YouTube XXX1 – Chilling Rooms
This is the thirty-first in a series of poems, and reflections, with the underlying themes of creativity, mental health and the environment, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
Many years ago, when I was training in environmental health, I had to spend a total of three months working in abattoirs doing meat inspection. The sensory carnage was both repulsive and strangely engaging. On close examination, horrific, all that we do to put dinner on the table. This poem is one simple result of that experience.
Chilling Rooms
There’s a cold place
where headless victims hang
and steam, breathing
into raw air
preparing themselves
to be eaten.
Some call this purgatory,
half-way between hell
and the freezer bag.
For more poems see my pamphlet: ‘When the Change Came’ (published by Indigo Dreams) and my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem celebrating planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XXX – Friend of the Earth, an Apology
This is the thirtieth in a series of poems, and reflections, on the themes of creativity, mental health and environment, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
Many of us wonder what we can do to save the planet, when just by existing we are responsible for such environmental impact. Out of all the things mentioned, diet is perhaps the most important. Changing from a meat-based diet to a more plant-based diet can have dramatic effects, cutting CO2 production and reducing deforestation if food is sustainably sourced.
This poem was written in 2019 and has been tweaked to reflect covid…
Friend of the Earth, an Apology
Forgive me, I confess: I have a house, gas central heating
and a car. Well, two cars, one electric which I use for work.
I have a motorbike (hardly used) and a pushbike,
used a little bit more…
I eat out, I eat sandwiches from Pret,
I eat takeaways, and other fast food,
I eat vegetables and fruit, often from abroad,
I eat meat (but I’m trying to cut down).
Sometimes, I even eat hamburgers (oh yes, and chocolate!)
I drink occasional cans of beer, bottles of wine.
I may eat soya, tofu (but what of plantations?)
Is the future: insects, seaweed and mycoprotein?
And I fly (used to), or drive away, on holidays.
But offset carbon (used to), medium, or long haul.
I take showers, but not baths.
I recycle what I can, I drive to the tip,
donate to charity shops, use litter bins.
I buy clothes, presents, smartphones,
I have a TV, HiFi, WiFi, electric light,
dishwasher, kettle, toaster, washing machine.
I have a refrigerator, and an oven…
but I care about the planet.
I think I may have consumed palm oil, without my knowing,
and (which is worse?) microplastics in my toothpaste.
I have children…I even have a grandchild! (Seven months old!)
I belong to Greenpeace, the Kent Wildlife Trust, the Soil
Association, Big Issue Foundation, Woodland Trust, World Wide
Fund for Nature, Amnesty, and of course, Friends of the Earth.
I am far from perfect, but I care about our planet…
For more poems see my pamphlet: ‘When the Change Came’ (published by Indigo Dreams) and my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XXIX – Extinction
This is the twenty-ninth in a series of poems, and blogs, with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This topic must be close to all of us as we become ever more acutely aware of what we have done to the planet and all that live, or lived, here in the space of a generation.
Extinction
It has happened, it’s happening now!
70% of wildlife lost in only fifty years!
The sum total of millions of revolutions
around the sun, evolving, returning to mud
which once gave them birth…
And there is no end, we may cry, grieve
at the loss, but there’s nothing can replace –
the perfect beauty of creation, trashed!
Unless we let nature run free, take control
of growth and rebirth, rewild
the land we have burned, abused.
For more poems see my pamphlet: ‘When the Change Came’ and my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XXVIII – River Lawn Road
This is the twenty-eighth in a series of poems, and blogs, with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder. This is issued just before World Mental Health Day, 10thOctober 2020. WHO’s theme is increasing investment in mental health.
The name of this road in Tonbridge seemed so evocative to me and raised a memory of actually discovering something unusual on our doorstep, imagination racing. Neither an advert for smoking or for unprotected sex.
River Lawn Road (aka Knickers!)
I wait for you after class at the corner,
leaning against a red brick wall in sunshine
smoking my last cigarette. With every
drag I cough – the box of Gauloises
I held onto for years – remembering
the fag I offered you on our first date.
Later that evening, I notice a slight
perfume on my fingers, think of the crushed
blue packet I kept with me in a stripy
jacket, when smoking was cool.
You inhale your last filter tip by the front
door, sipping a glass of rose in the light
of the disappearing sun. Then, in the morning,
someone else’s knickers on the doorstep
where the milk bottles used to be.
‘Dirty old man’, you say, catching the glint in my eye.
For more poems see my pamphlet: ‘When the Change Came’ and my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XXVII – Corpus Christi – https://youtu.be/Q9rKgHXrTH4
This is the twenty-seventh in a series of poems, and blogs, with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem is for National Poetry Day, Thursday 1stOctober 2020, on the theme of ‘vision’ and it describes a moment during my first breakdown in the summer of 1997.
Corpus Christi
He kneels, as if he has witnessed slaughter,
sobbing, while other communicants stand
holding out their hands for the Body of Christ.
The white cotton handkerchief he borrowed
is soaked and stained with silt
drained from the channels in his skull.
For a moment the power of Christ crucified
rings true and he is overcome
with the resonance of a violent compassion.
His dead grandmother kneels with him.
They walk through Westminster Abbey
treading on generations of the English monarchy.
The wafer passes from palm to lips,
entire moments pour
through her fingers like liquid air.
Likewise after supper, He took the cup.
For more poems see my pamphlet: ‘When the Change Came’ and my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XXVI – Roebuck – https://youtu.be/cei7jnZ0K-g
This is the twenty-sixth in a series of poems, and blogs, with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
Another very real experience, and poignant.
Roebuck
Braking hard, having turned the corner
we see him struggling to stand
in the middle of our side of the road
wide-eyed panic. I flag down the car behind,
who can we call? Early evening –
nobody’s emergency, but ours.
In the time it takes to dial, redial and wait
there is no breath left, the dull
black pools of the eyes are lifeless
like staring heads on spikes in the abattoir.
Picking him up to place on the green verge,
oils from his dun fur drain onto my hands,
he is the weight of a sleeping child
being carried to bed.
For more poems see my pamphlet: ‘When the Change Came’ and my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XXV – Mental Health – Equinox 2 – https://youtu.be/mBAobowJbRM
Swiftly after Equinox 1, this is the twenty-fifth in a series of poems, and blogs, with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
When I had my breakdown – from a ‘manic-depressive’ as we were then known
The first breakdown was a long time ago, in 1997, before the Millennium, before 9/11, before the Crash, an age before COVID-19, although I’ve experienced several recurrences, the latest in 2016.
It’s no big deal, it doesn’t plague me, but it’s not something I can ignore. I continue to take medication and have blood tests every three months, to monitor the effects of lithium on the organs of my body: liver, kidneys, thyroid…
I am me, like we all are ‘me’, all people with our personalities, emotions, dreams, beliefs, aspirations, desires and inherent creativity!
And here we are on the fringes of Lockdown, a whole spring and summer past, the span of half a year, and the prospect of an uncertain winter, an uncertain time the world over.
None of us know how much time we have, tho’ we can safely guess at the limits! And no doubt we want to live confident and capable for those years and, of course, not be moribund. But mostly it’s not up for us to decide, knowing that plans can vaporise the moment they’re made.
However, the principles of love and friendship remain, the sharing of the moment and any burden it may contain, to support our brothers and sisters from every walk of life, every day.
And, as well as those around us, we can look to the sky, to the universe for inspiration, and be mindful of all that life offers.
Equinox 2
From one peak to another
the covid birds have flown
equinox to equinox
the span of half a year
ochre, yellow, blue.
And we are lost among
a myriad of masks
our smile, our fear, obscured –
uttering muffled thoughts,
we piece together stories
of all who are lost.
For more poems see my pamphlet: ‘When the Change Came’ and my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XXIV – Mental Health – Equinox 1 – https://youtu.be/RMX70Xij-Yw
This is the twenty-fourth in a series of poems, and blogs, with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This blog is on mental health. We’ve had Lockdown. This poem describes the first few days. And now, after Lockdown; where are we? Who are we? Where will we be?
The virus still exists, it is among us, although the chances of death are slim, for those older, the risk of demise is greater. And we want to be here, mostly we want to stay alive! We breathe through cotton masks, as if they might save us, save someone else… We have learnt, in solitude together, what it is to be at the edge. We have faced what it is to be mortal, our end coming sooner than expected. As if there might only be hours to survive.
Equinox
It’s as if an invisible snow
has fallen, and the streets
become quiet and cautious.
Even with virus, in sunshine
the air seems clear –
less gases, particulates –
every breath we take
so much more precious.
We are the same under one sun
as setting, it catches
the tops of flowers, leaves
traces of gold on panelled wood.
For more poems see my pamphlet: ‘When the Change Came’ and my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XXIII – All I Need – https://youtu.be/9HDdtXMlUls
This is the twenty-third in a series of poems, and articles, with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem was written several years after the event. First love brought to life, as if something might go on… This poem is as much of my blood as I live. And yet it has passed. And the now is the beautiful.
All I need
If I were to be honest, all I need is what I am.
So why do I long for her, her taste, her touch
Her sex? Surely knowing that I could…
Ought to now to be enough. But I do not want
Only to remember her warmth, her kiss,
Her skin, her smile, her playful laughter.
What I want is to relive those first few weeks,
Months, hours, days, when there was nothing
In the world that mattered more
Than to be together. When our embrace
Broke the hearts of lovers not yet born
And we took what we each had to give
As if it were a child, to grow with us.
All I need is what I am. I am that child in her.
She is in me. I cannot forget. I even remember
The shapes of the bedclothes each morning
As if our every movement were captured
In their soft folds, mounds and crevices.
And I remember the voice of the singer
Who sang to the bonding of our muscles
And limbs, matching the rhythm, and sang again
The day we parted – releasing each other.
This poem can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals…
YouTube XXII – Teabag in a Wine Glass – https://youtu.be/9T2BW6gAbgY
This is the twenty-second in a series of poems, and articles, with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
For me, this incident which happened on the evening of 14thJanuary 1997, turned out to be a kind of Trigger Event, helping to spark off subsequent psychosis a few months later. I can’t say I blame my bipolar on this of course, but it was a factor in gathering change later that year. And life so often throws ‘a curve ball’, something unexpected. I was drinking cappuccino with a friend (an Environmental Health Officer, as I had been) in a café called Café Sante (translated as café health) in Garrick Street in London’s West End, and this is what happened…
Teabag in a wineglass
There are many dainty rules
of etiquette intended to avoid
the incongruous, designed
not to upset, like picking up
a bone china tea cup between
thumb and forefinger
with little finger cocked…
or tipping a soup bowl away
from you, to finish
the very last drop…
But when that gritty clump
of chocolate powder (is it?)
caught between your teeth
turns out to have legs,
etiquette can go stuff itself.
Waiter: there’s a fucking
cockroach in my cappuccino!
For more poems see my pamphlet: ‘When the Change Came’ and my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XXI – A lampshade painted with naked women – https://youtu.be/P56_JTnKEB0
This is the twenty-first in a series of poems, and articles, with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem won me a local poetry prize with the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society. I had actually been looking at lampshades, and here my imagination and got the better of me, and took a darker turn.
A lampshade painted with naked women
Their breasts and thighs are clear
masking a sixty watt bulb
and their fleshy tones seem real.
He stands at the entrance switching
the light on and off to watch
their shapes appear and disappear.
He is drunk. Very drunk. With each click
their shadows flicker like moving pictures,
in and out of focus, as if dressing, undressing.
She is stretched out on the leather sofa
her eyes closed, for her the light changes
from black to red to black to red, to black.
This poem can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XX – The Friendship Tree – https://youtu.be/kqZnA8LGH6E
This is the twentieth in a series of poems with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
The poem was originally called A Tree of Paradise in the pamphlet (When the Change Came), but I’ve realized that Friendship Tree is the most appropriate term to describe this succulent plant, also known as the Money Tree. The lady in question (Marie) was a close friend of the family, and my brother and I often used to help out with jobs around the house, and gardening. In particular, I used to read to her, as the poem describes, since she had cataracts, and we did indeed build up a close friendship in spite of the years between us. We shared many interests in books, and here in Supernature.
The Friendship Tree
Grows to fill your broad bay window,
succulent leaves spilling over the sill
among spider webs, clouded glass.
The room: the baby grand, huge armchairs
their red, stretch covers…wood-chip
which I’d hung and painted Sunshine Yellow –
a colour you chose but would never see.
You sit facing the warmth of the electric fire, its heat
penetrating the thick jumper you’d knitted.
How we explore books together, as I read
aloud – Lyall Watson: Supernature, Lifetide
and more, and you anticipate the cup of tea
and slice of your own lemon cake I bring you,
as we share our excitement over the intelligence
of dolphins, and reflect on Infinite Mind.
This poem can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XIX – Windbreak – https://youtu.be/_tPH3cBoS5o
This is the nineteenth in a series of poems with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
How many seaside trips required the sheltering services of a windbreak? This poem is a mixture of beach memories from childhood, but most recently Branscombe beach in Devon. It’s a lasting memory of my Mum and Dad, the sea and the sun, and the simple things.
Windbreak
He’d hammer the wooden rods into the shingle
with a rock the size of his palm and the wind would fill
the striped cotton: green, orange, yellow, brown.
Once punctured, the blue camping Gaz cylinder hissed
into the burner, the flames tickling the base
of the aluminium kettle. Mother would open the Tupperware
box of sandwiches prepared that morning in the cottage,
while the sea would continue to rise and fold, easing itself
between the pebbles, inviting us back in. We would
have to wait an hour before the food went down
and we could swim again. The whistle brought scalding tea,
our skin turning beneath the sun, pasty white to red, burning
between the sheets at night, in spite of cool, calamine lotion.
This poem can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals…
YouTube XVIII – Ecology – https://youtu.be/dJ9YTn6XisQ
This is the eighteenth in a series of poems with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem is as much about what we are doing to the planet, as it is about my late father. It’s a true story. As a representative for the local force, my Dad used to go to police federation conferences and would invariably bring something back for Mum, my brother and I. I identified with the wild, mountain lion of the cover, the sense of freedom, of power, of danger and concern at the animal being a threatened species.
That was the early seventies. How I wish we’d all done so much more in the last fifty years to save the planet, than was achieved. An irony is that I hated the systematic, cold measuring of everything, through the quadrats described, for example, but it is of course the science which is telling us exactly what we have lost and may continue to lose…as the video clip shows, I still have the book.
Ecology
The book. A hardback. Brought home from conference,
the police radio crackling to itself over lunch,
his thick, navy, woollen jacket in the porch. Or was it black?
A mountain lion in silhouette, at sunrise or sunset…sunset!
The title seemed to embrace much more
than simply the web of the interconnected.
Now I knew his concern. He too cared about
Man’s destruction of planet Earth, and the loss
of all we are linked to, and depend upon.
Not the ground, segmented into metre quadrats,
for the counting of biology, botany, caught within the frame
but the real, the unique, individuals of the species.
His arm around me. Rarely. Those moments
continue to live, as does this book
its pages now, holding a beast in the balance.
This poem can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XVII – Nothing Remains – https://youtu.be/EznOx8iRu8o
This is the seventeenth in a series of poems with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem is about what happens afterwards. After your parents have died. After civilisation and the so called ‘liberal elite’ have been hounded out of place, to recapture something of the creative through memorising verse and novel and to recite. The film referred to in this poem is Fahrenheit 451 – The Temperature at Which Books Burn (based on a short story by Raymond Bradbury).
Nothing remains
Remembering a film which ends in the woods in snow –
a community reciting novels they know by heart
offering words from old to young, escaping
the temperature at which books burn.
And yet form fractures, fragments, syllables burst
consonants dissolve into vowels, moments evaporate,
leave only their sense to be detected, as if by an aerial
tuned to a certain frequency. We cleared the house.
This poem can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XVI – At the Wheel – https://youtu.be/dArpyyPrk0A
This is the sixteenth in a series of poems with the underlying theme of creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem follows the death of my Dad on my birthday in 2012. I inherited his Smart car and still drive it even now. There is something of spirit that lives on and, of course, I frequently think of him and his poetry, particularly his last collection ‘Blue Moon’, inspired by his late mother. The collection includes the poem ‘In a Blue Moon’ which features his mother, and Orion.
At the wheel
On my way to work, I get into his car and say
Good morning, Dad. It’s as though he sees
through my eyes, headlights on dark mornings,
wipers leaving a blur. He taught me to drive –
as I change from first to second, it’s his arm
which moves my hand; mechanical, yet driven.
The notes of the engine rise and fall
with each change of gear, his shadow invisible
yet present in space and time – tall behind me –
and I sense the comforting, scent of him.
Every day closer to the same oblivion, living
those moments when memory is more than enough
to spill into tears; slow striding Orion,
the poem – always his even, measured voice.
This poem can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XV – Ribosomes – https://youtu.be/gA_MyClcAo4
This is the fifteenth in a series of poems with a twist on creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder. I’m delighted that it has been recently accepted into The Poetry Shed.
This poem has its origins many years ago, even to the first baby that my uncle and aunt had soon after they were married. It also relates to a weekend in the Lake District shared with fellow students and professors discussing the latest research and understanding on ribosomes. As you may know, ribosomes are cell organelles, (in the cell fluid or cytoplasm), which translate the genetic code of the cell into proteins, including enzymes, using amino acids as the building blocks. They use messenger RNA which itself is derived from DNA in the nucleus.
And it’s a love poem.
Ribosomes
Wondering where you are, among the beaten sky
broken rock, contours of distant mountains –
the tips of your fingers, all over me
from last night’s loving, now washed with water.
Not knowing quite what we’ve started,
without precaution, chromosomes divide
differences combine, begin to replicate
within, the nucleus going about its work.
We catch ourselves tripping over
the ultrasound of grasses in the breeze
following the sun and the long light
while inside, he grows.
More poems can be found in another pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ published by Indigo Dreams, visit: www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XIV – How to calibrate a sundial – https://youtu.be/46wH32y2T1k
This is the fourteenth in a series of poems related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
You could say this poem is a little ‘racy’…since it contains age-old themes of life, lust, and enduring love.
How to calibrate a sundial (without a watch)
Evening. He watches her short skirt ride up over
her thigh – glimpses white silk. For a moment
he loses his voice. At dawn, he wakes
rigid, ready to salute the morning sun, but
there are clouds and no shadow. He holds
an angle of sixty degrees, the width of summer.
The occasional night-time polish reveals
its true nature – a dreamy offering for the moon.
Moonshadow spills over brass, recessed hours,
beneath the weight of constellations spiralling.
Now she loves him as if he might leave her –
his middle finger finds the spot and she
revolves around it for an age –
such relief, this gentle measurement of space.
This poem can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XIII – Gaia2020 – https://youtu.be/kKZGca_3kO8
This is the thirteenth in a series of poems related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This is a long poem (dare I say almost Epic!?), about spirit and planet Earth. Here the planet is considered as being alive in its own right, since it came into being as a rock billions of years ago. (You might want to put the kettle on for a cup of tea with this one…J.)
This poem was inspired by asking my late parents a simple question: What do you say to me now? And the poem is rooted in the reply I received; a celebration of Earth, as the origin of life. The Earth, its care for us, and equally how we care for the Earth, is a most profound connection, these words are both tribute and lament. (The poem also includes a number of different quotes along the way.)
I try to make a contribution as a member of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Woodland Trust and Kent Wildlife Trust. But, as highlighted in Wildingby Isabella Tree, the Wildlife Trusts can’t do enough by themselves, it needs the whole farming and other land owning community to take part, torewildwhere they can, to search out every opportunity.
Gaia 2020 – Part 1
I have an emotional attachment to Earth, that goes far beyond my ability to understand or explain.(Freeman Patterson)
They walk into the middle distance,
lit in silhouette, sunset, focused,
as if they’ve found an answer – even from here I can feel them smile…
Nothing is left of home. My tears
run dry – I can utter barely
a word, syllables clutter at the back of my throat
I cannot spit them out
afraid I may choke, or swallow
what once meant something.
I speak in silence: Mum, Dad,
what do you say to me now?
Remember where you came from…
This poem is in the form of a pamphlet available on my website at:
http://www.makingconnectionsmatter.org/gaia2020/
More poems can be found in another pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ published by Indigo Dreams, visit: www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XII – The Moons of Jupiter https://youtu.be/KMorSecP8nc
This is the twelfth in a series of poems related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This viewing of Jupiter’s moons could be described as a climatic or cathartic, profound experience, which are so important in life…
I remember it as clearly now, that first gasp at the distant and the real, through a humble telescope with a dear friend and my aunt, in a garden in the Lake District. We know the planets are circling the sun with us, that we are in some form of harmonic orbit together, this is the first magic, the wild expanse of the universe.
The Moons of Jupiter
Outside, our breath rises, light’s focused
through clear lenses,
the magic of thick, polished glass, of mirrors.
Tonight, I see the moons of Jupiter:
four tiny crescents lit by the sun
in line, in orbit, the planet like a star.
Since childhood I’d heard their names
Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto…
but I never thought to see our sun’s
bright arc define their surfaces.
Now they are real. I know their solid
weight suspended, sense the easy glide
of partners dancing circles at a distance,
our globe, our moon, huge forces
swinging ellipses, invisible attraction.
Jupiter. I can even see its stripes!
More poems can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem about planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube XI – Alive!
This is the eleventh in a series of poems related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
I guess this is an existential poem, it’s very much about what it is to be alive – the fundamental reality of what it is to be real, to experience the here, the now. Too often we continue life on the surface, taking things for granted, the superficial accepted as the everyday. When in fact this whole, complete, entire moment at any one point in life, is infinitely magical, powerful, profound. Everything in the evolution of the stars, the planets, creatures, led up to this, and will continue. In what way depends partly on how we intend to respect, and nurture the earth.
Alive
It is in our veins, yet we have not said, not shared
enough of who and what we are
of how we came to be – to be human –
not enough of soul, of spirit, what it is that we strive for,
those of us lucky enough to dream.
Not enough of elemental roots, connections
which link us to the dawn of time, the dust of stars
from which we’ve come – not enough
of birth, of spirit made flesh…
molecular bonding – deoxyribonucleic acid.
What is this to be inspired, to be moved by beauty, art,
theatre, dance, painting, sculpture, music, song,
the human voice, the human body, ecstasy, heights we aspire to…?
More poems can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ and in Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem about planet Earth.
YouTube X – How to Wrap a Memory
This is the tenth in a series of poems related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem was written while on holiday in Tobago, when we used to travel long haul, many years ago. It’s a beautiful, natural island, with one of the first tropical rainforest reserves. Holidays are usually good for your mental health, and this was no exception. We visited Tobago with another couple who we’d known for a long time and remain very good friends and the source of inspiration for the poem. My thanks go to The Poetry Shed for publishing this online.
This poem as the title suggests, is about memory, memory of place and time, and of futures.
How to wrap a memory
Alive with the brilliance of tropical birds, sarongs
dance among the patterns of palm leaves
as waves turn turquoise, brown to white
ruffling the edge of the Caribbean, her skin
silky, lazy smooth touching Costa Rica, Cuba,
trading last night’s violence for the hush
of a rippling shore, as black men, glistening,
take a firm grip on the rope, pull in the net.
I gave up worry the moment I sat under
the shade of this palm leaf parasol, to listen
to the story of the sea…So, choose the finest
fibre of a hummingbird’s nest, weave yourself
a sheer veil, paint it with echoes of birdsong
draw in the corners – keep it in hiding.
This poem can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube IX – If I were to die today
This is the ninth in a series of poems related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem was written at a time when I felt secure enough to ponder my own demise. It might have been written in Lockdown but then the reality of death, the chance that the virus might get me, or my loved ones, was too close. So, the poem is clearly tongue-in-cheek and diverts thinking from what really matters, but reflects the fact that I would miss beauty, beauty and desire. It is equally about the deeper wish to hold and sustain love.
If I were to die today
It would simply be a death. It would be a simple death.
If I knew, and did not panic, I might recall
an odd detail – the damp of the grass
in the park, rising under the morning sun
through the denim of her jeans, her knickers –
white silk showing at the small of her back –
the chill reaching the skin of her buttocks, prompting
the muscles of her thighs and calves to contract,
lifting her, to stand and stretch in the long light.
Given the chance I might choose my last
Crème Egg. I would undo the multi-coloured
foil without making a tear, then bite
off the top, push my tongue deep into the centre
to lick out the sweet, sticky cream.
Likely as not, my life would conclude as my journey
began this morning – apparently on the wrong tracks:
‘This train is for Margate. The next stop is Folkestone
Central’ announced the synthetic, female voice
when in fact it is Tunbridge Wells
and the train will terminate at Charing Cross.
Life: the moment catches me unawares. In truth,
it is simply the wish to hold her, until the cold drains away.
This poem can be found in my pamphlet ‘When the Change Came’ see my website www.makingconnectionsmatter.org for further details.
Other publications include: Fast Train Approaching…a memoir, Voices: mental health survivors, carers, therapist, family and friends, and Gaia 2020, a long poem on planet Earth.
Steve has also performed at the Brighton and Edinburgh Festival Fringes…
YouTube VIII – Breaking Away from Breaking Down
Welcome to the eighth in a series of poems & prose related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
In 1851, Henry David Thoreau, wrote these words in his account of living in isolation in the woods, On Walden Pond: ‘a poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods…as narrowly as a cat does a mouse!’
In response, and in the introduction to several Fringe performances, I say: I am a poet, I watch my moods. Not only to be aware of the extremes, but also to register those subtle changes that may accompany that first slip towards oblivion. I have been close to the edge, I have fallen over…
Breakdown. Nervous breakdown. Fragments. And in those fragments, something of the truth. I didn’t see it coming until the third time around, bearing down on me. I’m more aware now, I watch for tell-tale signs, try to feel the ground ahead of me to predict and prevent that first slip into madness. As if it could happen at any moment.
YouTube VII – Asylum
This is the seventh in a series of poems related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This brief poem is part of my true story experience of being in an ‘asylum’ or ‘Place of Safety’ after my breakdown, a place for healing. In workshops that I’ve run, people often associate ‘mental health’ with stark Victorian asylums, or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, instead of a positive state of mind. We all have mental health, in the same way we all have physical health.
During my stay at the hospital I was in, I was sectioned for my own safety. There were also some other disturbing moments and this poem describes but one experience along the way. Several patients had practiced self-harm. I was relatively good friends with one of them but I found it difficult to understand her compulsion. From what I remember, she found it equally difficult to understand me J. It was many years later before I realised that my breakdown was in part due to me beating myself up inside, not resolving issues, putting myself down and not heeding the warning signs.
Asylum
Sometimes difficult to tell the cared for from the carers,
except where scars of razor cuts hash the lower arms.
I remember the day she came up to the window
stared in at me from the garden,
then battered the panes with her wrists
until the glass broke, drew blood.
YouTube VI – Dancing on Jermyn Street
This is the sixth in a series of poems related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem is about Mum and Dad, who both died in the last decade, but who remain with us in many ways. Our parents naturally have an immense influence, outside their own lives, upon our mental health, especially while we’re growing up and learning to make our way in the world. They teach us, consciously or subconsciously, about relationships, how they form, how they last, and frequently how they break. They encourage us to become confident individuals, or allow us to be become strangled by self-doubt and fear. As with most parents, ours were loving and supportive. They were also both very creative; Dad writing, Mum painting and this is reflected in this poem.
Dancing on Jermyn Street
Only a few years after the war, after
the coronation, ghosts lining the streets
waving flags; West End Central.
He was stationed there – you in art school.
On the corner you recognized
each other, merely a pigeon’s brief
flap and glide from where you stood to Eros,
the fountain; your broad Piccadilly smiles.
Him in uniform, a Swanley lad,
it was then that the moment was sealed,
you’d both be caught in monochrome
leaning out of the train window, beaming
on your journey, after the vows,
with our future in your loving.
And he would write you poems
even until death. Remembering
that moment, when he caught your arm
as you strode out, the length of the path
making to leave, and he brought
you back inside, out of the sun.
One evening you kissed us good night
in the emerald, silk dress you’d made for dancing.
Always you would dance with colour
on your palette; pigment quickens through water.
YouTube V – Biology Practical
This is the fifth in a series of poems related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem, Biology Practical, is true and dates from a sixth form biology lesson, but written some thirty years later. Once again, the theme is connected to the neurons in the brain, in this case one which controls many bodily functions, the Vagus nerve. Sometimes science just doesn’t seem to care.
Biology Practical
A film – no video then – to demonstrate
how the beat of a lamb’s heart,
unconscious, chest cavity open,
is governed by the Vagus nerve. Watch. See.
By cutting this thread we stop the heart.
Sure enough it stopped. A lesson
in science. Years later at work, I would weigh
warm hearts, hard and slippery
in my hands, cattle, pig, lamb,
think of hers racing in the sweat of us,
how we never thought the thread would break.
YouTube IV – 1014
This is the fourth in a series of poems related to creativity and mental health, drawing on my experience of bipolar disorder.
This poem is based on an article in The New Scientist a few years ago, on perception and experience, describing how we’re always several microseconds behind an event happening and actually experiencing that event. It cites the connections between the neurons of our brains which make up our experience, and which are many thousands of times more than the seven billion people on the planet. It is also a love poem.
1014
We live in the middle distance
we experience the immediate past,
our now has just happened.
When I begin to smile
you have already laughed.
When I dream, you are only
playing with the neurons in my brain
the ten to the power of fourteen
connections which tell me this is good.
And you hold me, hold me close
as hard as I hold you
and our imminent futures
are scattered like raindrops
across the taut skin of universal skies.
YouTube III – Skomer
Skomer
And the guttering red rock
sliced like decks of cards
slanted into the sea.
And she is there in the mist
in the sea breeze she
is in the gathering dark
she rides the mounting forces
which rise beneath the blackening waves
and she is in the quilted sky
she is there in the billowing
sheeted veils of the afternoon
and in the rakish cry of the gulls
screaming over the graves of shearwater
skeletons, she is at the exits of hollowed burrows
among bits of dead bird, dead rabbit, scattered
beside the remains of Iron Age homesteads
and she is marking the way
in Celtic stone against the unforgiving grey.
YouTube II – In Place of Silence
This is the second in a series of poems on creativity and mental health. Steve was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1997 and writing has helped to manage and reduce his symptoms, alongside Tai Chi, cycling for exercise and medication.
In place of silence
If I were to try to explain how it happened
it would have to do with high tension, high voltage
breaking the taut line between what is real
and what is imagined. It has to do with boundaries
between body and soul and spirit. It is about
aspiration, longing for love, longing to have her,
the indefinite beauty who defines a craving heart,
the woman within, the muse, playing dice with angels.
And there is always the pain, the slow pain of forgetting,
hidden among the shadows of the haunting past.
Whatever happened belongs to the space between the page
and the written word. It is better unheard,
because it fails when it reaches the vibrations of air,
the twisted membranes of the pharynx; the moment,
which is live between the mouth and the microphone,
between the speaker and the eardrum, is best held
close, except silence destroys from within.
YouTube I – Reversed Images
This poem was accepted into The Literary Review in 1985.
The sheep and their lambs
look like little
broken drops of mercury
rolling up the hill
between the hedges.
As if someone had
broken a ball of silver
on the hillside in sunshine
and watched the droplets
run down with their shadows
then wound the film backwards.