How special are you?

Angus somewhere, April 2018

I've been listening to lots of radio programmes of late. Now we can choose specific programmes (using the BBC i-player mostly in my case) it is possible to fill your mind, if you need or want to, with a pretty much non-stop flow of ideas via sensible people talking about interesting things on the radio. Just today (no paid work having come knocking on my email door... ) I have listened to Chris Wood on music, church and bodily functions, nearly all the 5 parts of Benjamin Zephaniah's autobiography 'The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah' and a 'Point of View' by Tom Shakespeare on disabled sexuality. I've also read a great piece of writing by Zadie Smith in her book 'Feel Free' ('On Optimism and Despair - you can read it here) so it's been a quiet day on the one hand... but a full one too. And thank goodness for other people's ideas because I have been in a bit of a poetry rut of late too... a run of knock-backs and a decent helping of 'why am I still doing this at all?' Self-pity is always so attractive... let's say no more on that.

Anyway, the Tom Shakespeare 'Point of View' started off with a look at the use of the term 'special needs'. "Disabled people don't have special needs," he says, "we're not aliens, we have ordinary needs... We want education and employment and a place to live and access to healthcare and all the other taken for granted things of life." I like this clear kind of talking and thinking and it reminds me that some time ago I wrote a poem looking at special needs in a similar way (if from the opposite starting point... that in fact all our needs are special in some way or other... which does make them ordinary). If I remember rightly it was the now very out of favour Germaine Greer who, at least in part, prompted the writing of the poem (she was on Question Time, was asked about disability and said she considered people with no sense of humour the most disabled of all... or something like that...). I can't find the quote because all you can find about her online now is trans-related. I wonder if she still has a sense of humour... 

Anyway (again), here is the old poem (from 2007 or so - back in the days when I rhymed a lot more and was allergic to end-of-line punctuation). 

Pay heed to the special need

Personally I need a lot of help with moving

I need public transport, I need constant soothing

I need my hand holding and I need some quiet time

These needs are special and these needs are mine

You might need a teacher, you might need a school

You might need some help with obeying a rule

You might have a thing about folding and drawers

Those needs are special and those needs are yours

I can’t do sitting in well-behaved rows

Snobbery and claptrap get right up my nose

I’m not very good at just following a line

So many needs out there but these ones are mine

You might be allergic, you might be alone

You might need assistance from more than a phone

You might need a moment, a break, just a pause

Because all needs are special, especially yours

RF 2007

Music and gods

A little while ago I told you about an old friend and musician (Ana Laan) who was crowdfunding her new project. The funding was a success and the music for that project (an EP called 'Camino del Agua') is now available. You can buy it here and I have seen it on the other site as well (the big one... that many of us use.... even if we maybe shouldn't... the Coca Cola of shopping sites...). If you want an actual CD to hold in your hand you can contact Ana at analaan@analaan.com to arrange that (she is based in Spain so postage costs from there I imagine). The artwork (by Jesús Placencia) on the CD is lovely and the music... my favourite track changes all the time but at the moment it is 'Dionysus' (and funnily enough there was a documentary about Bacchus/Dionysus on the BBC just recently... and an interview with the historian on my favourite radio show). Being whatever the opposite of a classicist is I have to look up the names of Greek/Roman gods over and over again (they refuse to stay in my brain). I might manage to remember this one now though! 

Occasions

Garden sun, last week

Poems are often a big part of special occasions and, as I am sure most of us know, they are a popular choice for weddings and funerals in particular. I had a message just last week about someone wanting to use one of my poems for their wedding and this happens quite a lot (interestingly, for someone who is not a big marriage or weddings fan, I am 'recommended poet' on a weddings website or two...). It's nice to get messages like that though - I'm all for love and if that's the way people choose to celebrate love then hooray for that and for them. Today's poem, however, is probably more funeral than wedding (but also about love...).

Passing

Now you’re gone for good, 

Nobody anybody knows.

And we won’t see your face

In the papers, on TV,

For who knows your name

To say it but me?

You were fort and fire,

Arms for comfort, eyes for warmth,

So much strength in every sense,

Not the usual push and pull.

Now all the rooms are empty

Even when they’re full.

Poems pour down hard,

Sinks are blocked, dust wins.

Simply nothing adds up

Now your time is done.

My days are lost completely

To a dying sun.

RF 2018

Waiting rooms (2)

Fixings

Now it's all quiet rooms,

Soft shoes, semi-smiles.

Mouths are up, eyes down.

Lamps are dimmed to half-light

And car parks like hearts

Are full to bursting.

The flashy camera sees all,

Grabs a stitch in time.

You catch your breath.

RF 2018

Waiting rooms

Sentinel by Steph Masterson

In the last post I said I would write something about the documentary film Unrest (2017) so…

Unrest was made by Jennifer Brea about the illness ME (also sometimes known as CFS). One of my closest friends has had ME for over 16 years so I was very interested to see this film (it is available now in various ways – showing at some cinemas but also available on most streaming services). There have been various programmes and features about ME on TV and radio over the years but this one is different for several reasons – it was directed by someone with the illness, it is a feature film (and a quality piece of work) and it really does seem to be making some waves about its subject. I found it really compelling (and emotional) and would totally recommend it as a fascinating, moving, very stirring piece of art and life. It tackles many of the myths about ME (as every piece about ME seems to have to do) but it does a lot of its work by just showing the everyday lives and challenges of Brea and a selection of other people who suffer from ME (and the suffering comes over loud and clear in this film). In fact one of the reasons many people don’t like the use of CFS, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, as a name for the illness is its implication that fatigue is the main problem for people with ME, when sufferers will tell you it is pain (relentless, extreme pain), amongst other things, that is a much bigger issue. The film does have medical content (experts and so on – not that there are many ME experts – and the film looks at that issue too) but what it has, almost most of all, is enough anger and determination to present its evidence in a way that makes it hard for viewers to look away. Unrest is part (a big part) of a growing campaign to get more research into ME, to try to finally offer people with the illness some hopes for cure and recovery (you might have heard recovery stories already but there are many more people who are not recovering and who are getting virtually no solutions from medical sources). It is hard for many people with ME (and their carers and friends and family) to be involved in campaigning because of the nature of the illness but Unrest is a big step on their behalf. A related campaign is MillionsMissing (part of ME Action, one of several ME-related groups) – the ‘millions’ referring to the number of people who have the illness (worldwide cases can only be estimated at this stage but all the ones I found online started with figures like 17 million and, within that, 4 times as many women as men).

ME is one of those subjects that a lot of people think they know something about but in reality very few do (both in the medical world and elsewhere). You may have a heard a scrap of a story about someone who was off work for a couple of months and ‘people said they had ME’ and ‘they didn’t seem ill to me’ but it’s most likely that these bits of stories are not about ME at all (and a lot of them are very old bits of stories and, often, told with malice for reasons I won't get into here...). This film, by concentrating on individuals who are far more typical of ME cases, draws attention to the pain and the suffering and the long-term problems that ME can and does cause. Thinking about it I kept coming back to the idea of waiting rooms. I think that lots of us feel like we spend too much time in waiting rooms (literally and figuratively). Sometimes it can feel like we are always waiting around for things to happen, either waiting to see a doctor of some kind (if that's what we need) or waiting for something or someone to fix things in other parts of our lives (and sometimes that person is us). We are dissatisfied so often and everything seems to take so long (and sometimes we are right to be dissatisfied, but other times much less so). But for people with ME (and those who love them), especially those who have had it for a very long time, they are both in a waiting room (this being a room in their home usually, for years and years in some cases) and yet, at the same time, they aren’t in a waiting room at all (because there just isn’t one – there is no doctor to see them in many cases, no cure, no hopes offered). These people are told, aloud and by actions (and inaction), that they are not important and that is a hard situation to deal with, whenever or however it occurs (and especially when you are in pretty constant pain). In some instances (see the Unrest section on Denmark) people with ME are even punished.

Other thoughts I had recently (partly to do with this film, partly to do with other things) were about strength and weakness. Around International Women’s Day last week I saw so many posts about ‘strong’ women and, whilst I understand the sentiment and the desire to stand up in the face of oppression, the repetition of this word ‘strong’ unsettled me a little (more and more every time I saw it...). I feel that if women (and I include here anyone who wants to use that word) become too fixated on the strong we are all too likely to repeat mistakes that have already been made by men (many, many men...). It would be so easy to end up taking ourselves down the cul-de-sac that some men find themselves in today, a place where ‘strength’ and ‘power’ are cages that don’t let anything else in or out (‘don’t show weakness’, ‘don’t admit defeat’). Unrest is something else entirely and I feel that by making this film Brea has shown both extreme strength and extreme weakness and that is another reason I found it so effective and impressive and whole. We can all be strong, yes, but we can be so much more besides.

Find Unrest here.

Writing about writing about writing

Messing about with art, Dundee

Last week I came second in a writing competition. It wasn't a huge affair (it was organised by the brilliant local theatre Dundee Rep as part of the promotion for their production of Deathtrap) but it was still nice to be able to say to myself 'maybe you aren't completely crap then'. The brief was to write a piece/story about writing (500 words max.) and it was my kind of competition in that you had to work quickly, you didn't have to pay to enter and they chose the winners pretty quickly too. You can see a photo of a few of us 'prize winners' here. My piece is more monologue than story and I will paste it below. It is fiction, for the most part. I'll be back in a couple of days to tell you how brilliant the film/documentary Unrest is (and if you haven't seen it, seek it out).

Outside

Someone on Twitter has won a prize. Well, that almost never happens.

Someone else on Twitter has won a prize. I’m thrilled for them both.

I eat a bag of Aldi crisps, switch to sweet (cooking chocolate), have a cup of tea.

I do some editing and while I’m doing it I notice links between some of the words in the piece that I’ve never noticed before. I think that maybe the words know what they are doing and this is a relief. Maybe they could just get an agent on their own and miss me out of the process altogether. Maybe that could be the plot of an independent film and I could write it. Or maybe that film already exists. It’s probably not my kind of thing.

I flick online to tread some time. Someone I once met at a festival has just been mentioned online by someone else who is quite famous. The someone I once met at a festival (a poet) might sell some books now so that is good for them and I am pleased. That someone was friendly and they work hard and deserve success. I think all this but I don’t really feel it. Only the dog knows the truth.

The dog looks at me with hungry eyes. Sometimes she wonders what is so special about the clicking machine but if I take her out for a walk she forgets about it soon enough. I take her out for a morning stretch and the great outdoors is full of inspiration and stories. I’m quite glad to get back home to be honest. It’s all a bit overwhelmingly real out there.

Someone on Instagram has also been outside. I see their photograph of the sunrise earlier today. It is amazing.

RF 2018

Tick Tock

Deadline

There is so much blah

gif, banter, gif

And the clock is getting ruder

tick, Tick, TICK

No, not that clock

Fuck that forever

Heaped pressures of the pack

That game is crap

On a bloody drum
This clock beats days

It counts us down

To the final gun

RF 2018

Here's a poem, a new poem. It has a swear word in it for which I make no apology. I don't use swear words in poems very much but that is probably mostly due to the fact that I have been raising a child for the past 17 or so years and most of us use fewer swear words around children (and when you do that those words sort of drop out of your vocabulary for a while). But that child is very nearly 18... so the language is relaxing a little more every day. And sometimes a swear word is just the one you are looking for.

I have also been using more punctuation in poems in the past few years but I often find it infuriating so I was glad to ditch it (or take a holiday from it anyway) for this poem. I make no apology for that either.