Malika's Blog

My writing process: the fourth poem 'Collision'

How it all began

I remember the evening clearly. It was dark outside, that deep winter darkness hugged the building and I was sitting in the Reading Room in the Swan all warm and cosy, listening to the recordings that I had made that day. The place seemed quiet and intimate as if no one else was around but I knew that there were staff members, and visitors. That evening was an unveiling for all the patrons who had taken part in the 'Take Your Seat' initiative; where they had paid to have name a engraved on a plaque on an individual seat. This could be for a loved one, someone lost, or to represent and honour memories etc.

I remember the gentleman walking into The Swan Reading Room, yet I cannot recall how the conversation began but we had some how managed to talk about my residency, the fact that he and his wife were visiting to see the chair that they had dedicated to his late daughter Becky who had died and who loved the performances that she had attended at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. He promised to return with his wife.

He returned with his wife later that evening and we had one of the most intimate, revealing conversations that sometimes happen between strangers, and can be beautiful, moving as well as life changing. One of those times when you know that you will be forever changed by this single moment and these honest words.

I suppose that it was a raw conversation stripped of any pretence because they had just visited the seat dedicated to their daughter 'Becky' and it felt right that they should be able to share their memories and feelings about that moment with a poet and a willing human being. They told me about the tragic road accident that had taken her life and somehow we ended up talking about grief and mourning. They were a lovely couple and their story deeply moving but I had no intention of using any of this for one of the poems yet their story stayed with me and would constantly pop into my mind.

The next week I returned to the Reading Room having spent a few days in London and found a lovely message from Becky's sister, that I still keep on stuck up on the wall in my writing office at home.
There were a few email exchanges as well but I still did not know that here was the topic for my fourth poem for the RSC.

I wrote the first three poems and began to make notes about Becky's story, her family. I would find myself thinking about her name on that chair, and find myself asking questions about how we honour our dead. I began to think of epitaph, and elegy and wonder if a series of epitaphs could share her story.

I wanted to write about this but wondered how the family would feel and I did not want to offend anyone. But as I cast my eyes around for the next poem, made notes of ideas, themes, conversations and the things that I intended to write – Becky's story would somehow scribble itself in my book. I realised that this was about the plaque that name etched there, it was about the fact that here was a great moving story, it was about the story behind the name or simply that the idea had lodged itself into my mind.
Then there was an uncomfortable moment for me as a poet, I had asked the parents permission to use the material that they had shared with me in a poem, both face to face and via email, but I felt that the poem did not want to and would not be able to stick to the facts, I knew that before I wrote anything I needed to speak to the parents and share my artistic intentions as well as ask permission to be allowed to re-construct and exaggerate their story.

One day I happed to look up in the Reading Room and the parents walked, it seemed like a sign especially when they were only too happy for me to use Becky's seat / story as a starting point for the poem and trusted me to have artistic licence with sensitivity.

Now I could begin.

I started by asking questions and pondering the following:
• The marks we make on the world,
• The memories that we leave behind,
• The impact our death can have.
• The purpose of litany and repetition
• What is a shrine?
• Could I write a poem that has sections that allow it to be read as a series of short epitaphs or a long poem?

Collision was by far the poem that I enjoyed working on the most. It was easy to write in a way it just wrote itself.

Collision.
For Becky 10.12.10

1. Epigraph
Every thing is a memorial.
Every moment is a lost thing.
The second that just past
the breath exhaled, that last blink, gone.
You can only revisit it in memory.

2. Memorial
Is this poem a memorial,
all that remains of a dead girl?
Your sister tells me that they keep
your room alive, an eighteen
year old girl's desire frozen
and this is artefact, a domestic museum.
We cannot use the word shrine here.

3. Collision
What is collision? The smash of two cars
on the wet tar road. A drunken driver smashing
the late night. A lone chest crushed
against dashboard. The ricochet of a head
against windscreen, news slapping
your parents faces, your mother's body hitting
that floor, the news hitting space, in that house,
in your house. We cannot use the word shrine here.

4. Mark
What is the mark we leave?
The scribble of David Tennant's hand
across that programme.
The ceremonial resting
of that programme on a cold concrete bed,
anchored by fresh wreaths,
where it will be battered
by rain and bleached with sun,
until shredded. We will not say
the word shrine here.

5. Congregation
What is congregation? Where you would all meet
to see plays at Shakespeare's theatre each season
like attending church. You a budding actress plucked
early. Your last play Hamlet where you grabbed
your heart as you whispered with David Tennant:
“to die, to sleep_ no more_
and by sleep we say to end… for in that sleep
to end what dream may come?
Now you can watch plays to your heart's
content from your own seat in that theatre,
where a thin silver band, labels the back of seat C30
with your name, like a gravestone.
Your sister, mum and dad take turns
to sit with you each visit.
We will not say shrine here.

6. Processions
Tell me about procession?
The steady flow of cars outside your window
on quiet nights, in your small town street.
Each car's drive is the slow march
of a procession behind a coffin
on a rainy British day
all misty, gloomy and dark.
Each footstep behind that coffin
is the slow march of the queen's soldiers
to the eight bar waltz of the drummers beat.
Each car sound wakes a mother
who forgets and sleeps light
waiting for her daughter to get home safe.
We will not say the word shrine here.

7. Litany
What is litany? The mother leaning fractured. Something broke.
The family leaning fractured. Something broke.
The car on that wet road, that dark highway night. Something broke.
Your crushed body there alone, something broke.
Something we can never fix back
Something we can never fix back
It broke us to heal us
Heal what breaks break what heals.
Break us heal us, heal us break us.

by Malika Booker  |  No comments yet

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