mental health

Guest Post: David Turner of Lunar Poetry Podcasts, ‘one poem about sex and that’s it ok’

Today’s guest David Turner, is an indefatigable supporter of poets through his Lunar Poetry Podcasts, where you will find interviews with many/many of the UK’s contemporary poets. But I also recommend you buy his debut collection ‘Contained’; it is an extraordinary book both in its form and themes. It’s published by the innovative ‘mostly experimental’ Hesterglock Press.

You can purchase Contained here (there is a pdf version for £4)
There is also a Soundcloud playlist with has recordings of the poems here.

So without further ado, here’s David writing about being in isolation watching The People v OJ Simpson whilst aware of the outside movements of others.

*****************************
David T“I am very grateful to Peter for inviting me to submit a blog post and poem for this great website. It’s always nice when someone you respect shows an interest in your work and places you amongst a growing collection of talented artists… especially since I’ve been a little down on my debut ‘poetry’ book, Contained recently. It’s like staring at your own face in the mirror for too long – my features have lost all relevance and no longer make up what I remember. Perhaps, worse still, they make up exactly what I remember.

As so many are at the moment, I’m ‘looking in the mirror’ too much and procrastinating. I’m watching Netflix instead of acknowledging the reading list building up in a corner of the one-bed, housing association, flat I share with my wife. We binge-watch The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime Story – you know, because for what other reason was that streaming service invented, other than to hear the gruesome details of a woman’s murder?

            …heavy footsteps thump the floor above in time to a joe wicks youtube routine, his        instructions resonate through us…

Ross from Friends plays Kim Kardashian’s dad and her and her siblings eat French Fries in a diner. Cuba Gooding Jr can only ever be Cuba Gooding Jr and I always thought Johnnie Cochran was an early Rock ‘n’ Roll star. This is the first time I’ve ever seen John Travolta play anyone other than himself.

            …downstairs, parents scream at their kids for going too close to their friends’ homes…

He actually looks like he’s acting, which is weird because presumably the whole cast is acting, so if I’ve only noticed JT does that mean he’s doing something wrong? Like, is it only good acting if you don’t notice it?

            …we’re all now painfully aware of our neighbours’ work voices as their zoom conference            calls pierce the calm in the yard…

I just keep thinking, ‘JT really looks like someone else here’, so taken by this that I miss several key plot developments. He’s executive producer (I think) so maybe he just got the pick of the best make-up artists. In many ways he actually looks like he’s wearing Nick Cage’s face. Finally.

            …upstairs, on facetime, she shouts to a niece or nephew about how they’re a potato      with a bum hole for an ear…

Watching JT commit, so firmly, to his Bob Shapiro makes my neck ache as I unintentionally mimic the tension he holds in his thick torso and absent neck.

            …there are now loud boisterous gatherings on random weeknights as people struggle to             maintain routines and the old bill hover in helicopters because they know that this city is   only a sunny bank holiday away from mayhem…

containedI don’t know anything about film theory – except a short (but excellent) YouTube series narrated by a feature film producer, preoccupied by the ‘oner’ – but I’m sure every character in these dramas is supposed to have an ‘arc’. But all I see is JT standing there barrel-chested, mush-faced, wide-lapelled and NOT BEING JOHN TRAVOLTA. The whole thing is very distracting. And, of course, maybe he just looks like that now.

You have to find a way to remind yourself that being stuck in the same place/space can breed obsessions and try to enlist the coping mechanisms you’ve already had to consider many times before. And, of course, for certain sections of society the place/space they occupy can be much smaller and hostile. And, of course (of course), a global pandemic is not a writing retreat and that for many of us lockdown isn’t time away from anything.”

David Turner is the founding editor of the Lunar Poetry Podcasts series, has a City & Guilds certificate in Bench Joinery along with the accompanying scars, is known to the Bristol, Kristiansand and Southwark Community Mental Health Teams as a ‘service user’ and has represented Norway in snow sculpting competitions. Widely unpublished. Working-class. Picket line poet. Publications: Contained, Hesterglock Press, 2020; ten cups of coffee, Hesterglock Press, 2019; ‘Why Poetry?’ – The Lunar Poetry Podcasts Anthology, VERVE Poetry Press, 2018

lunarpoetrypodcasts.com; twitter.com/Silent_Tongue;
https://www.instagram.com/david_turner_books/

one poem about sex and that’s it ok

It isn’t clean and we don’t want it in our mouths. Returned pint glass with lipstick on the rim. We’ll drink any old piss before we’ll ask for a fresh drink but draw the line here.

You wake up in horror on the Northern Line at Kennington realising you’ve been resting your head on the day’s accumulated grease. The glass dividers are supposed to keep us apart and we don’t want any trace of the others lingering on us.

Walking through the vaper’s sweetshop mist is somehow worse than the traditional smoker because it’s mainly their breath, innit? They’ve entered you. Even though you’ve expelled all trace of them it’s sort of their memory hanging around. Clinging to your insides.

You’re sitting in one of those rigid plastic chairs in Café House Restaurant (the caff) on the Walworth Road and it’s still warm and you’d move but you’ve been fixated on your nan’s disapproving look (it only takes a look) for just long enough that someone would definitely notice you moving. Like a heat shadow.

As financially challenged teenagers we’d share bottles of MD 20/20. Our biggest fear between the ages of 12 and 16 seemed to be backwash. All this energy spent trying to avoid the ‘wrong person’s’ saliva getting in your mouth.

For Display Purposes Only by Emily Harrison

My son is now eighteen, has a full-time job and is happy. He is ‘functioning’. This comes after almost three years of depression which at its worst involved self-harm and suicidal ideation. He left school in Year 10, couldn’t cope with another school, nor a part-time one. All schools found it difficult to support him, besides giving him extra time to do tasks, which was not what he needed. In fairness to them, although we didn’t realise it at the time, he simply needed to be withdrawn completely. So for him, no qualifications, no ‘normal’ pathway that as parents you just assume they will take (but boy, can he play guitar and knows his way round a recording studio).

world mental health dayFluoxetine and psychiatry didn’t help; it wasn’t until he was free of daily commitments, went on mirtazapine and saw a therapist fortnightly, that he slowly came back to us. He is now just at the beginning of withdrawing from the medication as it makes him very tired and sluggish. We will see how it goes. The reason I mention this, is that this year’s theme for World Mental Health Day (WMHD) is what’s termed, ‘wellbeing in the workplace’. For the coming weeks therefore, I will be seeking out advice and monitoring how he gets on at work as he begins the withdrawal process.

emily picThe poet, Emily Harrison, in her brilliant collection, ‘I can’t sleep ‘cause my bed’s on fire’ chronicles her journey through the teenage years and into her twenties of dealing with psychiatric institutions. She often does this with humour, as in the poem ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, and importantly on the theme of love, which has its own challenges. There are some beautiful and stark poems, and as I say some are very funny. But a poem that stuck out for me in light of WMHD is ‘For Display Purposes Only’, as it describes what goes on behind the closed doors of hospitals; where the prospect of work isn’t even a distant mirage. “Far from my window,/ I can see across the courtyard/ into the maximum security ward./ I watch violent outbursts/ I watch forced sedation/ I watch men of my father’s generation/ lose every way of expressing themselves/ because talking therapy never suited them.” Like Dan Duggan’s Luxury of the Dispossessed, this is a first-hand account of mental health crises and challenges (as well as other musings as in ‘Swindon makes me feel like a Russian Bride’), which don’t necessarily end because the person is now seen to be ‘functioning’ in the workplace.

 

Emily Harrison performs regularly in London and across the UK. She was awarded Best Spoken Word Performer 2016 at The Saboteur Awards. Emily has performed at Latitude, WOMAD and Glastonbury festival. “Astute and at times painfully humorous”, her first full-length collection ‘I Can’t Sleep ’cause My Bed’s On Fire’ was released with Burning Eye Books last year. She is currently working on a second collection. You can find Emily in East London. She’ll probably fall in love with you on the tube.

 

 

For Display Purposes Only

Jacqui leaves old orange peel and banana skin on my radiator,
says it smells just like potpourri.
To me it’s week-old bin liner on a hot day
but I don’t have the heart to tell her that.

When a nurse asks,
I don’t want to drop Jacqui in it.
I adopt her backward thinking reluctantly,
explain word for word
until the word potpourri loses all meaning.
He nods himself through it like I did.
It’s not that he doesn’t have the heart to tell me,
he doesn’t have the time.
There isn’t a box for that on the form
and he’s only allowed one Biro.

The last time I dobbed Jacqui in
they took her artwork away.
She got 7.5mg and couldn’t talk without dribbling.

From my window
I can see across the courtyard
into the maximum security ward.
I watch violent outbursts.
I watch forced sedation.
I watch men of my father’s generation
lose every way of expressing themselves
because talking therapy never suited them.

And now they sit in armchairs –
                the ‘if you’re sat on it you can’t throw it’ theory.
They watch paint climb the walls –
                the ‘stare at it long enough and it disappears’ therapy.
They wait for nothing to happen
twice.

Over this side we know to let things slide.
I’m staring hard at everything, hoping it all just disappears.

Everything,
except the smell of burning orange peel
and the word potpourri.