not sleeping

Am possessed with the need to work.  Not sure if it’s because my husband (or rather his job) has just been made redundant and I’m worried we could lose the house.  So, I’m launching on a bid to do as much freelance work as possible which will mean leaving the baby with her Dad.  She’s just 11 months and I don’t want to leave her.  Nor do I want to wallow in self-pity.  I’ve applied for a couple of jobs but they would mean me giving up writing effectively.  I’ll need to feed the baby soon so I’ll go and sleep for a couple of hours.

Might then be able to sort my thoughts a little better.

Books

I’m waiting for 2 books.  The Shape of the Dance and the Collected Poems of Michael Donaghy.  I encountered him twice and he reminded me of Francis Thompson – in spite of Thompson having been dead long ago and unmeetable.  I heard him read on the Poetry Society Tour in 2001 (?) with Sean O’Brien – and Roger McGough and Deryn Rees-Jones (in Liverpool) – and I met him when I was doing an MA and he did a workshop for us – but it was so brief and I was too shy to talk to him really.  He was the real deal.  I’ve met a few poets like that.  Charles Causley and Ted Hughes.  I’d like to meet Tony Harrison and Derek Mahon but I’m not sure why as I have little to say.  I’m happiest being at home and writing.

Lagging Behind

It’s starting to look a bit hopeless.  I’m 47 and just have 2 pamphlets and 1 collection and a few anthology entries so I need a plan if I’m going to get anywhere and I’ve these 6 kids – the youngest just 5 months and no one asks me to do readings unless they’re just making up the numbers because I’m the one who helps out, sorts stuff for other poets, a background kind of person whose there to buy the drinks or order food or clear the tables.  Somehow I’ve not been doing it right.  So sure, I’ve been writing since I was 15 – apart from when I’ve been mad or not allowed to (write) for 10 years because I had to look after other peoples’ kids and mothers and (GOD, is that a nightmare part of the biography I’ll never write) – some 20th century angel-in-the-house and boy there were plenty of draughts/drafts (?) for me to sit in.  I’m working on a new few poems based on snails (can’t explain here) and the plan is to try for the IOTA pamphlet competition with this and lots of poems out to magazines from my second collection.  I have a publisher I want to be with but need to do a lot of other stuff before sending my second collection to them.  It’s ready now but I don’t want to waste time being rejected.  I’d rather wait and be rejected after following a plan.  Why do I love John Clare and poor old (young) Berryman and crazy, sexy Anne Sexton and obsessive, civilised and multi-uxorious Lowell.  I need to write and have about 30 minutes each day so I have to stop sleeping to do it – which makes me go mad after a few months and TALK ABOUT THE PRAM IN THE HALL!!!

Awake

This isn’t a good time to be writing really as it’s gone 3 am but my brain is what I call zizzing following a day producing my first poem in a while and discovering a title for a new short sequence of poems – The Homing Instinct of Snails – my Yesterday moment. I feel a writing mania approaching which is not really tolerable as all the kids are off school and I’m feeding the baby so my time is – quite literally – not my own.  Although the husband-person has taken a week off work so we might get some family time.  I have to take care not to see this as a chance to escape and write although I’m desperate to do so.  My head is full of words to do with snails – gastropods – molluscs – but I  am not allowed to be like this.

ADOLESCENTS

I have 2 of these in the house and I like to think of them as born-again toddlers – although one is much more demanding, egotistical and hilarious in his transparent plotting than the other, but he is a bit older.  I define adolescence as that difficult time between the ages of 13 – 16.  Oldest A (A1) is (this week) simultaneously heart-broken about a metal guitarist who was shot by a deranged fan, and trying his best to emulate Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock by borrowing is Dad’s long black waist-coat.  Youngest A (A2) lends his brother money to go into town to meet up with friends and asks (often) “Is he doing that because he’s a teenager.”  Yes, I smile. Thinking of A1 taking 2 hours to do the dishes at night so he can play music on his Dad’s lap-top and keep in touch with all his friends on Facebook. I know how lucky I am.  We’re not worrying about drugs, knives, sex, booze.  In fact, when he went to his first party a few months ago he was one of only 2 boys that didn’t have a drink – and spent most of the evening looking after a friend who was sick and being delighted with himself in the process (A1, not green-face).  And the parents of the girl whose party it was were in the house (!)  There’s a long way to go yet and I’m worried about my sons – about all my children –  because I want them to be safe, as well as learning how to take risks, to be happy and yet to realise that being miserable and bored is a perfectly normal part of life growing up.  No doubt I’ll get it wrong – or they’ll tell me how wrong I am.  But I wouldn’t miss a minute of this – including the pomposity, arrogance, know-allness (that’s just their father) and – in the midst of it all – that terrible vulnerability and need for love and reaasurance that my sons have.

infant needs

My time is taken up with my new baby at the moment.  She’s reached 5 months now and is still breast-feeding exclusively so my life and actions revolve around what is essential for her life.  She needs to feed and I am her source of nutrition which would make life in a day-to-day institutional nursery not only impossible for her but very distressing for me.  So the recent study about infants under 1 not suffering if mothers are out at work doesn’t cut it with me.  If a woman wants to leave a child under 1 to someone else’s care that’s her business but it’s not what I want to do.  Babies are not inanimate objects and breast-feeding is not a consumer activity – it is an intimate and profound gift in a mutual relationship.  Most women in Liverpool aren’t into it but I am – and so is my baby.

But it makes me feel cut off because it’s such a disparaged activity. People object to breast-feeding. I shall give more thought to this over the next week.  I can’t think of any good literature about it yet.  If men did it would there be a Breast-feeding genre of novel!

Police and circuses

Tonight, the road immediately at my front door was blocked with police vehicles and people, spectators who might not have been out of place as companions of Madame Defarge.  I had to insist that my eldest son (14) and his friend come in from the front yard as he protested loudly “But this is the most interesting thing that’s happened since we broke up.” He finished school for the summer less than a week ago.  The cause of police interest was some bloke with a gun who’d gone off his head just an hour or two earlier.  ”We’re not treating it like an entertainment,” I insisted and brought them in.  A minute or so later he protested “But there are lots of other people in our path, watching.”  I went out and asked them to move.  This was not easy as they looked unfriendly, to say the least.  ”Please move out of my path,” I said firmly, feeling slightly ashamed.  They were, to put it most accurately, gobsmacked.”I’ve just told my children off for treating it like a spectator’s sport, so I have to ask you to move,”  The woman in charge of the small party of observers narrowed her eyes.  ”How old are your kids?”

“Eight to fourteen..”  (I don’t mention the baby, so correct myself obliquely by mentioning I have 6 children.) This is a kind of plea bargain in hope that they’ll reconsider their intention to slash the tyres on the Bongo Frendee that is so clearly ours.

“It might get violent yet,” says narrow eyed Mrs Defarge-a-like eagerly.

“I hope not,” I say, my tone a bit pathetic really.

Just before nine the police left after removing machetes, knives and at least one firearm from the house – as well as its difficult top floor occupant, on a stretcher, transported in an ambulance.  My son and his friend carried on watching from the front bedroom hiding behind the blind, in spite of my disapproval.

“He deserves some dignity, is probably ill,”  I say lamely, thanking God for the police. What if he’d flipped when I was walking past with the baby? My second eldest goes to talk to the neighbour.

“He’s a soldier,” he explains. “He’s been in Iraq.”

That explains it, I think and check the tyres on the van before settling down to feed the baby.  I’ll try and watch Sherlock again.  This will be the third attempt in 2 days.

This is not a very safe neighbourhood.