Lapidus News

The Blue Dragonfly by Veronica Eley

Hidden Brook Press 2021

ISBN : 9781738095902

“inside out
outside in
the feelings have become
statues in the garden
monuments to a crime”

The Blue Dragonfly is a courageous collection of poetry charting the deep psychological waters of living with childhood trauma. Veronica Eley’s raw, direct voice challenges.

Emerging from the psychiatrist’s padded office; from sanctioned gangster hallways of a mental hospital and from daily disorderly documenting of family life, the poet’s words unravel tortured experience - obliquely exact and savagely beautiful. It’s a wild ride which may require a trigger warning. If you’re new to the idea that writing can be therapeutic, this collection will convince you of the power of storytelling to explore, excavate, catalogue and contain the patchwork nature of human life. In Foreward, editor Roger Langen, who is also Eley’s husband, explains how the layout of the book reflects the stages of healing trauma: “injury and illness in 1 Secret Monsters; intervention (experienced like a miracle) in 2 The Bodhisattva; forgiveness and transcendence in 3 Mother.” (p.xv)

Knightsmith, Pooky (2016). Using poetry to promote talking and healing. Jessica Kingsley Publishers: London and Philadelphia.

Despite the relative seriousness indicated by this book’s title, its cover hints at a sense of experimentation – even fun. This is all the more surprising, and some might say refreshing, once you read in Dr Knightsmith’s acknowledgements that this book was written at a time of “complete mental breakdown”, when she was in “the deepest depths of anorexia and suicidality”; for me, such an open disclosure in a published work by an author of esteem is hugely powerful in helping dispel some myths about mental ill health.

Wunderkammer by Helen Ivory

Mad Hat Press 2023

ISBN: 978-1-952335-57-0

This remarkable collection documents the poetic development of Helen Ivory’s work from 2002 to 2019, with the addition of a selection of poems from How to Construct a Witch awaiting publication by Bloodaxe in 2024.

Why “Wunderkammer”? As a writer, I can attest that titles are significant and potent. Therefore, before diving into this collection, I undertook a little research. The Wunderkammer (literally translated as a room of wonder) has a long history stretching at least as far back as the 1600s, being a “a place where a collection of curiosities and rarities is exhibited”.  Contemporary artists like Louise Bourgeoise and Damien Hirst have a predilection for this kind of phenomena, with the curious and the weird. Nowadays we might call the wunderkammer a “Cabinet of Curiosities”, one we might peer into, to be both fascinated and repelled in turn, one where mystery, magic and the natural world collide.

 written & directed: Sara Colangelo - based on a Screenplay by Nadav Lapid

Nadav Lapid, directed a 2014 original, Haganenet. A prizewinner at Cannes. I'd very much like to see that version now. I loved this. A film made with wonderful understanding, beautifully paced, shot, acted - a gem.

Middle aged kindergarten teacher, Mrs Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal), has a husband and two teenage children. She attends an adult education class on writing poetry. She seems good, practised, and caring at her job. Perhaps so good it's somewhat automatic, even when listening to care and not pushing children too far. She comes alive when playing with them, in a golden light.  In exploring poetry maybe she's reaching for something she needs. We see her write a poem as she goes to class.  But it's judged as dull. She feels snubbed. Though she doesn't work that through fully.  She may be more in tune with her class than this teacher his.

Like those fizzy yellow treats, Tee Francis’ poems are often bittersweet - and sparkle with wit.

She explores the personal and the political: poems about cotton buds, left-over Christmas trees and insomnia jostle with a cleverly rhyming Ode to Jeremy Hunt and a satirical monologue in the voice of a Brexit-voting ex-pat who – surprise, surprise - prefers to live in Spain. There are tenderly erotic love lyrics (Hymn for Him, Communion, Silent Treatment) and poems which celebrate the beauty of the Dorset countryside where she lives (On Walking to Fleet Church). There are some very funny poems which were written for Spoken Word performance but, even on the page, made this reader laugh out loud (Slots, Forbidden Pleasures).

 Jhilmil Breckenridge spoke with Stephen Gillatt about the issues of mental health and men and how society does not allow vulnerability in men. Stephen has recently written a mental health memoir as he wants to get more men talking about mental health.

Heal Yourself With Journaling Power By Mari L McCarthy (140pp, 12 chapters)

Mari McCarthy was a business consultant in the USA until a bombshell 18 years ago when she was diagnosed with MS (Multiple Sclerosis). Following the loss of function and feeling in the right side of her body, she soon faced up to the harsh fact that prescription drugs and the conventional medical approach weren’t working. She set out on a journey to take control of her own health and began a practice of journaling, difficult for her because she had to learn to write with her left hand. Quite remarkably journaling enabled her to ditch the drugs and expand her life in many new directions including singing, walking, meditating and writing.

Love & Loss: creative therapeutic writing on relationships

Monica Suswin

Cabin Press

In this short book, Monica Suswin explores the universal experience of love and loss – and how creative therapeutic writing can help us make sense of it.

101 Stores for Enhancing Happiness and Well-Being

Using Metaphors in Positive Psychology and Therapy

George W. Burns   Routledge   2017

http://www.georgeburns.com.au/

This book is full of thoughtful, inspirational, and useful ideas. Storytelling lies at its heart, the power of story-making, story-hearing, story-recreating. Burns’ work  stands at a crossroads of Positive Psychology, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness, and story-metaphor therapy.

Bibliotherapy edited by Sarah McNicol, Liz Brewster

Facet Publishing

In recent years bibliotherapy has hit, if not the mainstream, at least a library or health service near you with programmes such as the Books On Prescription scheme, where self help and advice books are prescribed to support people with certain illnesses or ailments. It’s good recognition of something that people have known for many years –advice, inspiration, education and solace can be found through reading.

Title: The Little Book of Writing Prompts

Authors: Frances Ainslie and Barbara Bloomfield

Publisher: Lapidus International (www.lapidus.co.uk)

Book Review: Poetry and Dementia, by John Killick, published by Jessica Kingsley, 2018,

ISBN 9781785921766, £16.99

I was fortunate to hear John Killick’s address at the Breathing Space conference held at Snowdonia in November 2017. He began by talking about the fashion in contemporary poetry for obscure meaning and identified a trend towards more accessible, more natural writing, arguing that there is greater value in what has clarity of meaning. He allied himself with Peter Elbow’s approach to language and the application of speech to writing, as described in Peter’s book, Vernacular Eloquence.  Indeed, he refers to Elbow’s work in his postscript in Poetry and Dementia, published by Jessica Kingsley, 2018, when he discusses the quality of the language of people with dementia, describing it as ‘the Poetry of Natural Speech’. 

About 18 months ago, True Stories Live launched in Norwich. It’s an innovative young company using anecdotal performance storytelling to galvanise and inspire communities.

I first met Lucy and Molly, the TSL crew, at Storyhouse, Chester and was persuaded to tell my true story at one of their events.

Free Range Writing – 75 Forays for the Wild Writer’s Soul by Jenny Alexander

Book Review by Francesca Baker

Review of A Prism for the Sun by Rose Flint

Published by Oversteps Books, Devon 2015 by Fiona Hamilton

Rose Flint's fifth collection A Prism for the Sun opens our senses to birds, animals, elements, flora, while attentively contemplating human involvement with other-than-human worlds. She draws us close, almost inside, each moment, offering shifting perspectives on these interconnections, giving spaces for us to consider their prismatic forms.

In 'Marking china-blue' the physical sensation of cold sea on hands begins the poem. The lines achieve a fluidity as the poet attempts to ‘pull’ waves forward and they separate braid-like around her fingers. This interconnects with thoughts of the writer or artist’s efforts to mark or record a colour - aquamarine - or a state. By staying with the motions of the waves, body and water become almost indistinguishable:

Review – Crown of Thorns by Bethany W Pope

(Oneiros Books 2013, price £5)

Bethany Pope’s latest collection Crown of Thorns describes itself on the title page as a ‘Marriage of Forms’. Indeed it is the formal structure the poet employs in this book, with such elegance and apparent ease, which must be first and foremost admired. A marriage is a union and Pope’s collection, a complex weaving of narrative is conceived as a single poem which tells the story of family – Pope’s own family and her place in it. And quite a story it is too. The story is told unflinchingly through a series of sonnet crowns that are variously and ingeniously linked, by theme, by storyline, even by bloodline. The final section of the book ‘Bloodlines’, consisting of 45 sonnets subdivided into three sections is a further variation on the sonnet crown form described by Pope as an Emperors Crown. The result is an epic, almost biblical depiction of ancestral ties and the family tree to which the poet belongs. In the first of these 45 sonnets Pope writes The/History of family sets the future in its tread. This is the adage on which the entire book rests.