This afternoon (Fri 11 Sept) I worked with people in The Meadows, which is among other things a day centre for people with a dementia diagnosis. The two staff (Ann and Anne) and myself had the luxury of working one-to-one with participants.
We'd talked about memory and the loss of memory on other occasions, with my noting the conversations, allowing threads to build into a complex weaving. Today, we began with seeds of Il Pleut (Appollinaire) and Kaddish (Ginsberg) two of the most well-known 20th Century poems - and then span them away into rain and recollection.
The poem was collaged together from people's memories of rain, memories of forgetting, and image-play of rain symbolising the liquid borders of these states. The blurring of edges, of shapes misting, thunderbursts, and the sensual beauty of rain perceived through our bodies.
The group of three participants worked quietly, concentrated. This was a very different quality of attention than that of the first two talk-shops. Today was most definitely a serious enterprise, fully meant. The subject of forgetting is talked about in this place with humour, anger, fear, insight...
Broaching it felt like an extended faux pas, the sound of a taboo breaking. To my ears, the piece that emerged had both delicacy and directness. A three-voice reading of it flicked between joy and pain. Mostly joy. Anne said afterward, dementia is often depicted on TV with doomy images and pompous classical music. But it is not necessarily a dark journey; light does come through.
As I left, I was full of my own memories of The Meadows, which is where Lois and I began our first collaborative sessions nearly ten years ago. I kept expecting to hear the clicking of those Blackburn high heels and her big bursts of laughter.
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