Words of dementia sufferers woven into poetry by Susanna Howard
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Your support makes all the difference.A poet is working with dementia patients to weave their words into poetry. Susanna Howard, sits with them, often in silence, jotting down whatever words they utter, and then uses only these utterances to put a poem together for her collections, Living Words.
The results are poignant and profoundly emotional. At times, they also hint at the failings in our care system. “So many people are saying they want to be cared for and how to be cared for, that they are not listened to, that they are not heard. They are saying ‘this is what I want. This is what I need’,” says Howard.
She works with the terminal patients as well as the elderly, and says healing through words can’t be underestimated. Her refreshing approach exposes the lie behind the cliche of dementia as the “silent” living death. “I think we have a wealth of words inside us throughout our lives and when you have dementia, they are still inside you”, she says.
Howard, whose work has been funded by the Arts Council in the past, has created an innovative collection of poetry books in collaboration with dementia suffers, even though with advanced states of the degenerative illness.
Poems from a recent residency, staged in collaboration with EnglishPEN, can be viewed on 9 April at Europe House, in London.
Poetry by Susanna Howard:
All embers
Old fashioned in’t they
Sitting there
She wants to get up
They don’t wanna do that do they
Some round here are all embers
That one’s not thinking
He wants to remember it
Can he?
Now, see:
They’ve got habits
Number 65
This chair – it’s so dirty feeling
I’m not in a running order
Where do you go to when you
Go out?
I keep out of walking mode
With the mainframe
In the convoy – don’t go around much
I wish
Wish I could drive in a big car
Drive away in a car, oh
Oh I, I wish, wish I could
Fly just fly right away
To number 65 – Not
Drifting along at nothing
How I am
It’s funny how you can go to a room
And leave yourself
I feel like I’m going a bit mental
Terrible
I can’t even remember me own people
When I’m talking to them
That’s how I am
Nice to be able to talk
Some people have machines
Some people have machines –
They don’t run on.
Others don’t.
Sometimes it is overused
Sometimes doesn’t even need reminding
You think it lies with one person
But discover it lies with others:
Some people have machines
Sometimes overused
Others don’t.
Some people
Omm imm imm
When stuff comes out all
Looolaaalodo
It all comes out
Doo doo doo
Very very very nice:
You can go up in the world
Get it, get it, get it
Some people are different
Yes.
Now.
The back doorstep
Two or three clever things
In the back of my mind
Unfortunately
They seem to stick
To the back of my mind -
You don’t do them.
That expression ‘back of my mind’
Really rather significant:
You forget it’s a phrase
And doesn’t state that you
Are scrubbing the back doorstep
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