Sue Hardy-Dawson: Writing from the Abyss

I have been unwell quite a bit recently, I’m okay now, however it’s been a something of a slog. Not least because my default coping mechanism is escaping into either a good book or writing poetry. Sadly, for very sound reasons, I was unable to do either. Thus so, incapacitated, I was left far too long to the machinations and oddities of daytime television. I’m not a fan. I confess even on a good day I struggle with anything scary or upsetting, so in the circumstances it wasn’t long before I had exhausted all Jane Austen and fluffy Disney…

Monsters

& so again
sleep won't come
even small things
grow long and wide
cares so easily
passed in pauses
between washing-
up & laundry
now in the silence
creep out, speak
as if sunlight shuns
their dark powers
& I long for my father
to hold me again
tell me it's not true

© Sue Hardy-Dawson

Around that time, I recall a lovely writer friend saying to me, can’t you use your writing, cathartically, write your way through it? But, honesty, I really couldn’t. Whilst I have enormous admiration for those that can write on through their pain and bare their souls, it’s the most incredibly brave and gruelling thing anyone can do even if they are in a good place. More so because no good poem or story ever hits the ground running. They have to be moulded and tweaked, they require polishing and prodding. So, whilst I could perhaps have put many, many words on a page, having written them what would I do? To edit is in all senses to relive the narrative. To relive joy and beauty is just that, but to relive this misery?  No not for me – I’m a self-acknowledged ostrich.

Fear Can Be a Wise Friend

If jumping in the river
or crossing busy roads
where eating with a tiger
or inviting anacondas home

In the case of tightrope walking
or a career swallowing swords
if considering dragon taming
or hang gliding off walls

If climbing a giant mountain
meeting vampires late at night
playing football with a T-rex
understandably one might

feel just a little bit nervous
or quite rationally some terror
so why is it you're screaming
I'm just a tiny little spider?

© Sue Hardy-Dawson

The thing is misery and worries are very debilitating things creatively and it’s not uncommon for them to eclipse absolutely everything else, so I don’t think we should be hard on ourselves for that. Even without anything big going on our brains are about 90% butterfly; unruly creatures keeping us up all night worrying about strange sounds or something happening many hours or even days away. Then there’s the things that won’t ever happen or there’s little chance of happening.

Of course, in evolutionary terms, worries and fears kept us safe, they stopped us getting eaten by animals and incinerated by volcanoes. Nowadays, though, mostly they deprive us of much needed sleep and turn our brains to mush. Worse, their good friend blind panic runs amok, ridding us of our senses and rationalities. Yet who has not done or said something blush-worthy in panic mode.

Writer's Block

I have no sentences today
every line
has slipped away
no adjectives
no nouns or verbs
I looked but found
no way with words
no paragraphs
to call my own
I'm story-less
without a poem
my pen sleeps sound
as does my brain
only this empty page

remains...

© Sue Hardy-Dawson

Then there’s those traitorous inner voices. The soundtrack to our insecurities. We pick up the metaphorical stick and often spend a lifetime beating ourselves with it. Rarely are we our own best friend, we save our kindness for others.

Simply put, life is hard sometimes and we all need to get away from its realities from time to time. Whilst others might run, crochet or bake, I write to escape. Sadly, it needs all your brain to do that and so for quite a long while my magical getaway vehicle was in the garage. Occasionally it would turn up and run a few hundred yards, then I’d fill up with nervous surprise and hope. And that other stuff, the doubts: was ‘it’ ever coming back? Would ‘it’ be what it once was? I’d hope though and there were other precedents, following other major emotional if not physical body blows.  

Yet even in my darkest hours I never feel quite so low and lonely as I do without my poetry, most of my life it’s made sense of the nonsensical, spoken for me when I haven’t the right words. Yes, it’s taken its good time returning and had a few false starts along the way, but it’s my best and longest-standing friend and as such I forgive it absolutely anything.

Sue Hardy-Dawson

Sue Hardy-Dawson is a poet and illustrator. Her debut collection, Where Zebras Go, Otter-Barry Books, was shortlisted for the 2018 CLiPPA. Her second, Apes to Zebras, Bloomsbury, co-written with poetry ambassadors Roger Stevens and Liz Brownlee, won the NSTB Awards. Sue loves visiting schools, has worked with the Prince of Wales Foundation, ‘Children and the Arts’. As a dyslexic poet, she loves encouraging reluctant writers.