Poetspeak: a self-reflection

by STEVE MANN
Poem: Who growled up my nose?
Published in: Poetry Express 21 (Survivors' Poetry, 2005)

Looking out of the window, of my very small flat, with the approaching winter sunrise filling my eyes with exotic colours, I felt, in my strongly medicated state, a curious rummaging within. So I grasped a pen and simply wrote. The outcome was my poem Who growled up my nose? which opens with:

The blue glowed in fiery energy
the green pulsed with dazzling brightness
the yellow night darkened the sky
the purple dawn brought its hazy clarity

i thought why am i so happy it's so unfair

It was only some few weeks previously that Shropshire poet Sally Richards, whom I had recently met, had challenged me to begin writing poetry again, after some 27 years had passed since a little scribbling at university. Encouraged by that challenge – Sally continues to encourage me – and fuelled by all that was happening within me – and indeed in my life – I tentatively allowed creativity to flow:

someone said that only the evil die young
yet i am old and about to be born
my teeth will not obey me

food is such a love of my life
i really hate it taking over
starvation is unattainable
i crave for a toilet seat of sandpaper

Truly, the inspiration had its own course to run. It was only later, as I was reflecting upon the words, that I realised how much of myself – as in the quote above – and my working life – as in the quote below – found expression in its stanzas. In particular I could see some reverberations, from within myself, of times of being alongside people as they died of incurable causes. Yet, as if by deliberate contrast, there are also feelings, from deep inside, engendered by my necessary involvements with others who have taken life, even that of children, by murder.

i cannot curve the square
crossing the i seams so dangerous
the gift was lost in the bush
why did the pail roll across the road

spiders are so crunchy on toast
beware the one who smiles
always turn the key before coughing
in escapable woodenness reappear

so the end continues wounded
never is always happening
the belly flips its flop
embrace eternity as its flits away

It was after the breakdown of my health to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and anxiety in May 2004, which led to my early retirement on medical grounds in January 2005, that I began to write. Already in my fifties, with two adult children, and after many years work within prisons, hospices, schools, colleges, with the police and in the community – almost entirely in England but also briefly in Kenya , Israel and Eire – I found my poetic inspiration beginning to stir.

I was absolutely thrilled when this poem, my first ever piece to be published, appeared in Poetry Express 21 in 2005. Indeed, I feel very privileged to be published in a number of journals, magazines and anthologies. It was also a fantastic and real privilege to be accepted for the Survivors Mentoring Scheme 2006/07 which, with the encouragement of Alan Morrison, Simon Jenner, and Philip Ruthen as my mentor, will lead to my first solo collection – which will include this poem – being published by Survivor's Press later in 2007 and launched at the Poetry Café, London .

 

Steve has had a longstanding interest in history, geology, astronomy,
and spirituality. Therefore he finds the countryside of Shropshire
- where he now resides after having lived in a number of locations
over the years - a fascinating place to be: "...a magical landscape with
a phenomenal sense of history, fascinating geology,
and intriguing Celtic spirituality..."