Writing the Poem: Self-Portrait as Bronze Age Burial Mound

The search for identity through poetry. Is this a neurodiverse trait?

Photo by Joshua Oluwagbemiga on Unsplash

This post is quite long and probably best viewed on the substack website.

One thing that I have noticed about myself as a poet is that I return often to expressions of self via identifying as other things. With the hindsight of (still awaiting assessment) realising I am probably-almost-certainly in some way neurodiverse, I can see that this a part of my exploration of my existence in the world full stop.

I have problems working out who I am, what I am. I am 46 and have spent my life not knowing who or what my authentic self is. I wrote a memoir about it, and the best I could come up with, after explorations the effects of all sorts on things on shaping my identity - the effects of losing my daughter to clinical negligence, being working class, being so embedded to the landscape I live in, being influenced by the culture and society that I find myself a part of etc, - the best unmasked identity I could attach myself to is that I feel most like myself when I am alone in nature. I could tell you my natural skill set - emotionally intuitive, naturally artistic, empathetic and compassionate - but I still don’t really know what my self is.

I don’t have a strong idea of who I am and I change my mind a lot. To have a strong identity of self is to have a steady thought process, a set of similar thoughts about one thing at once. You know who you are because you always think this way or that way. I’m making assumptions here, about people with a strong sense of identity, please do comment with your experiences. The flip-flop nature of my identity is, I believe, in part because I have lots of thoughts and images in my head at once: my brain is like a switchboard on which all the lights are lit up at the same time, each one containing a separate idea. These ideas are usually connected in some way, but that connection might be sensory or imagery based rather than concrete.

There seems to be no filtering system for my thoughts, they either exist or they don’t. I’m not sure I am expressing this well, but I am still in a place of exploration and this is all I can do. I can see this switchboard of thoughts in my work, because I am a writer who brings lots of connection points together. This is why I am a writer, because I am able to create paper scenarios in which all the points can exist at once. In the alternative world that is the creative universe, the laws are more flexible. In that world it’s a good thing to be able to see how things connect, and the interesting places that those connections take place. My job as the writer then is to create the connective tissue that holds all the light points, all those connection points in a form. This is prose. In poetry my job is to take each point of light and explore it. This is what I feel I have done in my new collection, Blackbird Singing at Dusk, which is, essentially about identity through connection to landscape. The connective tissue here is the collection, but I like to think each light point, each poem can stand alone.

There are a handful of what I would call ‘self portrait’ poems in the collection. Some of them obviously self portrait poems, unashamedly using this very well used poetic device to explore identity. Some less obvious. Boulder Returning in Echoes of Self is a self portrait poem, Sometimes I pretend I am a Dog is a kind of self portrait poem, Drone is a kind of self portrait poem. There are a lot of poems in which my body is reimagined as nature; as an interface for nature, and my brain as the receptor, the translation place for nature. I like that idea. That is my identity in this moment. Perhaps my identity is not meant to be anything solid, perhaps my identity is meant to be fluid. There are a lot of poems in which identity, female experience and the rural identity are merged and explored, and these are often self portrait type poems.

Self-Portrait as Bronze Age Burial Place

The idea of the burial place, in terms of actual burial place and place explored by archaeologists, as landscape markers and as landscape markers that lend themselves to place names, is a repeating theme in this collection. There is a series of poems called Excavating the Bone House in which I am asking of myself what I am in terms of class and landscape, and the word ‘Howe’ becomes emblematic of that, as a place and a question. But Self-Portrait as Bronze Age Burial Mound is a specific poem. It uses this well known poetry style to set out in a very unapologetic way, ideas of being the landscape. Or rather being part man-made, part landscape. It’s a way of exploring and expressing this idea of ‘I feel my most authentic self when I am alone in nature’. I wanted to question what that meant and find a thing, a place in which I could embody that idea. Here’s the poem.

Self-Portrait as Bronze Age Burial Mound

The hearth is my heart. I am
rooms of darkness and forgotten light.
My language is the mid-winter sun.

Whale-backed. Face-down.
Burrowed into by rabbits.
Burrowed into by rats.
Ashes and teeth are my language. 

I carry the weight of responsibility.
I am detailed in archaeological sketches,
I appear huge on old maps, I loom
on the skyline.

My thoughts and secrets are in museums.
A sign says Do Not Touch.

Sometimes I am magical.
I face the east and promise
a kind of reinvention.

I am a receptacle for imagination, men
dig into me searching for riches.
I remain and remain and remain.

My language is the thumbnail mark
on the rim of a pot sherd, a carefully placed
lintel and doorway for a door leading nowhere. 

Everything I say below is a kind of insight into what my thought process was when writing and editing this poem, but the poem should stand alone without these insights. I want, always, to write poetry that is enjoyable, and (itty word) accessible as far as it can be. Poetry should be enjoyable for the joy of language and image, I feel, as much for what it is saying. I want to write poems in which the reader can come to them and find something in them, without knowing anything about me.

For this poem I decided to use a kind of formal style, with lots of end stopped lines to give a sense of gravity, reverence. In places I break the lines where I want a specific weighty feel. The first line is a good example ‘The hearth is my heart. I am’ - what do I mean by that? If you don’t know anything about burial mounds, and I don’t think you do need to know about them to enjoy this poem, an interesting feature is that often stone age burial mounds are like houses. They have a stone foundation that appears like the layout of a house, and are often built over previously used fire pits or hearths. They are often built over the habitation spots either of their own timeline or previous, earlier peoples. I feel there is a reverence to continuity in the building of burial mounds. The hearth is traditionally the heart of the home, it is the place where people gather, keep warm, socialise. But it’s also a place in which matter turns to gas, where things are burned. To burn something is to transform it. On the end of that line I break the ‘I am’ onto the next line because I wanted to have a very definite sense of self, of identity through existence and continuity. The next lines refer to the house-like structure that is beneath some burial mounds, and stone age temples, in which the ‘house’ has rooms, sometimes for remains.

This is the language of the burial mound

There are several lines that refer to the language of the burial mounds. Some burial mounds, like passage tombs, are aligned to the rising or setting sun at the solstices. Even though the ‘doors’ cannot be seen and are buried under rocks and turf, they are still in contact with the sun at these important times of the year. This is like the language of the burial mound, the warm sun in the mouth of the temple is a kind of life, and language is a kind of life. Ashes and bones are also the language of the burial mound in this poem. What am I getting at here, what do I mean by language? Language is the transformation of thought into communicable idea, so there is a transformation process that I am catching at, but also language is a kind of identity, to be able to speak is to have an identity of a kind.

There are lines in this poem that refer to archaeology and being ‘dug into’ by rats, rabbits, men… this is a commentary on the body, my body and all female bodies existing in the world. In my memoir The Ghost Lake I talk a little bit about the way that even the rural landscape, the paths we can walk on, the dangers inherent in the space where lone women exist, is male organised and male orientated and I wanted to give that impression of a personal experience, a metaphorical experience of the female body in life in general, in the rural life and as a ‘lesser’ person within the context of landscape. This idea follows on in the ‘sometimes I am magical’ and ‘I am a receptacle for imagination’ because so often identity comes from how we are perceived, rather than an internal narrative; who we are is subdued by, how we are viewed.

The final lines also add to this ida of creation of self through other people’s perceptions and actions - the thumbnail on the pot sherd and the lintel of a doorway that is impressed into you. Neither man made or organic, this burial mound exists. It remains and remains and remains but we are still unsure of what it’s purpose of design is, how the people who built it felt about the people buried within it.

I’m pleased with this poem. And the beautiful thing about poetry is that the conversation exists between writer and reader in which the reader comes to the poem on the page and interprets it according to their own experiences, the lens of their unique life. This is how it should be.

I’ve covered a little bit of my process in relation to how my brain works in a previous post. You can read the previous post here:

You can buy my memoir, The Ghost Lake from independent bookshops, online as an e book and audio book and the paper back is available to pre order now.

You can buy my new collection, Blackbird Singing at Dusk here.

Until next time.