When I was first experimenting with poems, five years ago, I was working blind, like a mole digging upwards. Coming from a prose background, all I knew was that I had to find words able to hold what I needed to write.
Like millions of other people around the world, I was groomed, and then sexually abused as a young child. In my case, this took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. I then stumbled through the messy teenage aftermath as Punk gave way to Two Tone and Margaret Thatcher took power. Nearly forty years later, memories of what happened can still flood my dreams. Physical symptoms replay old injuries.
Nowadays, sexual abuse is discussed extensively in the media. Measures are in place to identify, make safe and support children who have been subjected to predation of this sort, even if these have been compromised during the recent lockdowns. But there is still limited comprehension of what the crime entails, and how it impacts people, not least because it is so difficult, and painful, to think or talk about.
Changing awareness, and giving witness, were two things I had in mind as I shaped my fledgling poems. I wanted to make compact pieces of art. They needed to contain and express what had happened to me, but do so with a degree of agency and protection for both writer and reader. Like seashells found on a beach, they had to be small, beautiful fragments that you could pick up and hold to the light – while thinking of the depths in which they grew.
Aside from a transformative Jerwood Arvon mentorship by Pascale Petit, and generous insights and readings from other poets along the way, three key elements fed into the poems that will be published by Pavilion as bird of winter in April 2021. The first was my own long-standing fascination with Pompeii and Herculaneum. I visited the two sites in the summer of 2000, along with the Naples Museum which holds many of the key finds. I also subsequently saw, and bought the catalogues of, exhibitions at the British Museum and the Ashmolean. From the plaster dog, cast out from the void left in the ash by his evaporated body, to wall paintings and brothel graffiti testifying to lost lives, the findings gave forms to my excavations of my own past.
bird of winter was also shaped by the notes I salvaged from my childhood and adolescent medical records. They corroborated my hospital stay as a teenager. They additionally reflected how doctors saw children like me, at a time when sexual abuse was almost always missed. Finally, two trips to Dieppe in the summer and autumn of 2019 let me reconnect with what had sustained me through those very difficult years – namely the love I received from my French grandmother, and my father until his death when I was eight.
When bad things happen to you growing up, they can choke and pollute the waters of your life like an oil slick, and cause immense local damage. But they are not the whole story, any more than an oil slick is the whole surface of the sea. Healing comes through cleaning up the damage, and then moving beyond it, to clearer waters and moments of love and joy, which more truthfully define us and let us know who we are. I wanted bird of winter to honour these good elements, which enabled me to resist, and ultimately reclaim myself.
First in the July sunshine, and then in October rain, I travelled across from Newhaven on the ferries like those I used to sail on to see my grandmother. I stood outside the gates of what had been her clifftop house, along the coast from Dieppe. I climbed down to the beach where I paddled and swum with her and my father. To be there again, to know the movement of the sea, to hear the waves ringing through the shingle, was to feel a tide of strength flowing through me, as I worked on what proved to be some of the core poems of bird of winter.
When I was asked by Pavilion to choose the cover colours, I knew immediately that they had to be from the Channel off Normandy. They needed to wrap the darkness which the collection addresses in a transformative mantle of light. Some of them can be seen in the photos that run alongside these words, which were taken on those two trips in 2019.
In the months to come, I will be writing more about bird of winter, and the real, and imagined, birds which take flight from its pages, alongside the objects excavated from Pompeii and Herculaneum which inspired some of the poems. I will also write about what it is like to take back your medical notes, and see how you were seen, when you could not see yourself.
For now, I want to thank Deryn Rees-Jones, currently recovering from Long Covid, for making me a Pavilion poet, on a list which includes many writers who speak to my heart. Nuar Alsadir, Mona Arshi and Bhanu Kapil, to name only some, occupy sacred spaces on my shelves. I am honoured to be appearing alongside Alice Miller and Sarah Westcott in 2021 and hope we will be able to read together.
In closing, I express solidarity with all of us who have been impacted by sexual abuse in childhood – whether at firsthand, or because it has come into the lives of those who matter to us. By giving witness, by supporting each other, by making art that reclaims agency and beauty, we can work together across our communities. We can help the world to see and think differently.
If you would like to order a copy of bird of winter please follow this link.
To find more about the other amazing Pavilion Poets please follow this link.
The following poems are from bird of winter. It’s launching online at 19 00 BST on 5 May 2021 and free tickets are available here.
The photograph I chose to close this blog is taken of the harbour wall in Dieppe with the low summer sun illuminating circular holes in the concrete. At other times of day, when the sun is high in the sky, these holes are just dark masses. To me the photograph expresses the light and nurture I experienced with my French grandmother or bonne maman as a child staying with her in Normandy, and swimming with her in the sea. The photo also reflects how when you shine light on an area of apparent darkness, what is there may become visible and beautiful.
snowfall
‘elegy for an eight year old’
bird of winter
uprising in blue and silver
