Daniel Sluman, "Pain Songs"

Daniel Sluman is a poet and disability rights activist. He co-edited the first major UK Disability poetry anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back and he has three previous poetry collections published by Nine Arches Press. His most recent book, single window, was released in 2021 and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.

About Pain Songs, by Daniel Sluman
Pain Songs, Daniel Sluman’s fourth poetry collection, is written through the personal experience of chronic pain, examining the ways the body and the world interact and intersect. Tender and often sensual, we encounter the internal weather systems and shifting states of the bodily self, challenging conventional ideas of wellness and illness.

You can read more about Pain Songs on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Pain Songs

Chronic

 

god whispered in my ear

 

but the only word I caught

was pain

 

lord      I have learnt

to suffer well

 

                                                            to keep silent

 

as the lit nerve stirs my body

into meaning each morning

 

it begins

like a murmur

 

gathers itself

into a loose gust pushing

 

the window open

 

& say I understand the lesson

this life has taught me

 

to know myself

to the root of each hair

 

to cherish this feeling

 

pale & seized around the suffering

I’m drunk on

 

well what kind of surrender is this ?

 

crumpled in the footwell

of my father’s car

 

as he drives me to the hospital

 

how do I explain

how lucky I am

 

to be the husk this life passes through

like a sweat or splinter

 

how I hang over myself

in bed at night

 

& watch the pain climb inside me

                                                            whilst I sleep

 

& if there is faith

it is the faith required

 

to keep waking inside

            this immovable reality

                       

this ache that tells me

to love loudly

 

the body on fire

 

On leaving the pain clinic

                                     summer was over

 

I watched the light

in the building

 

slip clean

from the windows

 

darkness resting

 

over steel drawers

filled with scalpels 

 

rolls of gauze

& tiny bottles of anaesthetic

 

the storm clouds spilled over

the slick

 

of afternoon traffic

 

                                    the sensation of a lit cigarette

pressed into my left hip

 

kept me here in the car

rain sifting through hedgerows  

 

the knowledge of my pain

always intact

 

this stubborn sense

 

that I will forever

be wedged between the life

 

we’re making

 

& the one we’ve carefully set

aside

 

at the interchange

my mind drifts to thoughts

 

of you in your dress                

of orange flowers

 

when I am pulled whole

through the cotton

 

by the noise

 

of the truck’s wheels

swerving before me

 

the spray

 

of water lifting my car

off the road   

 

            held momentarily

neither in pain or at ease

           

between the ground

                        & the air