Bereavement – Jay Whittaker, Edinburgh-based poet

Bereavement, Cancer, Events, LGBTQ+, Practice / Craft, Publications, Round-up

Jay’s newsletter: An Illustrated Guide to the Ruins

Maybe you’ve read my poems, and you share some of my approach to the mundanities of life and / or the highs and lows that just happen. Maybe, like me, you read or write poetry as a way to navigate, reimagine and attempt to make sense of the world.

An Illustrated Guide to the Ruins is a newsletter for my readers.

It’s also the title of a key poem in Wristwatch, one which ends the Risky breasts sequence about my cancer treatment, leading into the new-life-and-love part of the story. It’s about rebuilding your life after disaster, and although it’s deliberately wry and self-deprecating, it’s ultimately positive.

An illustrated guide to the ruins

This bombed-out husk (established 1968),
roof sheared by the initial blast,
internal fittings razed by subsequent fire,
appears as derelict as a structure twice its age.
The shell remains serviceable.

Further excavations reveal pervasive rot
spreading through timbers.
An extensive course of damp proofing
reinstates the original look and feel,
but note: joists permanently weakened.

And of the future? The occupier,
once tempted to abandon to lichen,
ivy, has realised the space
(no longer fit for its former purpose)
has fabulous potential for parties.

If you’d like to receive more in this vein in your inbox, please do sign up! In return I’ll send an email once a month – containing news of coming events and publications, brief reviews of what I’m reading, exclusive insights into my creative process and life, and (of course) featuring Pan, my trusty canine poetry assistant. Nothing too long, I promise! I’d love you to join us …

Use the unsubscribe link in Jay’s emails to opt out at any time.
Privacy statement.

Bereavement, Sweet Anaesthetist

Proof reading in lockdown

Like so many other people, for me the last couple of months have been well, weird. I attended my mother’s funeral via Zoom, while self-isolating with a covid-like illness (at a time when there was no testing to be had, and in the absence of an antibody test, who knows?).

In the first weeks of lockdown I didn’t have much energy or inclination to write anything other that my journal (daily safety valve that it is). It’s been a good distraction checking the proofs for Sweet Anaesthetist. I think we’ve nailed it this weekend with a third round of PDFs to and from my editor, Jan Fortune of Cinnamon Press. I’ve obtained the final permission I was waiting for, from the estate of W.S.Graham. I’m looking forward to sharing more about my new collection (publication date October 2020) very soon.

In recent weeks I’ve started writing poems again. I joined a virtual retreat led by the inspirational mentor and teacher Roselle Angwin. While it wasn’t a week on Iona, it did challenge me into writing new, raw notes and drafts, now composting in my notebook for later editing.

I’m struck how I’m coming back to many of the things I found helped me when I was having cancer treatment – journalling, staying in the moment, pacing myself, trying to eat well. The language is similar too – stay safe, are you keeping well? My world has slowed down and is as socially isolated almost as much as in chemo days, and if I’m honest, that’s a relief, as it gives me some space and time to absorb mother-loss. And if I feel anxious or upset or discombobulated by my new reality, well, aren’t we all having a strange time of it, in our different ways?

Bereavement

Pearl

I’m keeping vigil just now, and I remembered a poem I wrote many years ago. It was the title poem of my 2005 pamphlet Pearl, and although it wasn’t written about death, it’s fitting.

Pearl

What sends you over your brink –
A final shove or ceaseless prodding?
Are you hounded to it, coaxed,
Alarmed or caught off guard?

The end’s the same.
Flailing arms, sky, chasm –
You fall, a shell of significance
At your heart, a pearl.

Bereavement, Events

INTERROBANG: Live And Let Die‽

I’m delighted to be part of INTERROBANG: Live And Let Die‽ at Summerhall on 14 May 2018, which is part of Good Death Week, 14 – 20 May 2018. The aim of Good Death Week is to promote the positives of living in a society where people can be open about dying, death and bereavement. How could I resist? I’m appearing with Stuart Kenny and Rachel Rankin, and I’ll be reading a range of poems from Wristwatch (appropriately enough). There’ll be some new material too – I’ve written three new poems on the theme of (in)famous deaths. I chat with Ricky from Interrobang in a Death Cafe kinda way here.

Tickets here…

Bereavement, Practice / Craft, Wristwatch

Oh Hippopotamus

utility_piece

Utility Piece is a poem addressed to an ugly sideboard that was part of my life for years. I’m not talking about a mid-century modern sideboard, the sort you see in lifestyle mags or boutiques in Leith or Bruntsfield. This sideboard was utility furniture, and belonged to my late partner’s parents.

I wrote it when I realised (some years after Morag had died) that there was no need for this piece of furniture to stay in my life. I sat down with my notebook aiming to write a letter to the sideboard (yes, I love all such self-therapy) and ended up with a poem instead. The early drafts were pure invective, but later versions calmed down somewhat, and it’s become a meditation on my relationship to the stuff I inherited – and the shared history bound up in said stuff.

Utility piece

It’s time to rehome you,
Hippopotamus,
squat in the corner
scuffed veneer
the colour of the eighty a day
you absorbed for decades.

I never liked you.
I can say that now.
You came when I married
the youngest daughter.

No-one else had room for you
so we took you home,
fed you a terrible diet —
crammed you with board games
a tangle of connectors, adapters, chargers.

You belch booze-reek when I open your doors.

And now I’m widowed.
I wonder why I tend you,
oxpecker-busy.
You were part of her childhood, not mine,
yet you’ve outstayed flat-pack and two sofas.

Oh Hippopotamus, handles chipped,
bulbous gnarly legs, too heavy to lift –
do you remember
after her funeral, in our home for the first time,
her brother said, outraged
How did YOU get that?

And I, the unhappy inheritor,
retold our story.

I enjoy reading Utility Piece at open mic and readings, and I’m delighted people respond so positively – it’s fun to find myself at the bar having chats about other legendary, sometimes resented items of furniture.

Bereavement, Events, Wristwatch

To absent friends

I’m looking forward to the To absent friends festival on 7 November, when I join other poets and storytellers taking part in the Marie Curie event Telling stories to keep memories alive. I’ll be reading some of my poems written in response to the death of my late partner (there’s a whole sequence in Wristwatch) and more importantly, I’ll be chatting to people about writing to celebrate and commemorate their dead.

To absent friends sets out to be a Scottish version of the Mexican Day of the Dead – I love this idea! As the website says, “People who have died remain a part of our lives – their stories are our stories…” Which is exactly what my poem Utility piece is trying to say.