Elegy (for Amanda)

Perhaps I saw you differently

softly scented

a thousand unborn stars

glimmering in parens

between each rhythmic hip-swing.

When the pale mists came

you rose like twisted willow

a sweet, difficult rising

arms outstretched

as far as being reaches.

Under autumn’s cold shadow

remnants of your breath

splashed against my cheek

like alluvion.

I could not let you go.

But where to keep you

among the soul’s clutter?

Here, in this waiting space

between open-beaked birds

and creases of heaven-red petals.

A review of Michael Richmond's book: 'Sisyphusa'

Take a sizeable chunk of Nineteen Eighty-four, introduce pieces of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, add a dash of Poppy Shakespeare – and you will still be missing several vital ingredients that the author Michael Richmond has blended together to produce his dystopian novel Sisyphusa. Influenced by his own emotional breakdown and a lengthy spell of psychiatric intervention, Richmond has created an intriguing work of fiction that satirizes Mental Health Services whilst, simultaneously, highlighting the disempowerment and stigmatization experienced by twenty-first century psychiatric service users.

Snatched from the local Liquidizer one dreary February night, Odis Winston wakes up to find himself incarcerated in Sisyphusa and categorized as Weirdness Grade 2.  After months of seclusion he is finally deemed ready to embark upon a rehabilitation programme with the ultimate goal of being discharged back to his home and family on the Island. As the story progresses, the chances of Odis or any of the other service users ever being allowed to leave Sisyphusa seem increasingly slim until, having been slung down into The Pit – a pitch-black hole full of human sewage – he meets the mysterious Gwen who, driven by her guilty conscience, discloses her secret plan for a mass break-out.

Running contrary to any such ideas of escape stands the formidable Warden Serky, an epitome of humiliation and control. Ably assisted by the beast-like henchmen, she struts her stuff like Nurse Ratched on acid, brainwashing and humiliating the service users in the ironically named Team Recovery. A much more insidious sentinel lies within the service users themselves as they succumb to the process of institutionalisation: a passive acceptance of and reliance upon the hospital structure, which is much more likely to thwart any escape attempts than the three-headed monster that prowls the corridors of Sisyphusa.

As time passes, Odis’s mind-set slowly changes as he begins to develop insight into the disempowering structures that underpin the mental health system in Sisyphusa. Identifying himself with the other downtrodden service users, he develops a quiet determination to redress the balance of power. Of course, despite a thin glimmer of hope, life in Sisyphusa continues to be plagued with tragedies, from the intimacies and tensions that emanate from service user relationships to the untimely deaths and suicides of a number of inmates. Perhaps the only realistic chance of escape is to follow the Flower Eaters’ example and ingest the essence of the Ziziphusa flowers.

Throughout the novel, Richmond manages to parody the negative effects of what we still refer to as mental ‘illness’ by introducing concepts such as ‘climbing pills’ (mandatory medication crucial to the rehabilitation process), ‘Normalization classes’ (where service users are cognitively restructured and taught to behave like ‘normal’ people) &, perhaps the most insidious of devices, the Neuro-Function Reading Mechanism – or earpiece – which is stapled onto every service user’s ear to deliver a constant stream of abuse designed to crush the individual’s self-esteem.

As a narrative, Sisyphusa works well. I was hooked into the story from chapter one & the unfolding plot had enough intrigue about it to keep me interested right to the final chapter. Having been written by someone with more than a passing interest in mental health issues there is a passion that flows from the author’s pen and drives the story forward. The characters & their roles have been well thought out and everyone from the protagonist to the smallest bit-part player are there for a reason: Dobbsy, Ella, Mr Femuz (who reminded me so much of Chief Bromden in ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’), the splendidly-named Governor Shade, even Gwen’s cats play significant roles as Richmond never misses an opportunity to campaign for improvements in mental healthcare.

Every so often, a novel is produced that highlights the imbalance of power between the so-called sane and the mad. Sisyphusa is a timely reminder, perhaps, that – although there have been improvements made in mental health services over recent years – we still have a system in the UK that devalues difference and stigmatizes and controls by way of segregation and medical compartmentalisation. For those who consider themselves to be standing firmly on the sane side of the line, madness will always be something they can point to as being suffered by the ‘other’ – an unconscious defence mechanism often employed to deny their own emotional vulnerabilities.

Wrapped up in the hyperbole of Sisyphusa is an important Foucauldian message of a disciplinary power that is still enforced within our mental health system through various subtle methods of control.  Richmond has piled Pelion on Ossa in order to capture his audience – but beneath those imaginary mountains lies a very real problem and a call to arms for us all. Please do buy a copy of Sisyphusa – I found it to be a fascinating and extremely worthwhile read.

Buy your copy of Sisyphusa here - available as a Paperback or a Kindle eBook.

You can also follow Michael on Twitter

The Gift

Crouched beneath a rising moon I see them

strewn beneath the Firethorns: fallen stars, devil-red

and smelling of bees’ wings.

Without a second thought I gather an armful

and drop them in my basket, visions of her requital

glistening inside my ego.

I wouldn’t! A voice, sweet as a fig, sings out to me

rushing like an unstoppable wave of magma

through a congeries of shadows.

They may be beautiful but they are dying, it sighs

as the rain falls, a thin drizzle of mockery

that clings to my skin like alamine.

I hurry indoors, eager to lay my gift at her feet

but those luminous rubicund orbs have melted

into figments of dark matter.

Back in the garden a soft green light cools the soil.

Only night birds now, picking the flesh from the last

few fragments of starbone.

Gloaming: the book

Following on from my collaborative work with the artist Melaneia Warwick, I am so pleased and excited to announce that our book: 'Gloaming - drawings, paintings, poems' is now available to purchase from Blurb at: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2479245

This beautiful book includes all of Melaneia's artwork from her Gloaming series,the four poems that I created to accompany her paintings and a new poem of mine entitled 'Gloaming', which you can read below: 


Gloaming

Rummaging

in moonless cupboards

beneath a filament

of thin gold light

a curio

catches your eye.

Intrigue lifts it

like a soft skull

from the clutter

of dull green books.

In that instant

faulty clocks

chime the hour;

camphor balls

clatter to the floor

this junked

piece of lumber

gasps and melts

like warm rhetoric –

a new story

to be squeezed out

fat over lean

in swatches

of invented colour.

The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street

The painting above this posting is by Giorgio de Chirico and is entitled 'The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street'. The original artwork is oil on canvas, painted in 1914. Heavily influenced by the writings of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, De Chirico painted familiar objects but juxtaposed them in such a way that his paintings took on an alien, often haunted affect that engaged immediately with the unconscious mind: Pittura metafisica or Metaphysical art.

'Underneath this reality in which we live and have our being, another and altogether different reality lies concealed.' Nietzsche

The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street 

As dayspring swallows darkness

light hangs curdled, olivine

like the toxic breath of gods.

On the piazza’s edge

a callous sun splits the arcades:

white hot stucco; charcoal ashlar.

A wagon stands iron-wheeled

and empty, the beast not long gone

its warm dung still steaming.

In the street a clockwork child

bowls her hoop along an egg-yellow

avenue of innocence.

Her pulse is clotted, beatless

her childhood stiff as a stick.

Dissonance rapes the stillness.

The poke of a growing shadow

looms black as sin, its saurian tail

flicking the ground with lust.

Lips curled, hackles matted

the prowling creature drools

behind the cool colonnade.

Inside the box I crouch, twisted

flawed, braced in the corner

waiting for the scream.

Cinders

The older/ i become/ the more/ i believe/ in dragons 

Swaddled in a blanket

of green smoke

I believed

yet did not fear them

their scuds of flame

benign as moonlight

on my amianthine skin.

When the time came

I ditched them easily

until not long ago

when I found one

smouldering

in the garage

its breath reeking

of hot rubber.

I tried to slip away

but it spotted me

its sickled eyes

oiled by amber

membranes.

Since that day

we have drunk

Oolong together

deconstructed Derrida

even spun around

the church steeple

a time or two

and though it has kept

its flambeau capped

in such a highly

flammable area

when the raven

taps on my window

I will be cinders:

gleanings and bone -

a grim ending

to any fairytale.

Shell

'Shell' is the final poem in a series of four, all created as poetic commentaries on the 'Gloaming' series of artwork by the visual artist Melaneia Warwick. This being the last poem, I wanted to address the issue of ekphrasis within it and, in particular, Roland Barthes' claim that the creator of a work of art is merely a functionary. He postulated that the real artist was the person who viewed the work: a postmodernist point of view that strips the author/artist of all her power, breaking it into fragments and issuing a piece to every member of an ever-expanding audience.


What Barthes seems to be saying is that the meaning of a text/work of art owes nothing to its creator and everything to its interpretor. 'The birth of the reader,' he hypothesised, 'must be at the cost of the death of the author.'


For me, creating an ekphrastic poem without acknowledging the artist's intentions is both pointless and disrespectful. Whilst the poem will always be my interpretation of the artwork, it must still pay homage to the art and be driven by the visual narrative played out upon the canvas. I can put my own personal spin onto it - even use it as a metaphor for my own experiences - but I must never lose sight of the fact that it is the artist's creativity and hard labour that have spawned and inspired my poem.


With this in mind, I have attempted to celebrate the existence of a truly wonderful artist within the body of my poem. Not only does Melaneia 'live' inside her painting, she is 'pulsing with feminine light' as the creator of a stunning piece of art.


Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Melaneia for inviting me to collaborate with her on this project. It has been such a privilege to step inside her works of art and, driven by emotions generated by her incredible creativity, produce this series of four poems. For those of you who have connected with Melaneia's artwork and my accompanying poems, we will be publishing them together in a commemorative book - hopefully during the coming summertime. Look out for more details on this blog and Melaneia's website.

Shell


Should I prise open those pleached fingers
and snatch you from the grip of the beast?

Nudged by the catchlight in your ironbound eye

I think again. Perhaps that scalloped hand

pumps your lung, holds you together

in the absence of bones?

You see, it’s all oxblood and mahogany in there,

hardly the bar at the Folies Bergére:

no mirror, no reflective gaze of the audience,

only you and your invisible gods in their boxes.

I step back inside to search for ekphrastic stars,

gaze at the red and blue fronds of la gerbe

wilting beneath a window of broken colours,

your lips spring-clipped in silence,

that bloodless limb skidding in white impasto.

I delve under layers of paint, burrowing beneath slithers

of warm oil to spawning grounds pulsing with feminine light

and there, in the catacombs of your painting, I find you

offering your art up to the angels, leaving your shell

to careen through space.  Only the pigment

of you remains, unconscious material oxidizing

towards a more stable state.