Page 26 - Community Living Magazine 34-2

arts: poetry
Poetry reflects life in the pandemic

Writer and novelist Emma Claire Sweeney and poet Clare About the authors
Manley collaborated during lockdown to produce a poetry Clare Manley works for the NHS as an
access health champion, advocating for
collection, Growing Wild. Artwork by Robin Meader the needs of patients with learning
disabilities. She is also
a trainee at a social
ack in March, we were in the middle Emma had to accept that the best way enterprise that
of an Arts Council-funded poetry she could help was to stay away. prepares adults with
Bproject for Mencap, capitalising on Clare’s parents, on the other hand, live learning disabilities to
its status as the official charity of the close by. When she was advised to shield work in horticulture
2020 Virgin Money London Marathon. because of her severe asthma, she faced and hospitality. She is a
We were looking forward to her own 19th mile. As a woman with founder member of
interviewing members of Team Mencap learning disabilities in her their poetry club, and
about how runners with mid-40s, should she one of her poems is
learning disabilities pushed self-isolate alone in her flat published in The Memoir Garden: Poems
through the 19th mile – or give up her hard-won from the Words of Adults with Learning
notoriously the point in a independence? It felt like Disabilities (Two Roads, 2013). Since the
marathon where people feel an impossible choice. beginning of lockdown, Manley has been
most tempted to give up. During the long months documenting her experiences as an adult
And we had planned to of Clare’s shielding, we kept with learning disabilities by writing poems
broaden out to learn about in touch and collaborated about the pandemic.
other moments in their lives over video call on poems
when they had almost documenting Clare’s Emma Claire Sweeney is the author of
admitted defeat, and how experiences of Owl Song at Dawn (Legend, 2016), a novel
they’d picked themselves up, the pandemic. inspired by her sister who has cerebral
dusted themselves down and We would explore palsy and autism, which won the Nudge
taken that crucial next step. possible topics and Clare would often go Literary Book of the Year award. Sweeney’s
We could never have predicted that we off to write a first draft alone. On the next debut non-fiction book,
were about to face our own 19th miles. call, we’d bat around ideas for developing A Secret Sisterhood:
When lockdown hit, Emma had to face the draft, digging for detail by exploring the Hidden Friendships
down the difficulties of separation from sensory appeals, and discussing the best of Austen, Brontë, Eliot
her sister, Louise, who has profound and form for expressing Clare’s ideas. and Woolf (2017) was
multiple learning disabilities and lives We are pleased to share a selection of written with her friend
with their elderly parents. these poems, which feature in Growing Emily Midorikawa and
They devised a care plan in case their Wild, a collection charting a varied has a foreword by
parents caught the virus and became too experience from Clare’s claustrophobia Margaret Atwood, who
poorly to support Louise. Emma sourced during weeks alone to her joy at returning described the work as
PPE and kept a packed suitcase in the to an allotment abundant with fruit. a “great service to literary history”. She
boot of her car, ready to make the long In these poems, we dared ourselves to has won Royal Literary Fund and Society
journey to her family home. venture to the darkest chasms of isolation of Authors’ awards, and her work has
In the meantime, it was crucial that while always taking in our sight brilliant appeared in Time magazine, The
they didn’t all fall ill at the same time. So vistas of hope. Washington Post and The Paris Review.

Grow Your Own I left behind And yet, I couldn’t stay still, Louise Sweeney of Autism Together: book cover image; Ryan Ansley: book cover design; Chloe Jones Photography: Clare Manley
I filled a huge suitcase Roland Rat and my teddies. cleaning the loos,
with joggers and jumpers and loose No need, my mum said, dusting and polishing the lounge.
cotton dresses, for children’s toys. No good for my lungs.
a mixed-berry bath bomb,
and wireless earphones. From Mum and Dad’s tub, I weeded their borders,
I looked out over their neighbour’s sowed broad beans, sweetcorn,
overgrown garden. sunflowers.
No bath in my flat. They took months to grow,
For years, I’d fought for a walk-in shower. and flowered for only two or three
weeks.
Dad needed space alone to feed the dog.
Mum fed us fish and chips and Sunday From April to August,
roasts. my neighbour watered my garden,
I should help with the cooking, she said. tending the daffodils and fuchsia
But I thought of myself as their guest. I’d planted before.

26 Vol 34 No 2 | Winter 2021 Community Living www.cl-initiatives.co.uk