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The Power of Poetry · Mental Health Matters

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Mental Health Matters.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Dr.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_04: Audrey Tang and I'm David Crozier.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_03: And this is the show where we talk about all things mental health and well-being without the quick fixes, without the need to be perfect, just real advice and tools to change.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_03: Now we've got a very special show for you today because we welcome Adrian D.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: Brown.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: We've recently had National Poetry Day in the UK and he is a poet, and we're going to be learning from him not just about his journey into poetry, but how we can use poetry ourselves, how we can use it to express ourselves, how poetry and words sometimes written on a page can help us say things when we're not well, we can't voice them.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what today's going to be about.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: So let's just start with a little discussion about poetry.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: Do you write poetry?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: Have you written poetry, Jude?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_04: No, fair enough.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_04: No, absolutely.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_04: I haven't.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_04: And I never really enjoy poetry.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: Interesting.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and I started to, when I was doing my teacher training and we did the English part of my degree, um, I learned to really love it.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_04: We you know that you do that thing at school where you dissect it all.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_04: And and that made me learn to love it because I realised what poetry is and what it what it isn't as well.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_04: And it's and it to me it's just a very free way of writing.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_04: Just lets people just express themselves so freely, and that's what I love about it.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's I know I used to write poetry when I was little.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: When I in um it was either primary school or or just starting secondary school.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: And and the reason I remember that is because my and it must have been English, so English teacher, so yes, yeah, um, it must have been in secondary, early secondary school.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Said to my parents one um parents' evening that she wanted me to go to Oxford to read English.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: And that stayed with me.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean I didn't either, for two.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I really went down the scientific route.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: And now the books that I've written are non-fiction, they're not creative, they're not anything like that.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I would love, and I don't have them anymore, to have actually kept some of my old books to look at them and see what I'd written.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: What your teacher saw.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: And why I'd stopped writing.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: I, you know, those are the two things that I'm really quite curious about.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: I know why I stopped writing though.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: I wrote used to write poems for my starter husband, the sort of good reason as to why he's a starter husband, and he actually made fun of me.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: He found them over sentimental and he didn't like them, and I stopped after that.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my goodness.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: You've never started again.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I've written some well, I've written this the test the trend exercise.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I've written when we've done workshops.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: But there is there's clearly something personal about it, and I find it really interesting.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm only reflecting on it now to think that I didn't go back to writing anything creative.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I was thinking that because you and I had a conversation where I said, you know, your writing's great, and you said, Yes, but I don't write anything creative, and you were very you kind of closed it down.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, now I know what'sn't that?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, interesting.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: But also, I'm hoping then that this um unlocks exactly unlocks and maybe what makes you want to start writing again.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_04: Well, let's meet him.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we have Adrian D.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: Brown joining us in the studio, and it's very exciting because it recently, well, not that recently, it was March, uh, it was National Poetry Day, and that's a wonderful time to start thinking about how poetry can really work for us.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a pleasure to have you here with us.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: And Adrian, I think please start by telling us about your journey into poetry and your personal and professional experience to bring you here.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you for having me.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my journey into poetry started in 2014.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was recovering from a stroke uh in Northampton, and I just I started writing as a way of trying to control my thoughts.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, I love that.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: That is that's what a lot of people say actually.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's a way of expressing and it's a way of kind of feeling or making sense of feelings.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely, yeah.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I know that there's a lot more that goes behind that.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_03: Do you mind sharing some of your own personal journeys?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, absolutely not.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um people ask me a lot what what the stroke was like, what did it feel like?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I've found the best way I can describe it, if you go on a waltzer ten times, back to back, you get off and somebody hands you an A4 pad and says, write down everything you remember about your first holiday.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of there are memories there, but as we get older, we don't know what are memories and what are stories we were told as children.
• 5:26
  unknown: Wow.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's what it was.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: There were memories there, but they weren't in the right order.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so yeah, so I I I came up with that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um because of uh the nature of of my treatment, I started off in John Ratcliffe, then I was moved to Northampton.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: The transition to Northampton was very difficult.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: And is that because of the difficulty in forming the memories or?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um the difficulty in the transition was I'd spent uh about a month in the Ratcliffe because I used to work in Bister.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I was taken to the Ratcliffe from work.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um then when I was moved from the Ratcliffe to Northampton, the first thing I saw when I when they took me onto the ward were a trolley of tippy cups and adult-sized pampers.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: So my initial thought was they've moved me because this is about to get worse.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, of course.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's quite a statement on the system there, rather more than anything else.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: And but of course, a stroke is not the only thing that you've had to battle with or or deal with, is there?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_03: There's other things in your life that you pay.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um after the stroke, um, there was depression, which led to alcoholism, um, and then the journey out of that.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm 30 months sober now.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: Congratulations.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and so that journey has figured heavily in my poetry.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, which is what what we want to talk about as well, because I think poetry writing is so important for for people, and there will be people out there who want to start trying to write poetry as well, but maybe don't know where to start.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: So, yes, let's jump jump into it.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, lovely.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_04: Well, um thank you for for sharing.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um it is inspirational, and and we wanted to know how how you find inspiration um uh to know what to write about in everyday life.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: I I write from experience or people I've known, um, and because we all we all go on a journey.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um and this is this is one of the this is one of the strange things.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: People now say, oh, them years drinking, they must have been the worst in your life.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: But they weren't, because I met some of the funniest, most interesting people that I've ever met, and they've all fed this reservoir of knowledge that I have that now comes into my poetry.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: I love that uh way of looking at life, you know.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I really do, because you're right, absolutely right.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: The assumption is oh, that thing that happened to you was so terrible, and the way that you have found those inspirations and the joy within that, I know of course it was, it must have been a very difficult time as well, but that's very, very powerful.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um it is because the I can I can't write um gushing poetry with swooning lovers, and I don't have that in me.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: What I can write is teenagers sitting on a bench sharing chips, waiting for the last bus home.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yes, I love it.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_04: It's observational writing.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_04: I really like that.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I love it.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_04: Because we can all relate to that as well, and I love the way that you, as you said, you put such a positive spin on what would have would have been a very difficult time.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, destructive for some people.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but you've taken the really good parts from it and and been able to put that into your writing.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um so how do you know when an I if you have an idea, how do you know when that's worth then turning that into a poem?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: My poetry tends to be quite sporadic.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'll get an idea, and within five minutes the skeleton of it is on a page.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's fantastic.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I'm really glad you've said that because I choreograph dancers, I teach a dance class, and I'm like you, my best dancers are the ones that I've just had the idea for, it's really inspirational, and I create it, but then the the routine dancers are the ones where I go, I've got to do one for this week, so here we go.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm really happy you said that because otherwise I go around thinking, are people just inspired all the time?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: And not everyone is.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: No, because as well as as well as kind of giving these um giving these things thoughts, you've also got everything else going on.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: The housework needs doing, the shopping needs doing.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um but but then see that this is this is where the nature of my poetry is is um comes through nice.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: We have a food bank in Kettering.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um I wrote a poem called Food Bank, and there was a man that was kind of shuffling round the entrance, and it was almost like he didn't want anybody to see him going into the food bank.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because as men, once we stop providing, there is a big chunk of our lives that feels like it is missing.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_04: I can understand that from an intellectual point of view.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: I can't feel how that must feel, but I understand that some men do feel like that.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_04: It's really sad.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: So we've had people uh uh who've talked about men's mental health, and financial provision is one of the key things that can cause mental health issues.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: And you're going to now recite a poem called Homeless to Us.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: Could you tell us a little bit about this poem and how it came about?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, a lot of my poetry involves um my daughter.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: For for a large part of her life, well, the bit before she got to being a teenager, really.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um she was like my best friend.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: We we went everywhere together, we had such wonderful adventures.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: And one of our adventures was going to London, Christmas shopping.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: It was something we did every year.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: When she was about five, we came out of Oxford Street tube station, and there was a guy laying on the path, covered in a blanket, with a takeaway cup in his hand, and Susie wasn't the subtlest of children.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: She stopped dead in her tracks, pointed at the man, and said, Dad, what's that?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: We then went from Regent Street to Piccadilly with Susie asking me every question that she could possibly imagine that we did as part of our everyday lives, and she just didn't have any comprehension that people could be alive that didn't have that.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Simple things like programmes we watched on the telly, um, where do you go for a shower?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she asked, um, does the homeless man have a holiday?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: And it it was just it was just heartbreaking.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and so innocent as well.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's that's really beautiful, and you have captured this in your poem.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: We are going to hear Adrian D.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: Brown recite homeless.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: Homeless man.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: Where does he have dinner?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: Watch casualty on TV.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Go to the toilet, have a shower, wash his clothes.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Where does he get a birthday card if he doesn't have an address?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: Where can his mum or dad call him if he doesn't have a phone?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Does he get cold in winter?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: Is it scary for him at night?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Dad?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a homeless people home with a little Christmas tree?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Where other homeless men go?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: What is homeless man's name?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: Is homeless just in London?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: Can homeless men come with us for dinner?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: Can we take homeless man home?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: Was homeless man naughty?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: Did he do something wrong?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: Why does no one help him?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Grown-ups fix things when they go wrong.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: Do you always be homeless man?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Or does it come to an end?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: Can he spend the day with us?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Can we be his friends?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: Dad, you always answer my questions.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Now you have nothing to say.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: You rushed me past the homeless man like you were ashamed.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome back to Mental Health Matters, where we've got the lovely Adrian D.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_04: Brown in the studio with us, and we're talking about poetry, and it's so lovely.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_04: So um if you haven't heard homeless, um please go back and and and have a listen to that.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_04: It was really, really lovely.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_04: Um so you're you're going back to your poetry um and and other people's.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_04: Do you think poems are different whether they they're spoken aloud or whether they're read on the page?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_04: And how does performing poetry influence what you write?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Performing and writing are completely different experiences.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm dyslexic.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: So for many, many years I wrote, but I was ashamed to show it to anybody else.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um so it was only when I met a guy called Carl Peach, and we went to open mic, a couple of open mic things together.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: Something as well that was awkward when I was first going to open mics, I was still drinking.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of what I did wasn't coming through clear, and it's only as time's gone on and confidence has built that um I feel able to.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: Gosh, I think that that's so insightful because you're right, they are two different skills, yes, but to have that experience and then I guess to build it up and then what happened when, do you mind me asking, when you became sober?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: Did was it different than performing?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yes, it was it was more enjoyable because I remembered more of it.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: I could look at my work and be self-critical.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas when you're performing something and you're not altogether in the right place, it tends to be other people criticise and you then get defensive.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, that's a good point.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_04: Really good point, actually.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_04: Wouldn't I wouldn't have thought about it?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_04: I suppose you just had more clarity about all of it.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_04: Oh wow, yeah, really good point.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_04: And then when you're performing or or reading your poetry, or if people read your poetry, what do you want readers or listeners to feel?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because so much of my poetry is about street things and everyday life things, the the nicest thing is for people to be able to relate.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh an example of that, as I mentioned, I didn't I didn't initially think my poetry was poetry because it didn't swoon and duck and dive, but I wrote a poem about my experiences of bullying, and then in 2016, I was invited to read at Kettering Library.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I I read my poem about bullying, which is called Not the Best of Days, and after the performance, a guy came up to me and he had this little lad, Isaac, about 10 years old, and he had this wonderful thick mop of dark curly hair and these thick glasses, and he said, What you have just read is my everyday life.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And at that point I thought, yes, I'm a poet because my words can touch hearts.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's very powerful.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: But actually, when you were reading Homeless, we were both you painted such a vivid picture, and the story behind it is beautiful, but even without that, you could see those questions forming and the innocence with which they're asked.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's it was just so so moving.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, really beautiful.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um now getting to the technical side of writing, um, are there any habits or routines that you have that support your writing practice?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um more so with my novel writing than poetry.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: As as I said, my poetry tends to be sporadic.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: I get an idea within five minutes, um the idea is there.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's on paper.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I will come back to it.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I will change little bits.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've just changed a word in one of the ones that I've read for you today.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: I've changed the word of that to make it flow better while I was waiting for you.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: Brilliant!
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's really and actually again, that's really nice because some artists feel that once it's done, it cannot be touched.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: You obviously have a much more flexible approach to it.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, because it's it's completely arrogant to imagine that okay, I've done that, that's there for posterity, it never ever needs to be touched.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Poetry evolves as you get older, your point of view changes.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, therefore, something I've written 10 years ago, yeah, it's now different.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and it comes with the experience of life and maturity and perspective.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: That is beautiful.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: Now, this one, I the novel writing is fantastic.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, whether with poetry or whether with novels, how do you experiment with different forms, or do you experiment with different forms of writing without losing your voice?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know how people kind of oh, I like that, I might try it in this style, but but actually, this is me.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: How do you how do you do that?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: I went to a writing seminar um five or six years ago.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and there was a lady there from the Midwest of America, and she said her access to books when she was young wasn't that good.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: So when she sat down to write her first book, she wrote the story that she wanted to read.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow and I I follow that.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: There are a thousand different types of advice you need to look at yourself, and you need to say to yourself, who am I?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: What do I want to write about?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_04: So simple, so precise.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I love that, and that's such a good baseline to start from.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: Then you can add and learn and do all the extras, but it is about you.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: And your authentic self, and that's one of the quickest ways I think to find your voice.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: Love that.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_03: Who am I and what do I want to write about?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely beautiful.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: Now, the next poem you're going to perform for us is a poem called Stroke.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: Now, this must be about your own experiences.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_03: Could you tell us a little bit about the poem?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, much as the uh first one, homeless, was about an experience with my daughter, when it got to stroke, it was my daughter coming to visit me in Northampton when my left side was paralyzed, I couldn't speak, and you kind of don't know how it's gonna go.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: One stroke can lead to another.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: And to see her there, she was 17, in the middle of uh uh college, and to watch her so upset and all I could do was jot down on an A4 pad, it's going to be alright.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: So stroke is how I was from my daughter's point of view.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: We are going to listen to Adrian D.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: Brown performing stroke.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Dad used to tell us jokes, and now words get stuck in his throat.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: Dad used to read lots of books, and our words jump round the page.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: He's still dead.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's there behind his eyes.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Dad doesn't remember birthdays, walks past old friends in the street, cries for no reason, puts shoes on the wrong feet.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: He's still dead, somewhere behind his eyes.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: Dad's from a generation that worked to provide.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: Their work ethic is what kept them alive.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: They'd sooner be dead than supported by their wife.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: Now he's fighting to make sense of his life.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: He's still dead.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: Behind brave, bewildered eyes.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: I can't understand what it's like inside his head.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just glad my dad isn't dead.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: If you didn't know him before Stroke took his spark away, you won't understand a single word I say.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Dad will always be my dad.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'd love him anyway.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: There was four beds on my ward, and I was the luckiest one out of all of us.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: There was a guy in a bed dead opposite me, I suppose maybe my age, maybe a little bit younger, and his wife used to come in every day, she used to feed him, and I thought when you're in your your twenties or your thirties, and you fall in love with somebody and you commit your life to them, you don't expect in 10 years' time you're gonna be feeding them and doing the most fundamental personal things for them.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: We love people, but that's really not what we sign up for.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so, yeah, so I needed to kind of make sense of all this, so I focused on writing sorry was never enough.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and it it gave me that level where I could think, Alright, I can't do this, I can't do that, but I can do this, so I'll focus on this.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_04: What would you say might be a common misconception about the writing of poetry that you'd like to correct?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: That you've got to be really, really well educated to write good poetry.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great message.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant one because it fe poetry can feel elitist because they talk about Keats and Baylon and all of these very old-fashioned poets.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you're right, you're so right.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think it will put a lot of people off, even starting if they think they've they've already got that barrier up, but that they've put up themselves, maybe, or been told in the past.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I've been I've been involved in in open mic nights and and poetry events where you'll get a guy or a lady will get up and they'll read a poem that got these words in that are as long as your hand, and there's probably three or four people in a 60 or 70 audience that are gonna know what that means.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas a lot of the work I do now is is with youngsters that are kind of on the cusp of getting into trouble, and I say to them, that thing that's making you so angry, write it down because once you've expressed it, it it's there, you can see it, it's not internalized.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's really good advice.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_04: So then, if somebody wanted to start writing poetry, um, is that where you can kind of advise them what how to begin?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_04: Write about what they feel, or or what what would you say is the best step?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_04: What the first step?
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: Write about what you know, yeah.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_04: You can't go wrong with it.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_04: No, yeah, yeah.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Write about your story.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's really good at that.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's really it's true, because why try and make things up when actually what has happened to you and your own voice, your own lived experience is probably just as, if not more, interesting.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_04: Well, exactly.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_04: I mean the the two poems that you've read so far, incredible, and they're both absolutely your your complete experience.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: Now I know this question, you've kind of half-answered it, but uh more on a broader scale.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: How do you know when a poem is finished?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_03: As in when you can put your pen down and say that's the end of the story I'm telling, not necessarily I'm not gonna go back and re-look at it, but what kind of gives you that feeling of, yeah, okay, that's done, or would you go back and add verses to something?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Generally speaking, your your mind will tell you when you when you finish telling the story of of what you're writing, that's when it's finished.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and uh you depending on what you write and how you write, yeah, my as I've said, my poems tend to be short, they've got a story to tell.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, once I've told that story, there's there's no need for embellishment.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes I wish people would talk that way.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's there was somebody who mentioned this to me that the longer the sentence, this is a woman, a woman who taught linguistics, actually, the longer the sentence, the politer it's become.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: So if you say, um, could I could you pass me the pen?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_03: That's one thing.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, could I bother you?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_03: Could I ask for you for the pen?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: Would you mind if I bothered you asking for the pen?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_03: Or or pen.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's really true.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I think sometimes you don't need the embellishment, you just need to come to the end.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's so important.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I could listen to your poetry all day.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: Honestly, it's just beautiful.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Where can we learn more about you?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm not I'm not a very kind of technical type of person.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: I I don't and I don't do lots of uh social media.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's okay.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know, I I do I do events, so I share some of my stuff on Facebook.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, that's that's pretty much it, really.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's okay, but if someone wants to maybe buy your novella or something like that, could they find that?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um the novella, yes, that is on Amazon still, I believe.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's gonna be a poetry book later this year called Um No More Hiding.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've got a collection of about 130 poems.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna bring that down to 60, and then that will be a poem for each year of my life.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, wow.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_03: Wonderful, wonderful.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it is also Adrian's birthday today, so happy birthday from us all here at Mental Health Matters.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you very much.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's been such a pleasure having you on the show, talking to you and listening to you as well with your poems.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, thank you so much, and I hope you'll be back.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: I hope so.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a pleasure.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you both very much.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant, we'll go over to Test the Trend.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: Test the Trend, we are going to challenge you to write a poem.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's going to be a three-word challenge.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: So, what you're going to do is you're going to listen and you're going to notice one sound around you.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: So, whatever it might be.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: Hear clock, it might be breathing, might be my voice.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: Write down three words that come to mind when you hear it.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: So here's a pen.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to make you do this right now.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I didn't know I was going to hear.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_03: Notice one sound.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_03: Three words that come to mind when you hear it.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_03: And once you've got those three words, can you write one more line?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: And that turns your three words into a short poem.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_04: So the three words and one more word.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_04: One more line.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so if I do that.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm very aware on a podcast, I will give you my example whilst Judith is thinking about hers, if it doesn't put her off, which it probably will, so sorry.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um I heard the the um of two things.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: I was listening when I was doing this exercise, I could hear the clock and I could hear my typing on the keyboard.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: So my three words are actually tick, tick, tap.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um clock moves faster than my words are typed.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_03: Love that! I was pleased with that.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it was so true because at the time I was sat there trying to think of questions to ask and what to write.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_04: It's like what extremely poetic.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_04: I love that you should you should go back to it.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_04: Well, no, keep it exactly as it is, but make it a thing, publish it or something.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_04: What's yours?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_04: Rumbling constant distance.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_04: This is the background to my Fridays.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_04: And this is the traffic noise that we can hear out there.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: I love that the picture of the background is just beautiful because we don't often think about the soundscape of our lives.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we think so much about what we can see, what we're doing.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: Well, there we go.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: Hopefully, that challenge will make you a poet.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: Give it a go.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_04: What a show.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_04: Very, very powerful.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and so moving.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_04: Very moving.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, beautiful, beautiful words, and so many of the things that Adrian said in the not just in the interview, but also in the poetry, they just sit here, and it's it's wonderful.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_04: And he doesn't shy away from difficult subjects either, and I think that that's that's that's where the power is, but also the power in helping him himself and other people that write poetry to kind of come to terms with whatever's happened in their life.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, but he also doesn't feel the need to embellish it because sometimes I I know and I've seen it happen.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_03: People write stunning poems and then oh, I'm not using that word, I need to use a different word because the word needs to be more pretty or more creative, and that can take away the heart and the earthiness, the grounding of where that poem came from, and the spontaneity as well, yeah.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my so, what have you taken away from today?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe I need to find time to write things down more.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, um, yeah, because even if you know I'm no good at poetry and I'm I've never really written it, it just just the act of writing things down can really help try and free your mind of stuff.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_04: So what about yourself?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for me it's it's um his point about be you and write what you know, yeah, so simple.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_04: And going back to what you were saying, do you think that you're gonna actually now do some more creative writing?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know because actually I found I really enjoy non-fiction writing.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so there is that, but there is, I know there's other I guess I express myself now through dance.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: So I have found an outlet, yeah, and I guess I don't need it to be writing.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well that's the point.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's that's where I kind of sit now, and I'm happy with that.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: I like the dance, so but at least it's something.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: But at least it's something because I can imagine actually, if someone was shut down and they have no outlet, that's quite you're carrying a lot, because I know, um and my classes will they will make fun of me.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_03: They'll go, well, you know, there's a lot of this kind of theme going through the classes this week.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_03: What are you thinking about?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_04: So I know it is expressive.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_04: But if if someone doesn't have any outlet, then maybe poetry is a great place to start.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_03: And you can do it with a three-word sound.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_04: I love that so much.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well, from us here, uh the whole team at Mental Health Matters, have a healthy week.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Listen.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: Can you not hear a voice quiet, timid?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: It wants to speak, longs to be heard.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: Silenced for so long.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: Give it a chance.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: Words won't just come.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: They need to be nurtured, given room to grow.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Words aren't rain.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: You don't just get a sudden downpour of conversation.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: A thirst for words leaves a heart parched, a soul barren.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: Life should ooze, joy, laughter, never-ending tomorrow.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: Without words, we could become tortured, fibrous husks.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: Listen, can you not hear a voice quiet?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: Him and lost.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: That voice is yoke.