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Beforehand – I felt quite daunted to think of an hour-long interview on Mearns fm radio about my non-fiction writing! Elaine May Smith, the programme presenter, helped make things much easier – with Elaine I chose the pieces of music which had meant so much to me during those years when Jay my daughter was so ill, yet refused all treatment when it was suggested by the doctor she should be in hospital.
Music and writing were what really helped me survive and get through those really tough times. Collected together copies of ’Families, Carers and Professionals: Building Constructive Conversations’ which Wileys published in 2007, ‘Skills-based Caring for a Loved One with an Eating Disorder….’ which I co-authored with Professor Janet Treasure, and Anna Crane, pub by Routledge in the same year, as well as ‘Anorexia and Bulimia in the Family’, my first ‘big book’, 2004, pub also by John Wiley and Sons…the listeners wouldn’t be able to see them though.
What was I going to say?….Talking about those difficult years – struggling on despite no information, trying to work out what best to do to help Jay and what not to do, plus constant worries about possibly doing all the wrong things due to my ignorance – certainly brought back so many memories. All, I now know, in common with so many other family carers in a wide variety of circumstances including multiple sclerosis, autism, schizophenia, bipolar disorder, acquired brain injury, alzheimers…. and so many other difficult conditions.
And when I read my poem Chair on air, written at a workshop I attended when Jay was so ill (and included in both my books published by Wiley), I worried that my voice was going to break.
Chair by Gráinne Smith
Each day I give you comfort.
Each day since we came home together
I support your weight, increasing with the years.
You should look at me you know,
be aware of the burden I carry,
feel the cracks as my skin rubs, wears.
You should attend my worn springs,
sturdy frame and broad smooth surface.
Why don’t you brush down the worn coat?
Listen to my creaks and groans?
Come here, stroke me, touch
with love the faithful arms
waiting, fearful that you might not return.
Why don’t you feel the warmth of my heart
beating at the sound of your feet?
Why don’t you, just once,
look at me? I am tired
of your careless demands,
the way you blindly take
and take and take and take.
One day my inner strengths
without warning
will break.
Glad to say I got through to the end without my voice breaking. The hour simply flashed past! – great feedback too since the broadcast too. Many many thanks to Elaine for all her help and support, and for inviting me back to talk about my non-fiction work, giving an opportunity to talk about the writing workshops for carers, ‘Journeys in Words’, which I’ve been asked by VSA to present in Stonehaven and Banchory Libraries on alternate Thursdays starting on 1st March. (More details from Stonehaven Library and Banchory Library)
My beloved Jay is now well, getting on with her life, working fulltime, great social life… it could so easily have been otherwise. Knowing so many other family carers now, and working with the Open University Development Group which includes service users and carers coping with a very wide range of conditions and situations, I count my blessings every single day.
Fall Manitouwabing, Muskoka
Red orange yellow flights,
leaves driven by the rough wind
lifting over armies of trees
reflected in the lake, landing
to meet and greet beavers
on deep paths leading
to the long dark
days ahead.
Quiet now the leaves lie
cold, a white-frosted
carpet on hard earth,
ready for the shining snowdrifts
later winds will bring, new falls
deep in woodland tangled with giant
branches and roots where
chipmunks, squirrels sleep,
deer hide, until signposts
appear signalling
Spring again.
Slowly adjusting after my recent trip to Canada to visit my sister Mo, her husband Jim and my 3 lovely nieces! Great beginning to the trip when I met up en route with our other sister Nicky who lives in the French Alps, and we travelled rest of the way together. With so many miles usually between us, email and Skype are great for keeping in touch – but nothing beats face-to-face time to catch up, especially over 3 really great weeks!
So many highlights from my trip to Canada – Mo and Jim’s wonderful organisation and cooking, unflappable even when packing and preparing for meals every day for 8(!). Just a few –
Talking round the table – and round firebox in the garden in St Catharine’s, round the firepit under the trees at the renovated wooden boathouse on Manitouwabing Lake where we spent our middle week. Standing on glass floor at top of CN tower in Toronto – I’m assured it supports weight of umpteen hippopotamuses! The very special peace and calm of our days at Manitouwabing, no tv, radio, internet or phones – watching sunset and, if I woke early, the sunrise; trees on other side of the lake changing colour over our week there, from variety of greens when we arrived to reds, oranges, gold and yellows just seven days later when we left; only sounds to break that peace were breeze in the trees and ruffling the water, occasional birds, occasional boat. Watching a beaver swimming alongside deck of the boathouse only a couple of metres from where I was standing. Visits from chipmunk most days, often close enough to touch when he called to say hi. Squirrels running just ahead of us on pavements, colonies of gossiping sparrows in St C garden…
And visiting some wonderful galleries featuring Canadian artists, including sculpture and paintings by Inuit artists…in one of those galleries I fell in love with carved Dancing Bear and brought him home to remind me of a very special trip, all part of my own personal Year of the Dancing Bear.
Shooer
Hale watter runklin doon the lane,
stair roddies stottin aff the tar,
branders hotterin, bubblin foo,
an ma soakit feet rinnin, rinnin tae get hame.
The roadie’s dryin, risin steam.
Blin storm gies wye tae a singin singin sky.
A splashin splooterin draas ma een –
starlins haein a dook in a reemin watter spoot.
(Published 2008 in the Reading Bus, ‘Fit Like Yer Majesty?’, a book of Doric poems illustrated by Bob Dewar)
Delighted to be invited to read at the Cookney concert on Sat 1st October, part of the Doric Festival organised by the Elphinstone Institute, Aberdeen University…I immediately decided to make Shooer (written after I got caught in a thunderstorm) my first poem. Geordie Murison, John Valentine, Anne Nicol, Kate Taylor and Peter Lamb are also among those taking the stage that night.
After so many years, it’s wonderful that stories and poems and songs in Doric – the natural language of NE Scotland – are again being valued and celebrated as well as recorded after so long when they were regarded by many as ‘common’, collected and remembered by only a few.
When I was growing up my father, having grown up one of a family of twelve on a farm near Kintore, saw speaking Doric as a handicap to future progress in life and wouldn’t allow his children to speak it at home. The same attitude prevailed at the time in schools; I can even remember some children being punished for speaking their own natural language in school. Many learned to be bi-lingual, Doric and English depending on place and company.
Therefore despite being surrounded by Doric in the playground and in everyday life, and writing stories, poems and plays in Doric as well as English, I’ve never really felt a natural speaker… so to be asked to read some of my Doric poems and stories means an affa lot!
Would be great to see some kent faces there…
Chuffed to bits to be invited to read at The Doric Festival in October 2011. More details very soon!
March of the women by Gráinne Smith, written for 8th March – International Women’s Day – 2011
Marching with their hearts those hardy souls pushed,
argued, fought laws long deemed immovable,
brought basic rights. All wrought by loving hands
and standing up to be counted for us – the Here and Now.
Yet still today across our world some live with dread –
cruel blows, whips, boots – the right to peace assumed
the sole preserve of men who lay down rules. These sisters,
degraded, can only dream a life without torture, rape.
Broken breath,
broken years,
her voice spoke
of so many tears
as she told
of that plastic bag
the police handed over –
a daughter whose bones
may be
trapped
there among other
lost souls.
We too can raise our voices,
stand for rights within the dark.
We too can fight for those
with no power, our hearts
march for freedom.
We too can light that spark.
‘Broken’ – For Paula Bonilla Flores, whose daughter Maria died in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico in 1998, and who answered the question ‘What do you miss most about your daughter?’ with a sigh – described by human rights artist Tamsyn Challenger, as a broken breath which she finds impossible to forget. ‘Since January 2010 alone over 300 women have been murdered or abducted in the area – more than one a day.’
400 women exhibition www.400women.tumbir.com – remembering the lives of women ages from 13 years up, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Recently I was asked by Marie Shaw, Arts Development Officer for Aberdeenshire South, to write a poem specially for the centenary of International Women’s Day, and read it as the introduction to a big event at Buchanan’s, Banchory Woodend Barn on 8th March. As I knew little about International Women’s Day apart from the name, and not enough about women’s lives in other parts of the world, quite a daunting project! Would I do the topic justice, not to mention women across the world?
Marie sent me lots of information about how IWD started in 1911, just 100 years ago…and much encouragement. I started thinking about and reading up on all the changes in life in UK in those years, in particular in the lives of women. The marches and other campaigning to gain votes for women, not to mention changes in heating, lighting, housing, earnings, belongings and property, food, transport and travel – so many huge changes.
How would I tackle it? – past, present, future perhaps; or common experiences and bonds; or maybe building bridges, communication across the miles?
And then I picked up an Amnesty International magazine featuring an article about Tamzin Challenger’s work in Mexico where over 400 women have disappeared since January 2010. I knew then that I couldn’t simply write nice words of celebration about what has been achieved within 100 years, even in my own lifetime, within my own country and in some other places.
I was delighted that Judy Taylor agreed to read too and in front a big crowd representing artists and many other creatives and makers, we started off…
And after all my reading up beforehand, it struck me that morning that although things could always be better, so many of the women there drove themselves to be with us – and in their own cars, can run their own businesses, choose their own clothes and their own style, earn their own money, own their belongings. Unlike so many I had been reading about in so many other places.
Performing my ‘March of the Women’ – a bit daunting too, as well as amazing and overwhelming thanks to the warmth of reactions and the feedback. Best of all however, is that tackling this project and the reading it involved has started me writing again. Many thanks Marie!
Read ‘March of the Women’ in Poetry section. I’d love your to hear thoughts too on my poem, on the topic, on what we could do to help carry forward the change started just 100 years ago.
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