The Poetry Rollercoaster

After the lull in poetry activities towards the end of last year, while I recouped some emotional energy, things have picked up again, coinciding with the return of spring. 

First, in February, the latest reading in Bristol Poetry Institute's series of Annual Readings, this time by Mohave and Latina poet, Natalie Diaz, whom I never expected to get the chance to hear in my home city. It was a privilege to be present.

March saw the publication and launch of Dominic Fisher's pamphlet, Migrations, at the Inn on the Green, Horfield, with support readings by Matthew Barton, Emily Reynolds and me. 

(Matthew isn't a giant, by the way; he just happened to stand nearer the photographer than the rest of us.)

The audience

The Northerner

Emily and Maggie

I was also due to be reading at Berkeley Square Poetry Revue the Tuesday following Dom's launch, but my appearance had to be postponed until July because I woke up on the Sunday morning with no voice to speak of, a situation which persisted for five days. It just squeaked back by the following Sunday, in time for the launch of the resurrected 'Outposts', courtesy Devon-based poet and editor, Clare Morris, which was held in the community bookshop in Totnes.

Of course, a chance to read a few poems in Devon had to be seized, as it meant I could go the scenic route and have a quick dive across Dartmoor. 

Bennett's Cross

Riding shotgun was fellow-poet Dominic Fisher, who not only had three poems published in the inaugural 'Outposts', but was also featured in one of the original issues back in the 1980s - or possibly the 1970s. 

The 12th century clapper bridge that crosses the East Dart at Postbridge 

Hemlock water dropwort growing by the modern road bridge (built in the 1780s)

Ice cream van at Haytor

Looking towards Hayne Down and Houndtor in the middle distance

It was brief. It was bleak. It was beautiful. And then we were bowling down off the moor, re-encountering the Dart near Buckfastleigh and accompanying it almost all the way to Totnes. 

The launch was under the auspices of Word Stir, an open mic hosted by Harula Ladd and Toby Richardson in the community bookshop. 

It was a memorable event, filled with friends in poetry and poets I'd communicated with but was meeting for the first time, including Clare and Peter Roe, the editor of Jawbone Journal, which published one of my poems - 'A brief feather confession' - earlier in the year and who, along with his two fellow editors, nominated it for a Forward Prize, about which I'm still astonished and deeply grateful.  

Clare Morris

Finally, some sad news, as my publishers for the last 16 years, Ronnie Goodyer and Dawn Bauling of Indigo Dreams, have decided to call it day as far as publishing collections and pamphlets is concerned, although they will still be producing their poetry journals, Reach and The Dawn Treader. It's been my privilege to work with them all these years, and I will always be grateful that they helped me realise my life's dream - to take up a half an inch on a bookshelf somewhere - not once but seven times. I've been the luckiest poet, and I'll never forget how, through their faith in me and my writing, I was able to rebuild my life and my identity when my spirits were at their lowest ebb. Thank you to them both, always. 

Poetry byways and desire paths

I've taken some time to regroup lately, following a year of readings from Love the Albatross (IDP), my collection about estrangement. Engaging with such personal poems in front of an audience takes a big emotional toll, so a break has been due, and really welcome.

That said, I have been involved in a couple of group readings, both of which allowed me to read some of my (less exhausting) Bristol poems, from earlier collections. The first was a rerun of last year's 'Ten Bristol Poets' at the Bristol Literary Film Festival, in aid of St Peter's Hospice. This time we were promoted from the cafe to the main hall, where the lighting wasn't as conducive for taking photos; nevertheless, here's a few of the poets involved: clockwise from left, Tim Burroughs, Melanie Branton, Pete Weinstock, me, Charles Thompson. 

The other reading was with the IsamBards at Brunel's Underfall Yard in Bristol's Floating Harbour. 

The Matthew, seen through the round window

Fellow IsamBards, Pamli Benham and David Johnson

First set, with David, Dominic Fisher and Pameli

During the interval between sets, I took the opportunity to have a wander along Baltic Wharf, with its view over to the painted houses of Cliftonwood. My route took me past Albion Dockyard, with its familiar clock tower and the Banksy, Girl with pierced eardrum, which is now, sadly, beginning to fade. 

After our second set, it was home on the bus, via Hotwells Road and Jacob's Wells Road, where we had the delight of seeing a fleet of Santas on a bike, raising money for West Country children's hospices.

Elsewhere, I've had some of those aforementioned Bristol poems included in the Street! project run by Ralph Hoyte and Bristol Libraries, which has created soundpools containing site-specific poems outside various libraries in the city, which people can listen to through an app. Obviously I haven't, because even the thought of downloading an app brings me out in a rash, but I understand the soundpools are a joy and a delight, so that makes me happy.

Finally, after three long years of 'not writing any poems at all', I was shocked at the end of August to realise that I have actually produced some this year. Most of them appear to be on the theme of neurodivergence, and the first of these has now been published in Jawbone Journal, which I'm so pleased about, not least being amongst my friends-in-poetry, B Anne Adriaens, Melanie Branton, Rosie Jackson, Clare Morris, Alasdair Paterson, and Susan Taylor. Truly an honour.

Autism, ADHD and me

I realised some years ago that I probably have ADHD. The waters had long been muddied by trauma-related dissociation, but even as the years passed and the fallout from my marriage started to fade, my distractibility persisted, familiar from earliest childhood and embedded in a mind with no idea how to stay in the moment and be still.  

Eventually I got my act together and earlier this year, I went to see one of our local GPs. At the end of our ten-minute appointment, she looked me in the eye and said 'Well, I'm pretty sure you do have ADHD, but I also think you have autism'. 

I was dumbfounded. Two of my four children had been diagnosed with autism at the ages of four and three in the early 1990s, and I thought I knew all about the condition and the diagnostic process. 

'But I don't tick any of the boxes of the Triad of Impairments,' I protested.

She laughed. 'That's very old school!' she said. 'We diagnose it differently these days, and the hyperfocus and sensory overload you just described definitely indicate autism. I'd refer you for assessments for both if I could work out how to do it.'

Intellectually it made sense. I was aware of what's informally known as AuDHD, of course - it's hard to be on social media, in my sort of bubble, and miss it. And I had to agree that a lot of the tricky contradictions a combination of autism and ADHD might throw up (and hurl around your head like roof tiles in a high wind) felt all too familiar.

But emotionally it was another matter altogether. My little family had been considered an anomaly back in the day, with not one, but two small, non-verbal children a considerable way along the autistic spectrum at a time when autism wasn't thought to be hereditary.  As a result, we'd been invited to participate in several medical studies over the years, and I always said yes, thinking the research might help other families in my position. 

But in all that time, not one of the many medical personnel we encountered ever suggested that I too might be autistic. The only finding that was ever remarked upon was my score in the word recognition section of one of the tests we underwent: the highest they'd recorded to date. (I did rather less well on the spatial reasoning test.)

In the event, my GP referred me for just an ADHD assessment, as that seemed to me to be the condition most relevant to my daily experience, but sure enough, when my assessment came around months later, my eventual diagnosis was combined ADHD (hyperactive and attention deficit) with autistic traits.  

Again, there's lots of processing to be done, and it's going to take a long time. In the immediate aftermath, I feel I need to reframe my whole life, to pick through everything that happened to me, and perhaps view myself and the decisions I made a little less harshly than I have up until now. In that respect, this diagnosis will, I think, turn out to be a relief. 

But at the same time, I grieve that it's taken me 64 years to get to the point where I might start to understand myself, and allow myself the same compassion I extend to others. And I grieve for earlier me: for the avid six-year-old reader, who, once her books had fewer pictures and longer blocks of text, found herself reading the same page over and over without taking any of the content in, and convinced herself she'd somehow forgotten how to read, but was too ashamed to tell anyone; for the teen who loved her friends but found their company and the shifting of group dynamics draining (and still does); for the exhausted young mother with no emotional support and no ability to self-care, who gave up any chance of a career to look after her children on a promise from her husband he had no intention of keeping; for the woman entering middle age, who felt she had no choice but to keep her head down and put up with it all and who completely lost what sense of self she had in the process.  I've always known those years were hard, but I never realised quite how hard until now. 

At the same time, I can celebrate the leaps that allow me to write poems that seem to come from nowhere, and an ability to hyperfocus that makes even essay-writing exhilarating and infuses the most mundane of dog walks with an intensity that's addictive. 

I'm grateful to those who have stuck by me regardless - my lovely, long-suffering partner, three of my children, successive dogs who have loved me unconditionally, my longtime friends and wider family, my friends in poetry, and my publishers, who've enabled me to realise the one dream I held onto through all those years not once but seven times. I love them all, with every bit of my distractible, avoidant, oh-look-squirrels heart.

Remembering Andi

 

Our friend in poetry, Andi Langford-Woods died in August. To be more precise, on August 12th, my grandmother's death day, and yes, Hilda would have had the kettle on ready for Andi when she arrived. 

I've attended several celebrations of Andi since then, the first being at Silver Street Poetry and Open Mic at the end of August, where several of us read poems in her honour. I chose 'Selkie' from 'Wain', Rachel Plummer's brilliant, LGBT-themed retellings of Scottish folk tales. 

Here's Jeremy Toombs, reading his poem 'Saint of Wandering Poets, Singers, Musicians and Other Vagabonds', which he also read at Andi's funeral on Michaelmas Day (which happens to be my mother's death day).  

Below are my impressions of the funeral, which I wrote down to read at Andi's memorial, three weeks later.

The memorial, at the Greenbank in Easton, was a night full of love, startling synchronicity, and Tunnock's tea cakes. 

Andi's backgammon board

Hazel

Tom

Julian, and memories of Acoustic Night Bristol

Dom and Seb

Jane

David on his Jew's Harp

Person whose name escapes me but who read one of my favourite poems, 'Jenny Kiss'd Me' by Leigh Hunt

Ian

I'll never forget how snugly I fitted under Andi's arm when I first stuck my head above the poetry parapet in Bristol, and how funny and fearless she was. It's impossible to accept she isn't still in her Dove Street eyrie, high above the city, so I'm not going to; she is there. She'll always be there.