Eighty Four E-Book

• Herausgeber: Verve Poetry Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 78

Beschreibung

Eighty Four is a new anthology of poetry on the subject of male suicide in aid of CALM (campaign against living miserably). Poems have been donated to the collection by Andrew McMillan, Salena Godden, Anthony Anaxogorou, Katrina Naomi, Ian Patterson, Carrie Etter, Peter Raynard and Joelle Taylor while a submissions window yielded many excellent poems on the subject from both known and hitherto unknown poets we are thrilled to have been made aware of. Curated by poet Helen Calcutt, Eighty-Four showcases human vulnerability in all its forms. From the baby in the bath who knows daddy is gone, to the woman whose father haunts her through the window, here is a diverse collection of voices, delicately speaking the intense difficulties of the human predicament, courageously engaging with the profound impact that male suicide is having on all of us. There's a glittering strength to this volume, because of the honesty from which its poems have been created, giving this book the truth it was seeking. We hope to shed light on an issue that is cast in shadow, and often shrouded in secrecy and denial. If we don't talk, we don't heal, and we don't change. In Eighty Four, we are talking. Are you listening?

Leseprobe

ABOUT THE CURATOR:

Helen Calcutt is a poet, critic, and visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Loughborough University. Her pamphlet, Sudden Rainfall was published in 2014. Her poetry and criticism has featured in publications such as Poetry Scotland, Southbank Poetry, and The Guardian, with award-winning essays in Boundless, and The Wales Arts Review. Helen's first collection Unable Mother was published by V.Press in September 2018.

In September 2017 Helen’s brother Matthew took his own life. He was 40 years old.

ABOUT CALM:

The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) is leading a movement against male suicide, the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in the UK. All receipts for sales of this book after bookshop discounts or Paypal transaction fees will be donated to CALM. You can read more about them and their campaign at https://www.thecalmzone.net/

Our deepest gratitude goes to all those who donated to our Eight Four crowdfunding campaign; this includes all the names listed below, as well as those who wished to remain anonymous.

Jinny Fisher

Clare Potter

Cherry Doyle

Jo Young

Antony Owen

Reama *

Abegail Morley

Sue Kingdon

Robin Hadley

Mel Pryor

Sue Sims

Stacey Witts

Nicky *

Hannah Swingler

Katie Hook

Adam Kirtland

Roxnne Gatrell

Ayla McCamphill-Rose

Ruth Stacey

Nadia Kingsley

James Hannah

John Mills

Liz Mills

Anna Metcalfe

Kerry Featherstone

Rishi Dastidar

Kate Oliver

Elizabeth Foody

Wayne Fox

Lou Sarabadzic

Olga Dermott-Bond

Aurelie Calcutt

Melanie Hanslip

Janet Jenkins

Janet Smith

Asim Khan

Jan Bartholomew

Roma Ante

Emma Purshouse

Chaucer Cameron

Leila Rasheed

Richard Archer

Anna Christina Price

Gram Davies

Casey Bailey

Theo Lloyd

PUBLISHED BY VERVE POETRY PRESS

Birmingham, West Midlands, UK

https://vervepoetrypress.com

[email protected]

All rights reserved

© 2019 all individual authors

The right of all individuals to be identified as author if this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act 1988.

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

FIRST PUBLISHED JAN 2019

Printed in the UK by TJ International

ISBN: 978-1-912565-13-9

ePub ISBN: 978-1-912565-79-5

Dedicated to Matthew,

and his family, who have always

listened and loved.

CONTENTS

Introduction by Helen Calcutt

Slipknot - Jane Lovell

Hide All the Knives - Katrina Naomi

Gaining Trust - Romalyn Ante

Impromptu - MT Taylor

That’s Enough - RM Francis

The blood of Christ - Brenda Read-Brown

43rd Birthday - Antony Owen

Book of The Dead - Nick Makoha

Deciding - Stephen Seabridge

The decision room - Abegail Morley

Match Over - Gary Carr

Hollow Ponds - Victoria Richards

I should’ve said something - Louisa Campbell

Last Words - Ian Patterson

These boys - Peter Raynard

Red Road Flats - Caroline Smith

Multiple Choice - Casey Bailey

What About It? - Liam McCormick

my name is failure - Charles Lauder Jr

The Hunting Party - Lewis Buxton

my sister says - Andrew McMillan

Friends Who Decided to Leave in Their Sequence of Leaving - John Hawkhead

One Bird - Paul Howarth

An incident with a train - Paul Howarth

sadness is a room - Emily Harrison

Mouth Organ - Diana Cant

Now my brother has died - Helen Calcutt

Wolf Blood - Hannah Linden

Boxes - Richard Skinner

An Evening With Lights - Rosie Jackson

Rise - Bethany Rivers

Body Balance - Isabel Palmer

A Boy Stands - Belinda Rimmer

Son - Helen Kay

Inscription - claire e.potter

Sitting Under a Pine Tree - Zoe Piponides

Ghost Wave - Michelle Diaz

face - Alan Girling

Time To Check In - Salena Godden

Just an aquaintance - Alastair Hesp

Eleven Men - Joelle Taylor

Lazarus - Mario Petrucci

Oiling Brakes - Anthony Anaxagorou

Seven Senryu in Memory of Brian Karr Harter (1969-1987) - Carrie Etter

Rosemary - Janet Smith

Bath time memories - Janet Jenkins

An Improper Kindness - Christina Thatcher

The Ekphrasis of Self-annihilation - Asim Khan

A Single Atom in an Ion Trap - Glyn Edwards

What might live on the other side of the moon - Martin Hayes

hold me warm blooded thing - Shaun Hill

In Which I Compose the Note but Then Talk Myself into Living - Gram Joel Davies

Evening Prayer - Abi Budgen

A Dream - David Calcutt

Listen to this - Stewart Carswell

Notes & Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

A few weeks after my brother died, my daughter told me she could see his face in the moon. Days later, when she spied its silver disc in the window again she said that, actually, it wasn’t just his face she could see. Everyone who had ever been sad was up there.

The moon changes, and so do all the people in its glow. And that was when I realised - we all suffer.

There’s this idea that the personal blow of death, or a trauma, can’t be relatable. And with society’s insufferable ignorance to human vulnerability (especially male vulnerability) it’s difficult to see how this could ever change. But I feel it can, if we stop the bullshit. If we accept the reality of the human condition – that it’s a diverse, beautiful, troubled, elated, mish-mash of a being – and if we live by its natural demands, we can influence what is considered ‘normal’ behaviour. What currently stands as such has been working against us for generations, and ultimately, brought us to the mental health crisis we find ourselves in today.

There are other factors to this issue – foremost, lack of funds to mental health services. But change starts with the individual, and this is one of the reasons I created this book. I received little-to-no help from any authority or public service after my brother killed himself. The doctor signed me of for three weeks and I was offered pills. What does this do? This response, though an initial kindness, had no relevance whatsoever to the patterns of my complicated grief, and this signalled a twisted understanding of it, or worse, a normalised ignorance to my vulnerability, in all its ugliness and truth. It also exposed a desire to sweep the problem under the carpet. As was the police’s response after my brother was found. Male dead, domestic tragedy. Tick the box. Move on.

It’s my understanding that, at present, society is shaped to deny us our defining human quality: our complexity. To be human is to be vulnerable. It is also to be aggressive, quiet, commandeering, violent; it depends on the circumstance you find yourself in. But these are all naturally existing, powerful sides to us. For whatever reason, society encourages an over-simplified existence, thus generating accepted ‘norms’ to our behaviour. We live, we die. We weep, we laugh. We suffer, we feel joy. It would seem we’re only ready to acknowledge and celebrate three of these six crucial human emotions. And the desire to live up to this warped standard of being has sadly become greater than the desire for truth.

Women cry, men do not. Men hit women, women don’t hit men. Both examples of what we would consider a socially accepted norm, denies either party their natural complexity. Women do hit men, and though a violent and harmful act, it also highlights a particular type of vulnerability (perhaps a trauma too) that needs addressing. Men weep. It’s probably one of the deepest, moving sounds I have ever heard. Denying this as a normal attribute to male behaviour, almost refuses them the bog-standard right to grieve, to shed a skin – to let it out.

Grief isn’t just about death either. The effects of grief and trauma are very present in the body and mind of someone who has suffered divorce. The loss of a life we love, either from sudden house eviction to an extra-marital affair, can take 12 months at the very least, to overcome. We can even grieve, deeply and with absolutely profundity, the loss of our former selves in the wake of any personal travesty.

Not acknowledging the many possibilities, the many realities, to inner turmoil, is damaging. It represses and confuses us. Suicide rates are through the roof in the U.K. Male suicide stats are particularly devastating. 84 men kill themselves a week, my brother being one of them. The reasons as to why are complicated. And unknowable to us in many ways. But I will say that the pressures of a society largely unwilling to accept the anxiety and despair of a ‘man’s man’ (holding down a job, a mortgage, child-care) will have had something to do with it.