The first time my poem “Please pay at the reception desk on your way out” was published was in the late autumn of 2020. It was accepted by Blanket Sea, a small indie publication dedicated to poetry about chronic illness. I received the honour of having my poem nominated for the Best of the Net Awards that year.
But the poem’s journey didn’t end there. I have been lucky enough to have this poem picked up a second time. This time it’s appearing in Kaleidoscope magazine, a publication run by United Disability Services (Ohio, US), that creatively focuses on the experiences of disability through literature and the fine arts.
Please visit the online edition of Kaleidoscope: Issue 86 to read my poem (it’s on p. 61) and enjoy essays, short fiction, art, and more on the theme of discovering unexpected truths.
And the old clock in the kitchen stands still now. Always quarter to seven. The warm knitted stitches in autumn days forming, one by one, a warm colourful scarf. For friends, for herself, knitted in is the quiet, lost time in this house. Quiet hours, gone and forgotten. Like tassels of her imagination, the same. Each carefully knitted stitch is a meditation, a prayer for peace, calm. In turbulent, stressful days. Opposite the cemetery, in a deserted village full of strangers now, lying underneath collapsed tombstones, overgrown with ivy and misty shrubs, the old dead family members in their graves. The quiet witnesses of a forgotten time, in which I went to school and played. Skipping on their arm. Four family members in one grave. “Now they can play cards”, my mother said at the time. At the very last funeral. Anais knits time and thinks about the days of old. I add a pebble to the grave in the cemetery and whisper softly “hearts are trump”. Perhaps the old can still hear me. And I wrap a warm knitted autumn scarf around me, while I turn the corner of life in a bitter wind. Braving time.
Antonio Machado’s poem “I never sought the glory” is an almost Taoist contemplation of the ephemerality of fame. In this poem he states that he’s never sought it out, he doesn’t want it, which is a strange claim to make for a poet, isn’t it? When poets write, isn’t it to communicate something vital to others? To leave something so important behind that it had to be put down in a fixed form?
Most of us, at some point in our writing careers, realize that our poems, our stories, are like soap bubbles drifting by. They capture the awe and attention of some person who’s finely attuned enough to appreciate its beauty, and then it pops or is carried away by the wind and is lost against the backdrop of a busy city street.
Machodo’s soap bubbles are the perfect analogy for the impermanence of attention, as well as life. Indeed, the poet seems to be thinking about the time when he’ll no longer be around, as he states: ” I never sought […] to leave in memory of men my song”. “Subtle” is the keyword in this poem. Subtle as in understated.
The poet expresses that he appreciates how his poems have briefly delighted readers, but that they should not be seen as important. In fact, his last lines contain a warning. We have seen the delicate bubble floating in blue, but then there is the foreboding verb “trembling”, and in the last line the bubble pops. A suitable onomatopoeic ending.
Fame and life are equally transient states. There’s something peaceful in giving up the striving. You’ll have more time to appreciate the small bits of beauty that float by you every day.
I never sought the glory I never sought the glory nor to leave in memory of men my song; I love subtle worlds, Weightless and graceful like bubbles of soap. I like to see them painted In sunlight and scarlet, wafting under the blue sky, trembling suddenly and pop.
Poem by Antonio Machado, translated from Spanish by Katie King.
Directing the creative journey in a turbulent world
After watching a few talks from the Global Joy Summit that was held a few weeks ago, I started to think again about my creative practice.
The Global Joy Summit is a virtual gathering to celebrate shared humanity and find joy in these challenging times. The summit opened with a screening of Mission: Joy, a documentary created from a conversation between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Here are two remarkable individuals who have each experienced many traumatic events, and yet, they’re a light and delight to everyone who hears them speak. They’ve done something incredible: they’ve held on to a childlike wonder at the world around them. Despite living in a world struggling with isolation and despair, they still experience a sense of profound joy, each and every day.
In my own struggles with chronic illness and familial trauma, I’ve found that art and poetry has helped me to make sense of what was happening to me. At least, that’s where it started for me. Writing especially, helped me to narrate what I was going through, and when I started to share my work on social media, I soon found that I wasn’t alone. This made me feel validated.
They’ve done something incredible: they’ve held on to a childlike wonder at the world around them. Despite living in a world struggling with isolation and despair, they still experience a sense of profound joy, each and every day.
After a while though, as I dug a little deeper, I started to feel the need to provide answers for myself. I felt discomfort any time a poem or collage made me out to be a victim. I never meant to fall into the victim-mentality trap, but I had ended up there nonetheless. I was angry and disillusioned, so I latched on to any negative, divisive hashtag trend that was going around on social media platforms at the time. Whether the discussion was gender, race, sexuality, it seemed that victimhood was the message.
There’s a well-known saying: art should afflict the comfortable or comfort the afflicted. It seemed that I was caught up in the former, and I had to start muting some of the accounts that I was following. I became ever more conscious of the effect of trauma-exposing art and literature on my own experience. It wasn’t helping me. In fact, it was making me worse.
Funnily enough, the famous saying originated in the media world. It was first said by author Finley Dunne in the 1890’s, and he was referring to the duty of newspapers to the people. I think that current news channels do a pretty good job of afflicting the comfortable, to the point where I can’t imagine there’s that many comfortable people left on this earth. But apart from The Good News channel, and perhaps a handful of smaller efforts, there isn’t much positive news being spread, or if it is, it’s being buried by algorithms created by big tech.
I can’t with good conscience continue to put work out there that expresses a woe-is-me attitude. I need to find a way to integrate the work I’ve been doing on my health into my creative practice.
I stopped checking the news. I even blocked the most visited news sites with an add-on in my browser for a while (it was too easy to disable), but I had to learn self-discipline. I had to take personal responsibility for my own mental and physical welfare, so I started to learn more about brain rewiring techniques, about neurons that fire together and hence wire together. I realised that I had to wire my brain for joy.
I can’t with good conscience continue to put work out there that expresses a woe-is-me attitude. I need to find a way to integrate the work I’ve been doing on my health into my creative practice. I want to create art that will comfort the afflicted. Or I want to create art that shows a way out of the victim mentality.
My bookWaking up to Thrutopia, that is coming out next summer, shows that journey. The book is divide in three parts: it moves from an exploration of personal trauma through to a recognition of collective trauma caused by an ill society. The book doesn’t provide answers, as I myself haven’t found any clear solutions (yet). But it begins to show a way through and possibly out: by relating your personal experiences to the wider world and by questioning the status quo.
The prerequisites for a tender rebellion are personal responsibility, openness to new ideas, and a staunch refusal of the fear narrative that is being pushed upon us.
I’m a pacifist, so my aim is to start a tender rebellion. The prerequisites for a tender rebellion are personal responsibility, openness to new ideas, and a staunch refusal of the fear narrative that is being pushed upon us.
I’ve finished writing for this book, and from now on my work will start showing more of the journey towards living with authentic joy as I continue to walk this path. I’m even considering starting a publication where like-minded writers and artists could connect, and we could collectively continue to rewire our brains for better health and a better life.
If this sounds good to you, and you’d like to help, don’t hesitate to send me a message. I feel like it might be a lot for me to take on, but with a few helping hands, the task might become more manageable.
The Poetry Review — submissions for non-members of The Poetry Society Submitted on August 17, 2022
Your name Conny Borgelioen
Titles & no. of poems submitted Selima’s snail 1
Cover Letter Dear editors,
I felt somewhat riled by Selima Hill’s poem “The Snail”, published in The Poetry Review Summer edition and on the website. I have much respect for this poet’s extensive oeuvre and long-established career, but the anthropocentric and speciesist tone of this poem didn’t go down well with me on this particular day. I felt compelled to write a little counter-poem.
Best regards,
Conny Borgelioen
Selima’s snail
My world was a ditch, rich in everything I needed, when I was plucked — my gills flapped from fear — from my garden home. Life had been interrupted abruptly. Frightening, the pink deformed blob appeared in my sky many times, this fleshy mass hovering. I learned to associate it with force feeding of ever more exotic food- stuff that left my radula tingling. Alone, I would just zone out for days
on end, there was nothing to do but look for a way out from the top of a rock. A sinful waste of life, I never had a chance to perform the important tasks of my species. I would explore the boundary of my prison, looking for a cranny, a small crack, in the slippery container, to wiggle my way through and out at night. Robbed of my meaning, I hardly slept. It is absurd to imagine me happy.
Tender Rebellion 