{"id":13880,"date":"2021-09-29T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=13880"},"modified":"2026-04-18T19:34:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:34:31","slug":"a-kind-of-healing-poetry-for-endings-and-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2021\/09\/a-kind-of-healing-poetry-for-endings-and-beginnings\/","title":{"rendered":"A kind of healing: poetry for endings and beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Winter-flowering<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

To be healed is not to be saved from mortality, but rather, to be<\/i><\/p>\n

released back into it:<\/i><\/p>\n

we are returned to the wild, into possibilities for ageing<\/i><\/p>\n

and change.<\/i>  <\/span><\/p>\n

Healings2: Kathleen Jamie<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course it\u2019s not over yet. There is no Covid ceasefire. No generals signing treaties, no monuments, anthems or operas commemorating the millions of lives lost. Or, not yet anyway, and so far few are planned.<\/strong><\/p>\n

How and when do you mark the passing of a pandemic which is not yet done? Politicians stumble, their messages swaying between promises of better days ahead and threats of worse to come. The Covid virus is as unpredictable as human nature.<\/p>\n

But there is poetry. And a kind of healing in words chosen to grapple with loss and grief and confusion. For many of us the yearning for new life is tangled with wariness of being \u2018returned to the wild\u2019. Can poets help us tease a way through?<\/p>\n

This is my personal choice, a Sceptical selection of works which have caught my eye in a search for meaning and comfort. Some of it produced long before Covid, others emerging in the strange in-between land we occupy right now. Not knowing what comes next, there\u2019s continuity in nature.<\/p>\n

 <\/h2>\n

Poems of healing<\/h2>\n
\n

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn<\/i><\/p>\n

and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.<\/i><\/p>\n

Adam Zagajewski<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Healing and reconciliation are themes in several exquisite publications produced by the Scottish Poetry Library. I open Poems of Healing <\/i><\/span><\/a> \u2018a small treasury of words across the centuries\u2019  <\/span>says the preface  <\/span>\u2018\u2026illuminating many different experiences of illness, injury and convalescence,\u2019<\/p>\n

In our febrile time, when Covid combines with manmade disasters across the war-torn world, there\u2019s comfort in contemplating the rhythm of the natural world, the seasons, bird song, scurrying ants \u2013 if only we can take time to see and feel.<\/p>\n

My eye lights on a poem by a poet I haven\u2019t read before: Try to Praise the Mutilated World<\/span><\/a>. (You can listen to the recording on the Poetry Foundation website.<\/span><\/a>)  <\/span>Adam Zagajewski<\/span><\/a> gently tugs at feelings, for better and worse evoking emotions with images dropped quietly into place \u2013 June\u2019s long days, wild strawberries, \u2018the concert where music flared\u2019, acorns in the park.<\/p>\n

He offers comfort in the familiar which can feel oddly moving in our unfamiliar world \u2026\u2018moments when we were together\u2019\u2026.<\/p>\n

The mutilations he sees in this poem are part of our immediate landscape too \u2013 in the nettles \u2018methodically\u2019 overgrowing abandoned homesteads of exiles. In \u2018refugees going nowhere\u2019…<\/p>\n

Yet, there\u2019s fluttering hope in the last few lines, with the grey feather of a thrush<\/p>\n

\n

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes <\/i><\/p>\n

and returns<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/span>Adam Zagajewski was born in 1945 and died in Krakow, Poland in March 2021<\/p>\n

 <\/h2>\n

On the threshold<\/h2>\n
\n

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue <\/i><\/p>\n

William Carlos Williams 1923<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When, oh when, will it end?  <\/span>Like many others, I seek answers from witnesses of the \u2018Spanish Flu\u2019 of 1918-1920.  <\/span>There\u2019s no quick fix, of course.  <\/span>I find no kindly reassurance from poets. In 2021 our leaders and scientists look forward to spring 2022.  <\/span>A century ago, spring seems cold and still, even when the virus retreats.  <\/span>\u2018That corpse you planted in your garden\u2026has it begun to sprout yet?\u2019 asks a mocking TS Eliot in the Waste Land<\/span><\/a> of 1922. He had survived the flu but hidden menace lingers.<\/p>\n

The Waste Land is one of three poems analysed in a fascinating essay by Mariella Scerri of the University of Leicester and Victor Grech of Mater Dei Hospital, Malta in their Representations of the 1918 Pandemic in poetry.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

They choose the work of TS Eliot and William Carlos Williams with the younger Ellen Bryant Voigt.  <\/span>(Voigt\u2019s \u2018book-length\u2019 Kyrie is inspired by her father\u2019s childhood as an orphan in 1918.)  <\/span>And while our pandemic has not coincided with (or emerged from) world war there are haunting echoes in the poetry which contemplates the \u2018strangely permeable threshold\u2019 between life and death.<\/p>\n

\u2018Lifeless in appearance, sluggish\/dazed spring approaches\u2019.<\/i>  <\/span>William Carlos Williams was a doctor whose reputation as a poet was established in 1923 with the publication of Spring and All [By the road to the contagious hospital]<\/span><\/a>. <\/p>\n

It is a stark yet pulsating poem. For Williams, life is defiantly persistent. Despite the \u2018dead brown leaves\u2018 and the \u2018cold, familiar wind\u2019\u2026 new growth shoots in spring.  <\/span>Against the odds, and with \u2018stark dignity\u2019\u2026 \u2019One by one objects are defined\u2026\u2019 <\/p>\n

\n

Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/h2>\n

Returned to the wild?<\/h2>\n

Like Williams, Kathleen Jamie grasps that troublesome thorny word, \u2018change\u2019.  She handles with care\u2026\u2019a rose, a briar rose\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n

Recovering from surgery in 2011, the poet had examined her own mortality, the visible change a line left on her body after treatment for breast cancer. Her beautifully simple language probes tenderly.<\/p>\n

Healing2 is included in the Scottish Poetry Library Tools of the Trade: Poems for new doctors <\/span><\/a> It is also one of SPL\u2019s lockdown poems and it is discussed with great sensitivity and personal engagement by Sam Tongue<\/span><\/a>, one of the Tools of the Trade editors.  <\/span>He was writing early in lockdown 2020 when we had begun to drop our guard, newly willing to share our human frailty, to become part of \u2018a social net of mutuality, care, and compassion\u2019.<\/p>\n

So Tongue warns against treating healthcare workers as heroes because that risks relieving governments of their responsibility and denies the vulnerability of mortals on the frontline.   <\/span>\u2018I am having trouble sleeping at the moment\u2019; Tongue confesses, \u2018waking at 2 or 4 or 6am\u2019, and Jamie\u2019s thought of breathing light into the body is ‘a calming one, a line of light in a dark time.\u2019 He concludes by praying that as many patients and loved ones as possible are indeed \u2018returned to the wild\u2019 .<\/p>\n

Healing hurts. Recovery takes time. Awakening life is often a fluttering thing and all the more precious for it. As we proceed \u2013 some too carelessly, some too cautiously \u2013 through the (final?) phases of the pandemic, Kathleen Jamie, now Scotland\u2019s new Makar, opens the door to the daylight reality of being human.<\/p>\n

\n

To be healed is not to be saved from mortality, but rather, to be<\/i><\/p>\n

released back into it:<\/i><\/p>\n

we are returned to the wild, into possibilities for ageing<\/i><\/p>\n

and change.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Featured image: Witch Hazel, symbol of light and hope in dark times, picture Fay Young\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Further reading: <\/em><\/p>\n

Kathleen Jamie essay Frissure, on Granta\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Poems of Healing<\/a>: Everyman”s Library \u00a312.00<\/p>\n

Tools of the Trade:<\/a> Poems for New Doctors, Scottish Poetry Library, \u00a36.99\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How and when do you mark the passing of a pandemic which is not yet done? Politicians stumble, their messages swaying between promises of better days ahead and threats of worse to come. Can poets help us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":13882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[497,135],"class_list":["post-13880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-pandemic","tag-scottish-poetry-library"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18557,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13880\/revisions\/18557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}