Ambush Moments: Kathy Pimlott on writing After the Rites and Sandwiches
On various occasions and in a very glib manner I’ve asserted that all poems ever are about either the writing of poems or about death. Having now written about death – a particular death – I think I’d adjust that showy-offy generalisation to ‘mortality’. Writing about a death is a part of that. Let’s get it out of the way. My husband of over 40 years fell down the last few steps of the stairs at home, hit his head on the wall, suffering catastrophic brain damage and dying immediately. That’s what happened. What happened next, and continues to happen, was a flood of shock, admin, guilt, fear, fury, plain sorrow, recrimination etc – all the components of coming to terms with a sudden and total absence.
I don’t think many people experience grieving as a neat progression through the emotions. I think, like me, they are ambushed – often out of nowhere – by what ifs, and if onlys and why didn’ts. My way of dealing with this is to write. Everything I write is an effort to understand why and it was no different in writing the poems in After the Rites and Sandwiches. Not why did it happen but why a certain mundane route to the shops or a recipe provoke tears while what I would imagine to be far more inherently painful, leaving some of his ashes under a totemic tree, provoked laughter.
“Everything I write is an effort to understand why and it was no different in writing the poems in After the Rites and Sandwiches. Not why did it happen but why a certain mundane route to the shops or a recipe provoke tears while what I would imagine to be far more inherently painful, leaving some of his ashes under a totemic tree, provoked laughter.”
The poems surfaced around ambush moments, but were left to simmer until I had time or, more honestly, courage to get down to it. This is the way I write. Courage is the energy to mark the blank page not knowing what you might end up with – something or nothing. I start by hand. Once I got down to editing and shaping, which I do on screen, I wanted the poems to have their own life, to be able to be out in the world detached from me. Which is what I want for all my poems.
I think the difference between these poems and others I’ve written is that it was harder to judge what was working as a poem, even when workshopping with trusted fellow poets. I was nervous of being self-indulgent, of people being kind about them because they were being kind to me.
Paul Stephenson, in his wonderful collection Hard Drive (Carcanet) touches on the ambivalent feelings raised by publishing a collection of poems about the death of a loved one – the ordering, choice of cover image, fiddling in final edit to fit pages, hoping it will be well reviewed and that sales at least cover the publisher’s costs, not to mention how others personally affected by the particular loss will react. I have had and continue to have those doubts, a certain guilt. But here we are – I hope those who do read it will think well of it, that it will be a lasting memory of the generous, kind, impetuous and utterly infuriating Robert.
Cover detail from After the Rites and Sandwiches.
