A year of wringing hands (Part 1)

I thought it would be fun to share some of the background to the poems in A Limited Season. Some people don't like to much explanation, preferring to engage with poems as self-contained worlds with voices of their own. This is generally the way I approach other people's poems, so I have sympathy with that view. But, of course, I am unable to look at my own poems ever in that way, and, in any case, I suspect knowing a little more about the background of some of my favourite poems (by other poets) would deepen my relationship with them.

Certainly my relationship with my own poems has many more dimensions than I can hope to explore in other people's work. So I will try to share some of this with you in the hope that it will enhance your enjoyment of my poems. (Hyperlinks in this post are to my Slush Poetry blog where some of the poems can be found.)

***

We'll begin with the first poem in A Limited Season, 'Wellmeaning'. The epigraph shown on the blog version, but omitted from the published version, is a clue to its origin: 'Wellmeaning' was written as part of a year-long project for which I wrote poems inspired by news headlines. (I originally hoped to produce a collection from this, which would have been called A Year of Wringing Hands after a line in one of the early poems, but the resulting body of work was too uneven in style and quality.)

For 'Wellmeaning', the headline 'HIV test will be sold over the counter', taken from the free London paper METRO in July 2012, appealed strongly to me because of its connection, though the progression to AIDS, to terminal illness. My father was (and, at the time of writing, still is) suffering from a 'terminal' cancer of the oesophagus. I wanted to write about how, only eight months after his diagnosis (and over-pessimistic prognosis of a six month lifespan), those of us who love him seem to have come to terms already with his slow act of dying. That is, I was feeling more guilt than grief, and sought in poetry a catharsis.

Of course, the headline concerned HIV, not cancer, and I decided to fictionalize the poem with a protagonist infected with that disease, the research for which I found distressing, humbling and apposite in equal measure. I think I did it justice - do you agree?

I decided to omit two of the original stanzas from the version in A Limited Season (the third and fourth stanzas as shown on the blog), because they seemed on reflection to repeat points made better elsewhere. This kind of decision is always easier to make with old poems than with fresh ones. I hope I got it right. Another omission from the final version was the original epigraph. Removing it gave the poem a more personal feel, as though it were addressed to a person, not an anonymous 'case'. 'Wellmeaning' has proved to be very popular and deserves it place as the opening poem.

***

In December 2012, I was bringing the news project to a close but was still drawn, because of my father's continuing illness, to headlines about cancer. On 7th December the METRO ran a story with the headline 'Cancer strikes more people but death rates are falling'. The story described how cancer sufferers are surviving longer, often indefinitely, and how medicine was turning away from trying to cure the illness, and instead managing its symptoms to prevent them worsening. In other words, patients were having to learn to love with the disease.

It struck me that patients are not the only people who suffer from their cancer - that their loved ones, particularly those who live with them and care for them on a daily basis - also have to deal with its ramifications. From this thought was born the poem 'Live with it'.

One immediately obvious change that was made between the blog version and the one in A Limited Season is the change from first person to third person. The protagonist is a woman; this is obvious in both versions. When I originally wrote 'Live with it' I had her telling us her story. But, of course, I wanted A Limited Season to work as a single collection with a recognizable voice - mine.

The poem remains sympathetic to the plight of this woman, who is feels helpless in the face of her friend's illness, while having to cope with her ill husband's impotence and rage. It would be a depressing message were she to be simply portrayed as a victim, but it is her love for them both that pains her, and it is for love that she will bear to go on living with it.

***

The last poem I want to tell you about today is 'Missing the match in McDonald's'. This poem was already simmering when I came across a headline in the Telegraph: 'Child abuse allegation soar in wake of Savile scandal'. (Jimmy Savile was famous in the United Kingdom as a radio DJ turned TV presenter, and as a charity fundraiser. His fame was so great and his reputation for good deeds so unquestionable in life that the hundreds - yes, hundreds - of child victims of his decades of sex predation only felt able to come forward after his death. Savile is also the subject of another poem in A Limited Season, 'Pissing in the wind'.)

'Missing the match in McDonald's' is, of course, a sonnet. The first eight lines are largely autobiographical, and relate to a short period during which I had some strained access to my two daughters from my first marriage (I have now all but lost touch with them both. Though I frequently see the eldest one's picture appear on Facebook, I am afraid to click on it for fear of being ignored or rejected. I'd counsel you not to judge me a coward without knowing all the facts.) I had been observing Saturday dads for some time and considering writing about their plight, so the opportunity afforded by the Savile headline was a welcome one.

But the headline sent the poem off in a darker direction, for I imagined the fathers of small children acutely aware of latent suspicions. With a witch hunt under way for sex fiends in positions of trust, every man entrusted with the care of a child was suddenly a suspected paedophile. Will he be undressing them? Will he be bathing them? Will he be touching them? It all reminded me of the way innocent Asian men carrying backpacks were scrutinized after the terror attacks on London.

***

I hope you have enjoyed these glimpses under into my engine compartment. Within reason I am happy to answer questions, or I'd really like to know what you think of my poems and other writing. Just leave a message below. Peace to all!

My faith in poetry

When I was in my early twenties I began searching for greater meaning to life. My wife, who had yet to turn into a witch, was expecting our first child, and it was the wonder of this above all else that convinced me there had to be more to life than was presented to the senses. And it was the birth of the child, my daughter Heather, and the heavy societal expectation she would be baptised, that delivered me into the hands of the Church of England.

I tried to be a Christian, I really did. I got up on Sunday mornings and attended mass, shook hands with other worshippers, wishing them the peace of the Lord with my sincerest smile, knelt for wafers and cloying wine, went to tea parties, invited all my friends and family to my confirmation. Jesus, I even tried bell ringing. I turned a blind eye while my parish priest got his bishop to sanction his marriage to a divorcee. (I was later, after my divorce from The Wicked One, denied the right to remarry in the Church of England.) And all the while I tried to persuade myself that, if I just persevered, I would come to believe there was a god.

My poem "The great key" tries to capture that burning schizoid desire to believe in things my senses told me were utterly false, to persevere with patterns of behaviour and speech that felt, even at the time, dishonest and debasing. Ironically my behaviour became more devout and evangelical the stronger my doubts grew. And if "schizoid" seems strong, let me tell you a year after I first walked into a church I was on medication for anxiety and depression, so it's not a million miles off the mark.

(Incidentally "The great key" is based on a true story. I recently decided to visit the parish church in the village I have lived in for sixteen years. I had never been inside it, but when I went I found the door locked.)

My recovery from Christianity was effected not by medicine, but by philosophy. Plato's Symposium was my starting point, but I was subsequently counselled by Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, Locke, Hume, Nietzsche  Marx, Mill, Sartre, Russell, Dennett. And Voltaire, oh Voltaire. I learned that there are no right answers, or at least there is no one right answer (but no unanswerable questions either), I learned to appreciate the rich and unfathomable complexity of the world, and I also learned to tolerate, even to embrace, ambiguity.

One day I read an article in New Scientist about the beneficial effects of Buddhist mindfulness meditation, which it claimed induced neurological changes that made practitioners happier and more focused. I didn't know how to meditate, but I live quite close to the headquarters of the Buddhist Society in London, so I decided to go to one of their courses to learn more. By the second week of the course I was so fascinated by Buddhism itself that I completely lost sight of my original aim, and by the end of the course was willing to call myself a Buddhist.

• I do not believe there is a god, nor that there being one would explain anything.
• I do not believe in an afterlife, nor do I feel any need to believe in one.
• If there is a heaven or a hell, I believe this is it.
• I believe we are reborn every moment we live, that everything that happens happens now.
• I feel no need to explain how this world came to be, nor how it will end.
• I believe that what we do is more important than what we believe.

This is not an exhaustive statement of my beliefs, but just enough, I hope, to explain how my predisposition to religion and immersion in philosophy and science perfectly readied me to accept the Buddhist view. For all of these "beliefs" are compatible with, if not fundamental to, Buddhism. I say "beliefs", but the it would be more accurate to say I considered them as propositions and found them to be either true, or at least helpful as heuristics, useful ways of dealing with the world. I put my faith in them in the same way as I put my faith in my senses.

And of course this new faith has found its way into my poems, too. A poem like "Waiting for the R Train", for instance, which deals with the real-life horror of facing imminent death, illustrates how it is the burdens our past regrets and hopes for an imagined future that prevent us living fully in the present. No one ever experiences their own death, of course, in the present, but only ever through anticipation. "Maiden flight" explores the same idea in a different way, its subject once again death but this time suicide, and once again we experience the liberation from casting off attachment - to mistakes from the past and to shattered hopes for the future. It's not quite nirvana, but doesn't suck.

In fairness to Christians let's remember that Jesus' parable of the birds said much the same thing.

Peace to all beings!

(c) 2013 Andy Hickmott

The season for mushrooms

At the end of 2011 my father Archie was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. He had put off visiting his doctor, suffering weeks of difficulty swallowing, until at last he was unable to swallow water. Even then he waited until he was severely dehydrated and suffering excruciating headaches. By then the cancer had taken a hold; a tumour had spread three quarters of the way around Archie's oesophagus. His doctors told him he might get another six months. Archie said he hoped for a year.

The doctors could do little more than patch him up. They inserted a stent to open his oesophagus so that he could swallow. They put him in touch with the Macmillan Trust, who allotted him a visiting nurse for palliative care. Eighteen months later he is still alive and, even if "well" is not the right word, mentally vigorous and independently mobile. Yesterday was Archie's birthday: he is eighty-eight years old, but let's have none of that "he's had a good innings" bullshit, he's no more desire to die than you or I have, and he's as much right to hold on to life, even if he smoked heavily until he was fifty and was overweight most of his life. Before he became ill he weighed over two hundred pounds, now he's down to a hundred and thirty.

Archie isn't "battling with cancer", he lets his doctors get on with that. What Archie is battling with is pain. He refuses to take higher doses of morphine because he fears it will dull his mind, and that is all he has. He endures frequent avalanches of pain. I don't think he dwells on dying, just treats it as a fact of life (as it is for us all) and tries to grab what he can of life between spasms.

He refers to his tumour as a mushroom.

#

Archie isn't the only one who's had to come to terms with his terminal illness. My aunt, whom he has shared a house with since my mother died, has had to become his carer. But she is not in great health herself: before he fell ill, Archie used to take care of her. She has been very kind and has done all that anyone could have asked of her. My sister has been a rock, too, making sure that all Archie's affairs are properly in order to his liking. What little money Archie has accumulated in his life will go to my brother, who has advanced multiple sclerosis. If Archie could give his life to restore my brother's health, I'm sure he would.

But Archie's protracted enactment of the dying process has affected us all very deeply in other ways. We have been through mourning for a man who is still very much alive. I remember the shock I felt at first when my sister phone with the news of his illness. (I live two hundred miles away, so can only visit occasionally.) I walked downstairs, feeling numb, trying to make sense of the meaningless facts. I sat on a piano stool, closed my eyes, and, because I am a Buddhist, tried to think of Archie, my suffering father, in terms of loving kindness, and to think about the impermanence of all things, which gave his dying some proper context. It helped, but I think the passing of time has had as much to do with my acceptance of what is happening.

During those first grieving months I also channeled my feelings into my poetry, and several of the poems in my first collection, A Limited Season, arise from my dealing with my father's illness. The two that were most directly influenced were "Deadly Nightshade" (previously unpublished, but discussed below) and "Steak and mushroom pie", which was featured in the April 2013 edition of Popshot (the "Imagination Issue"). Another poem that was affected by my grieving for my still living father was "After disconnection", which, although it makes no direct references to Archie, I am unable to read without visualizing my childhood home.

Here is the first of the six stanzas of "Deadly Nightshade":

A mushroom lodged in the damp

stump of your throat. It smelled

like the inside of an old shoe

and now your breath smells of brie,

or athlete’s foot. It grew fat

and got greedy; the more you fed it,

the less it left for you. You shrivelled

as your pipeline silted up.


You can see how Archie's tumor humour became a central motif in the poem, one that is carried through the other five stanzas, and is revisited in "Steak and mushroom pie". The motif will occur in another poem, which must remain under wraps, for one of the consequences, for a poet at any rate, of witnessing the drawn out death of a loved one is that there is more than enough time to work on a worthy elegy.