Kim Wiltshire, "NHS Verbatim Poems"

Dr Kim Wiltshire is a scriptwriter and fiction writer, with much of her creative work being political, issue-based or exploring health and well-being. Plays include: Polarised (2004 – Burnley Youth Theatre), about the 2001 race riots (later adapted as a film for schools); The Loser (2009) for Scenepool at Camden People’s Theatre; Sing When You’re Winning (2010) for Bolton Octagon; Joy With Child (2010) for Organised Chaos in Manchester (shortlisted for the 2009 Bruntwood Prize); Triple The Price Of Fruitcake as part of the Come Closer event at the Royal Exchange (2015). Short films include Living To Die for Let's Go Global/Mothers Against Violence and Transitions for Lime and the CF Unit. In 2014, supported by Bolton Octagon and Arts Council England, with Paul Hine she toured Project XXX, a multimedia play, and in Autumn 2017, The Value of Nothing, directed by Joyce Branagh, toured the North West and the Midlands. Both plays have been published by Aurora Metro.

In December 2015 her book, Writing For Theatre: Creative and Critical Approaches, was published by Palgrave Macmillan (now with Bloomsbury Academic) and in September 2018 the book she co-edited and co-wrote with Billy Cowan, Scenes from the Revolution, was published by Pluto Press. She has also had various academic articles, essays and short stories published. 

In 2022 she became a British Academy Innovation Fellow, working with the arts team of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT), known as Lime, to explore ways of embedding the arts into healthcare settings. 

About NHS Verbatim Poems, by Kim Wiltshire and Caro C

NHS Verbatim Poems is one of the projects that came out of the British Academy Fellowship. Working with musician and sound artist Caro C, Kim interviewed a range of nurses both onsite at Manchester Royal Infirmary and across the city with the District Nurses. Using a range of questions, Kim and Caro formed the interviews into ‘poems’ using the clips from the recorded interviews, with Caro adding original music to these pieces often using found sounds from the working environment. At time of writing, there are three poems with a fourth planned for 2024. The poems can be found here.  

One Day, One Ward was showcased on the BBC Arts and Idea podcast (BBC Radio 3 - Arts & Ideas, New Thinking: Writing the NHS) and two of the poems formed part of an immersive dance theatre piece of the 2023 Being Human Festival in Liverpool, Be My Guest, working with Fusion Dance Company. 

The reason we wanted to use verbatim for the poems was because of the truthfulness of what was said in the interviews. As the writer, Kim shaped the words and sentences, formed them into a poem, but the phrases, statements, ideas are those that came from the nurses and healthcare staff we interviewed. Their words can paint a picture of what life is really like as a frontline healthcare worker so clearly, including not only the difficulties of their working life, but their homelives, giving a rounded picture of a whole human being who just happens to do an amazing job, rather than the faceless heroes/angels that the public were encouraged to bang pans for on their doorsteps every Thursday evening during the pandemic. These poems were created to honour and show appreciation for that work. 

Below is the transcript of One day, One Ward.

One Day, One Ward

Today Today Today Today Today Today Today

Today started with having a handover,

There was plenty of staff

Compared to yesterday.

Thereafter, we served breakfast.

I began to do my medications,

I also assisted the support workers.

Personal care,

The way you would care for your parents.

Today, quite a few surprising things happened.

Everything is kind of unexpected.

I got complimented off the matrons for excellent care.

My manager has said she would be very happy to be cared for by me.

A family member was very grateful of our support.

There is always someone who appreciate the little things you make to them.

There is always someone who’s smiling at you for no reason, you know.

That is why I’m in this profession,

I just want to make a difference in the lives of others,

Yeah.

Today the hardest part of my day 

Was trying to fit in seeing every patient that needed to be seen. 

Waiting for linen to come in to be able to get on with work.

Taking the observations of the patients, 

When patients’ families get upset because they’re in hospital.

Today for my break I just had summat to eat and a chill out time.

Cup of tea and my rice crispies.

Surfed a bit of Facebook, just to catch up on what’s going on.

And then I rang my family as well.

In my break, I sat, forgot work and ate tranquilment.

I’ve not eaten anything yet, not had chance today.

Today I haven’t had a break.

Today I heard that some patients passed away 

Before my shift started.

Our wish is to see every one of them go back to their family, you know, 

And when this tends to happen, we really feel it, you know, but …

Afterward, we move on.

We move on.

We move on.

Today I’ve heard call bells, door buzzers, fire alarm,

Patients shouting out.

Lots of interesting conversations between patients,

Shouts, screams, laughter, crying,

Obs machine, the IV fluids.

I’ve heard people smile.

The sound that was the most profound.

The fire alarm go off.

The fire alarm, because someone broke it.

The fire alarm.

The fire alarm went off, where is it, you know, 

Checking the toilets and the bay

To see if there is anyone smoking.

I asked why did you press it? 

He said, I don’t know, it was there.

The fire service, they came in and turned it off.

That was today you know.

Today at the end of the shift,

I would reflect about how the shift has gone.

Change into my regular clothes and then hurry off to the car.

I will go home, kick my shoes off, ask my daughter 

To make me a nice cup of tea. 

And relax.

Relax and watch champions league.

My plan is to make lots of macaroons, 

Coconut macaroons, 

For tomorrow,

For the patients.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up early and get myself ready for work,

Because I’ll be coming back tomorrow.

Probably do pretty much the same thing as what I’ve done today.

Tomorrow is my day off, and I’ve got to wait in for the gasman.

Tomorrow I’m expecting to look similar to today, 

But I’m hoping it will be better.

Tomorrow I’m back again, 

I’m very passionate about my job.

Tomorrow is my day off. 

I’ll look after my children in the morning before they go to school.

Tomorrow? Heh. I come back to work!

And give some macaroons away.

Michael Rosen, "Many Different Kinds of Love"

 

Michael Rosen, photograph by David Levene

Michael Rosen is renowned for his work as a poet, performer, broadcaster and scriptwriter. He is Professor of Children's Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London and visits schools with his one-man show to enthuse children with his passion for books and poetry. In 2007 he was appointed Children's Laureate, a role which he held until 2009. While Laureate, he set up The Roald Dahl Funny Prize. He currently lives in London with his wife and children. His website is here. 

About Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death and the NHS

Michael Rosen wasn't feeling well. Soon he was struggling to breathe, and then he was admitted to hospital, suffering from coronavirus as the nation teetered on the edge of a global pandemic. 

What followed was months on the wards: six weeks in an induced coma, and many more weeks of rehab and recovery as the NHS saved Michael's life, and then got him back on his feet. 

Combining stunning new prose poems and the moving coronavirus diaries of his nurses, doctors and wife Emma-Louise Williams, and featuring illustrations by Chris Riddell, this is a beautiful book about love, life and the NHS. Each page celebrates the power of community, the importance of kind gestures in dark times, and the indomitable spirits of the people who keep us well. 

You can read more about Many Different Kinds of Love on the publisher's website here. You can read a short review of the book by Lisa Williams on Everybody's Reviewing here. Below, you can read a sample prose poem from the book. 

From Many Different Kinds of Love, by Michael Rosen

The coma keeps secrets.

There is no place for the coma in 

the geography of my memory. 

I can't visit the coma. 

I can't call for it. 

If I try to find it,

if I plead for it to come, 

it doesn't hear. 

Or if it hears, 

it refuses to come out of its cave

and tell me what happened. 

It hangs back in the shadows

forbidding me from 

having a conversation

There isn't even a sign saying:

'This is not a memory.'

Millicent Borges Accardi, "Quarantine Highway"

Millicent Borges Accardi is a Portuguese-American writer. She has four poetry collections including Only More So (Salmon Poetry, Ireland). Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, CantoMundo, Fulbright, Foundation for Contemporary Arts NYC (Covid grant), Creative Capacity, Fundação Luso-Americana, and Barbara Deming Foundation, "Money for Women." She lives in the hippie-arts community of Topanga, CA where she curates Kale Soup for the Soul and Loose Lips poetry readings. 

About Quarantine Highway, by Millicent Borges Accardi

From re-definition to re-calibration, the poems in this book are artefacts to the early and mid-days of the pandemic. Though not specifically labelled as "Covid poems," they strike to the heart of the universal yet individual struggles of solitude, confinement, justice, isolation and, ultimately, self-reckoning. The poems push and pull between the constantly knocking global news cycle to the stillness of a surreal inner world.

You can read more about Quarantine Highway on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read three sample poems from the collection. 

From Quarantine Highway

Broken Pieces

All was if and maybe and meanwhile. The chorus
sang full of weed, a reflection on the acoustics
in the church, and--when does it ever seem all right--
When will that be again? The empirical
wish of a stupid requirement for happiness. Was that
what it was? And they lived happily ever after is the phrase
perhaps you were looking for, a timid cool minute inside
your head when you used to believe otherwise, back in the slow
when time when it was not the new normal and, man, 
it is not just us; it is global and inflated and then you know 
it is terrifying. Did they take a census this year? 2020. 
America, I seem to remember ten years ago 
the government wanted to know our household income,
and what we did for a living.
This year? The form was all about age and race 
and you could fill in whatever "other" you wanted. 
Like a weakness, a mere description of how it was not
supposed to be.

To Miss the Shadow

It was a dare and a spit and a hope
that we were moving towards
a place, like chasing a storm 
or running through a batch of luck.
No breathing out in the alley
like the tall grass they used to cut back
in the olden days when neighbors
talked over the fence at each other.
And it was OK with God to like family.
Cause we were when and where and we
were how to in the outdoors where
we ran free. The future was all of a piece to keep,
a place to save us from. We were fearful
then of real things that meant something
to us, and it was in our power just to keep
silent in a grand fog of yelling voices,
trying to hold it all together even when it
was so not all right, and the doors were slamming.
Back in the day, we were all so self-important
and wondering-dreamy about ourselves.
And we were sore and solemn, clueless,
like, like yeah it was impossible. Do you 
remember that time when we held everything
in our arms tightly, as if we knew what we were talking about.

Green was the Silence

          From a line by  Pablo Neruda 

It changes meaning like water,

as a living being, like unfettered civility, 

a sunny breezeful summer ahead.

The start of June, it is altogether

Stifling, and as if things would never be straight

again we feel as if we had promised to be

dark and mortal, soon, like strangers

from the past we promised to be each other’s

solid memory. We have shortness of breath

and a pounding inside the lungs.

We cannot remember a time when we were able

to sleep before when we were former and usual 

vivid beings who existed in the city of Los Angeles,

drifting through rivers of errands and emeralds,

as if nothing had happened. We are 

lost now. As if we had been careless. Dropped out.

like music not written down but whistled and hummed

and played under strange circumstances.

Like a stranger with a guitar at a party. 

It is nearly June, near the longest day of the year, 

as Jordan comments in The Great Gatsby, a seasonal marker 

complete with a sign that says, "We’re done now." 

And we are together and alone and about to 

get reckless and cruel, but yet this time it will

be different. This year, belonging to the entangled

world that has been ripped apart.

We are limited by so many things since

the quarantine, absolute touch and hunger

and it all goes to show us that nothing 

is visible or at hand any more. 

We are a perfect example of ration

and virtue, essentially savage and, yet--in a new sense--

we are blindly controllable. We feel alternately

safe and in danger, every moment altered,

with no telling which statement above is truer.

We are reckless-absolute and sexual-reasonable

full of home-shocked martyrdom and wary of being 

present for what is about to come. We pretend

to be on holiday and take 

out the board games, self-full of pride and fear,

notching achievements with false pride:

your charm, my conflict—our 24 hour conversations

lack a richness of reality,

embodied with a generous sadness.

Martin Figura, "My Name is Mercy"

 

Martin Figura, photograph by Dave Guttridge

Martin Figura’s collection and show Whistle was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and won the 2013 Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Show. Other prizes include the Poetry Society’s 2010 Hamish Canham Prize and runner up in the 2017 RSPB/Rialto Poetry Competition. Shed (Gatehouse Press) and Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine (Cinnamon Press) were both published in 2016 and a new edition of Whistle (Cinnamon Press) in 2018.  The spoken word show Dr Zeeman’s Catastrophe Machine, was shortlisted in the 2018 Saboteur Awards. He lives in Norwich with Helen Ivory and sciatica. Together during lockdown, they began hosting Live from The Butchery Zoom readings with leading guest poets, winning the Saboteur Best Regular Spoken Word Night 2021 Award. In 2021, Martin was Salisbury NHS Writer in Residence, resulting in publication in The Guardian, inclusion on the Poetry Archive and a pamphlet with Fair Acre Press. His next full collection As Far as I’m Concerned is due out with Cinnamon Press in 2023. His website is here. 

About My Name is Mercy

 

The Salisbury NHS Trust commissioned award-winning poet Martin Figura in March of this year to interview staff from across the Trust, exploring how it felt to be at the frontline of the pandemic response. This has resulted in an emotional collection of poems, titled My Name is Mercy, also the title of a poem based on one of the series of reports that BBC’s Mark Urban produced for the Newsnight programme.  

 

The life and work of staff in an out of the hospital form the subject matter of the poems, including experiencing Salisbury during lockdown and using horse riding to help cope with the stress and mental challenges of the pandemic, and the poet’s own experience undertaking this project.

Oscar-winning actress, and patron of The Stars Appeal, Olivia Colman, has read two of the newly-commissioned poems. Olivia Colman reads the poem "Fifth Season" that is based on a patient's true story and "Nightshift," which has recently been chosen by Poetry Archive Now as one of the poems of 2021. The poem "Ridge Line," read by the poet Martin Figura, reflects on the very personal experiences of one staff member, Lizzie Swift, and her horse Drum. You can listen to these poems here, here and here. 

 

Stacey Hunter, CEO of Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust said: "We all truly have been through an experience like no other in the history of the NHS. The emotional and inspiring poems in My Name is Mercy capture the psychological challenges that our staff faced in working through the pandemic and coping as best they could at work and in their personal lives."

 

Martin Figura said: "Thank you to everyone who made this project happen. I am especially grateful to those who gave me their time to be interviewed. The lasting impact of the pandemic on their lives was palpable and deeply affecting. I hope the poems go some way towards honouring the experiences and sacrifice of the staff, those they cared for and their loved ones."

 

The project was made possible with funding from the hospital’s League of Friends and The Stars Appeal charities.

 

You can see more details about My Name is Mercy on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

From My Name is Mercy, by Martin Figura

On Being Interviewed by a Poet

How was it for you, this past year, was it: 

river swimming in lead diving-boots 

or walking in snow, blizzard blind, 

was it the Mojave Desert with an 

empty map, was it a cumbersome 

suitcase and a broken lock, was it 

line-dancing in purple crocs, a flock 

of sea gulls at a chip shop bin, was it 

windowless and continuous, a mouthful 

of salt, was it burning car tyres, pliers 

and teeth, was it blood dripped into milk, 

an alien abduction from a New Forest 

glade, sackcloth, shackles, ashes and shale, 

was it a skeleton clock, a pickaxe, a mule, 

a gilded mirror in flames, was it déjà vu 

after déjà vu, was it Nova Scotia in fall, 

an abandoned mineshaft in Wales, was it 

Easter lilies left to rot, bloodhounds barking 

in a parking lot, was it a cold metal bridle?  

Tell me in your own words was it difficult, 

are you exhausted, what are your hopes, 

what do you do to unwind?  

 

My Name is Mercy

Morning my darling, my name is Mercy

I'm your nurse for today, how are you?

Today is the nineteenth of January,

the sun is breaking through.

I'm your nurse for today, how are you?

The outlook should be positive,

the sun is breaking through.

Your wife knows you're here, she sends her love.

The outlook should be positive,

you're doing well, you’re safe, you're really safe.

Your wife knows you're here, she sends her love.

Would you like us to phone your wife?

You're doing well, you’re safe, you're really safe,

if you can hear me, squeeze my hand.

Would you like us to phone your wife?

It is difficult, I understand.

If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.

Today is the nineteenth of January,

it is difficult, I understand.

Morning my darling, my name is Mercy

Kathleen Bell, "Do You Know How Kind I Am?"

Until recently, Kathleen Bell was an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at De Montfort University. She has published poems in a number of magazines and anthologies including PN Review, New Walk, Under the Radar, Unarmed and A Speaking Silence, and has won prizes in the Nottingham Poetry Competition and the Brittle Star Competition. Her first poetry collection, Disappearances, is due from Shoestring later this year. Kathleen has also published short fiction. She is on Twitter as @kazbel and blogs at https://kathzbell.wordpress.com. 

About Do You Know How Kind I Am?

Do You Know How Kind I Am? is a sequence of twenty poems in different voices, all emerging from and responding to the experience of Covid and lockdown. They range from the carefully sympathetic to the hyped-up enthusiasm of the Covid-denier. The poems suggest a greater distance between humans than the mandated 2-metre physical distance illustrated on the cover. 

You can see more details about Do You Know How Kind I Am on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a sample from the collection. 

From Do You Know How Kind I Am? by Kathleen Bell

1.

Out there’s a woman, driving a bus.

Her only cargo is cloth, metal and air
and at night, light.

Out there’s a man who walks dutiful, slow,
lugging a bag.
Two talk at a distance – a third
leans in to listen.
The masked and gloved make their way
into shops. Some stumble at kerbs.

Others are sniffing the air
as if free but they know
it may hold disaster and death
and breath can bring pain in its train.

15.

Organise, please
one dead celeb a week
or, if you can’t, somebody blonde,
pretty of course, and young
in floods of tears, for failing that
how can we hope
to unite a nation’s grief?

Merryn Williams (ed.), "Poems for the Year 2020: Eighty Poets on the Pandemic"

About Poems for the Year 2020

Thousands upon thousands of poems were written in the unforgettable year 2020, when
corona virus changed the world. Eighty of the best have been carefully selected for Shoestring's new anthology. They come from all five continents and all corners of Britain, and look from several different angles at the crisis. They are not all about doom and gloom. Sickness, bereavement and isolation are all here, along with empty cities and animals roving the streets, but there are also some very funny and life-enhancing poems about how people are coping in extraordinary times, and intend to come through.

Contributors include: Anon, Mona Arshi, Adrian Barlow, Meg Barton, Denise Bennett, Matt Black, Janine Booth, Alison Brackenbury, Melanie Branton, Carole Bromley, Simone Mansell
Broome, Rip Bulkeley, Maggie Butt, Ian Caws, Gladys Mary Coles, Deborah Cox, Barbara Cumbers, Tony Curtis, Ann Drysdale, Vicki Feaver, Paul Francis, Owen Gallagher, Ann Gray, Paul Groves, Jill Hadfield, Alice Harrison, Gail Holst-Warhaft, Joy Howard, Keith Hutson, Lesley Ingram, Chris Jackson, Rosie Jackson, Mike Jenkins, Roz Kaveney, Angela Kirby, Camilla Lambert, John Lanyon, Gill Learner, Emma Lee, Pippa Little, Marilyn Longstaff, Deborah Maccoby, Mark McDonnell, Gill McEvoy, Jennifer A. McGowan, Anathema Jane McKenna, Alwyn Marriage, Deborah Mason, Kathy Miles, John Mole, Judi Moore, Lucy Newlyn, Patrick Osada, Antony Owen, Harry Owen, M.R. Peacocke, Megan Peel, Clive Perrett, Pauline Prior-Pitt, Rita Ray, Padraig Rooney, Lesley Saunders, Brighid Schroer, Robert Seatter, Clare Shaw, Jay Sizemore, Paul Stephenson, Anne Stewart, Sean Street, Todd Swift, David Tait, Wisty Thomas, Serin Thomasin, Nick Toczek, Christine Vial, John Powell Ward, Merryn Williams, Stephen Wilson, Gregory Woods, Neil Young.

You can see more information on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read about the editor, and two poems from the anthology. 

About the editor

Merryn Williams has published five collections of poetry: the fifth is The Fragile Bridge: New and Selected Poems (Shoestring Press). Her latest book is Mansfield Park Revisited (Plas Gwyn Books), an updating of Jane Austen's classic. She spent the year 2020 reading literally hundreds of poems about Corona virus and lockdowns. Her website is here.

From Poems for the Year 2020

Threads

          for my son, Silas, NHS anaesthetist and rock-climber

Dangling on a rope

hung from a cliff-top

you look like a tiny spider 

spinning a thread

the slightest gust

could snap. 

Now your patients

are hanging on threads.

And all of you 

working on wards

where a terrible

scissor-wielding hag

decides who to spare,

which thread

next to cut.

Note: the ‘terrible scissor-wielding hag’ is Atropos, eldest of the three Fates.

 - Vicki Feaver, South Lanarkshire

Geoffrey Chaucer Cleans the Beach

Whan the temperature in June is hotte

Than longen folk to doon what they should notte

And specially from every shire’s ende 

Of Engelond to Bournemouthe they wende.

 

Some had woken with the lark

To finde a space where they could parke

Otheres parken everywhere

Legal or not, they did not care

 

And loutes imbiben swich liquor

Of which vertú engendred is the boor

And disputheth eche hir beachside space

And one anothere puncheth in the face

 

Then when al that motley bunch were gonne

Cleanen we the beche anon

And finden underwear and socks

And defecations in a box

 

And so was I seke of hem everichon

That I wrote to my PM anon

To demaunde new laws  straight be doon

But from him answere was there noon.

- Jill Hadfield, New Zealand

On Creativity, Covid and Kindness

 

A Statement

By Jonathan Taylor

I've never believed that writers are in competition with one another. I believe in a democratic community of writers, a Republic of Letters. The same goes for universities: I don't believe in the myth of competition between university Creative Writing departments, for example. Writers in universities, whether staff or students, are all part of the same community, the same carnivalesque republic. 

It seems to me more important than ever to hold onto this idea at the moment. We're all  confronted by huge challenges in education and the wider writing world. There's no point pretending otherwise: it's an incredibly difficult situation for everyone, and we're all facing the toughest year in higher education most of us have ever known. There are so many challenges we've got to deal with in the next academic year - safety, sickness, mental health, shielding, lockdowns, economic pressures, new technologies, fallible technologies, new ways of learning and teaching, situations that change every week ... and so on, and so forth.

It's important to acknowledge these things, I think, from the start. It's not going to be easy, and there are going to be problems, mistakes, hiccups (to say the least) throughout the year, as we all struggle to stay upright on the shifting sands of Covid World. 

Above all, in Covid World, I think it's important to be kind - to pack away any notions of competitiveness between writers, between departments, between universities, and substitute instead a model of cooperation, support, mutual aid. Faced with such huge challenges, I think writers - staff and students - should support one another, both within and between universities. I know I'm preaching mainly to the converted: in my experience, this is exactly what writers do. I've been helped immensely by other writers over the years, and found the writing and university-writing communities very supportive. 

On a practical level, therefore, I'd like to make some suggestions to writers who work at all universities (in whatever capacity), about sharing resources, information, opportunities, knowledge - above all, about talking to one another, and supporting one another as both creative writers and learners or educators.

In my own small sphere, there are things I can offer - for example: 1. if you have a book out, and you'd like it reviewed on Everybody's Reviewing, contact me, and I'll see if I can find a reviewer; 2. if you have a book out, and you'd like it featured on this blog, again, please contact me; 3. if you'd like to join the Facebook group I run, "Creative Writing at Leicester University," on which I post news, articles, opportunities, jobs, calls for submissions and competitions, you are more than welcome, whether or not you are in Leicester; 4. if you have any questions about writing, teaching, publishing, or want any advice, and think I might be able to answer them, please do get in touch - I'll try my best, and, at the very least, I might be able to put you in touch someone else who can help; 5. if you teach in a university, and want someone who is in the same boat as yourself to talk things over with, share resources and rants, then again, please do get in touch. My email, for all of these things is jt265 [at] le [dot] ac [dot] uk.

Conversely, if you would like to share information about your own events or opportunities, or if you'd like to write an article about your own experiences, as a teacher or learner in Covid World, for this blog, or if you'd like to write a review for Everybody's Reviewing, or if you have any other ideas about how we might all support one another, in terms of writing, learning and teaching, then please do email me. 

None of this is intended to undermine the necessity for writers to be paid for their work. Sharing information, resources, help, rants is not the same as working for free. It's just a way of supporting one another at a difficult time. Let's all have a conversation about how best we can do that - how we can carry on the literary carnival in an age of social distancing and lockdowns. 

It goes without saying that all these opinions are my own. 

Thank you for reading, Jonathan