:

Spelt News

After an unbelievable set of stresses, issue 08 of Spelt magazine is out now. We are now able to offer digital versions of the magazine too, which you can buy here.

It’s been a bit of a breakthrough week with the Big Writing Project, I pushed straight through a block that has held me semi captive for months and can see, know that the project will be finished on time, that I can absolutely do it.

Until next time

x