Sunday 31 December 2023
GOD IS A REFUGEE
Thursday 16 November 2023
BISAN
White, yet not entirely - she was real -
not as a cloud, she was eating lime.
Yes, I was holding a round green lime
in my hand and she stole it to play.
Cats love to play, don’t they?
I say this as one who has never owned a cat
or even, I confess, known or loved a cat.
But this cat, your cat, I presume -
this cat, I say, knew me well enough
not the bed of my English home,
but the home of my dreams,
Protecting my throat, but also
I feel her now - a heavy white scarf,
Ya Rahman. Ya Raheem.
Thursday 19 October 2023
THE KITE FLIERS
across blue skies
and border divides,
Thursday 12 October 2023
SUNFLOWERS
wept over the kitchen floor
Monday 21 August 2023
INTENTIONAL BIRTHDAY JOY
Mum made a roast chicken with sweetcorn, mushrooms and potatoes on the side… And our beloved friend Joan Church whisked up the legendary chocolate cake she knows I have loved since my first bite in hospital in 2009 while I was still being weaned off a feeding tube… she learnt it was my birthday at 5pm and by 7:30 she was at the door, a cake with still warm icing, fresh from the oven, in the boot of her car!
Over the next few days, other friends stopped by. Dr Kumar with plums and then tomatoes, Dr Ly with walnuts from Vietnam, Sammy stayed the weekend while there was a wedding in the family... and a week after my birthday, I fulfilled a literary challenge set down by my friend Firdaus - to pick up the threads of my novel again!
I sit in the conservatory and place a few sentences, a few words... like a few daubs of paint onto a canvas. A slow slow writer I am when it comes to fiction. Memoir and poetry come fast like trains and wind. A novel is slow pressure cooking for me. But if I don't keep at the cooking, a piece of my heart's desire continues to remain unfulfilled. So en avant! The poet warrior has work to do. A work of love, she hopes...
Wednesday 9 August 2023
A TIKTOK BARBIE SUMMER
I thought I hadn’t posted a thing since Christmas, but I have a couple of posts this year to redeem me. It gets harder and harder to persist as long form creator when the young ‘uns are buzzing about us with TikTok reels, and YouTube shorts and everything is clipped and fleeting. My niece Bella made a first TikTok for me, and it’s fun, lively, catchy. My nephew Raf has an anime channel, and he checks the views and subscribers like a hawk. My nieces Eva and Ellie whip up comic series as an afterthought at breakfast, and the walls of Shaista land continue to be drawn and painted on, some done, some undone.
Yesterday at the infusion centre, I wore my ‘Je Suis Très Fatigué’ sweatshirt, and June (of the gold heels and immaculate fashion) advised me to never give up hope, keep the negative thoughts away, and surround myself with colour. Mostly I want to badger into the earth, and stay duvet-ed until… until when? It’s summer, and Barbie is in town.
What did I think of the movie? It was indeed berry pink, had a great soundtrack, Ryan Gosling and Kate McKinnon have fabulous comedic roles… but I stayed detached. Barbie and I were never particularly close - I preferred the softer touch of my grey worn teddy bear, my little cotton pillow, my dreams of authorship. There was something very hard and plastic about Barbie. A synthetic opacity. I did love America Ferrera’s speech about the expectations on women resulting in us never being or feeling enough. I love Greta Gerwig as writer and director… I liked being in the cinema with not only my niece, but also my brother and nephew (with him I discussed the film in great detail later that night on a doggy walk around the village). It’s ‘Both, And’ for me, to quote the extraordinary therapist, Esther Perel.
I am phenomenally tired after our family summertime together. Mentally and physically. And the beat goes on… What next? What lies undone? The desire to create, while knowing there are operations to come, an underlying infection that has not released its hold on me… and a birthday. I try to do something special, something memorable on my birthdays when there are few family and friends around… while knowing that staving off a hospital admission is really the focus of the next two weeks. Meanwhile, here's to watching the rain fall with best friends, through a looking glass...
Friday 23 June 2023
GLOBAL EARTH HOLDERS’ RETREAT (PLUM VILLAGE)
I made it to Plum Village two years ago in early June for the 40th anniversary of Plum Village. Covid was spreading like a gossipy cliché and the nuns asked me to toddle off home because my complex auto-immunity would be a deeply troublesome obstacle to overcome for the sangha. I had no desire to tangle with French medics in limited French, all on my own, with no beloved Dr Dinakantha Kumararatne to be my local hero. So I toddled. And the twins were delighted to see my masked mouth and smiling eyes when they looked up from their lunch. Last year was a time of grieving with the return of Thây's ashes to his hermitage, but this time I felt his absence more keenly. He has many continuations, myself being one of them, but there will only ever be one Thich Nhat Hanh as he was.
The retreat was intense - the schedule more packed than ever to accommodate a second branch of practise - the global earth holders' community - and as you can imagine, there was a lot of emotion and anger and frustration at the lack of 'global' interest and concern in our shared planet, plants, animals and the welfare of each other. And also a lot of white privilege. or simply the privilege of having time and money to spend at a retreat deepening one's practise in gratitude, care and better communication. Plum Village is invariably a place of healing, but healing takes time, energy and wisdom. Most of us aren't particularly wise, yet. I think I make a difference to some lives when I travel, so I make the effort. A tribal elder told me he had a message for me from the ancestors - I must pay attention to the stories I tell myself. I am writing my own story, he told me. I believe him, in part. But I also believe that a writer feels the responsibility of being the medium through which many stories are told, past, present and hints of what may come to be. We are not new here. We have walked these paths and ways a thousand, thousand times before. The poet exists as reminder. As tolling bell, sometimes. And so she is ostracised as much as she is celebrated.
I had fun too - morning tea and sticky rice lunch with the young nuns I have been teaching through the pandemic, an escape with friends to the local town for pizza and decompressed chatter, an extraordinary coincidental coffee and croissant meet up with my pal Freya, daughter of Mum's bestie Victoria - to whom I dedicated my poem 'The Year of Yes'. I hadn't seen Freya since before Christmas - so it was a joyful fascination that our paths crossed - hers cycling, mine meditating - at, of all places, Thénac, Aquitane, France. It would have made Thây smile. The most smiling part of the retreat was my new born friendship with Benedetta, my roomie, who read my poetry books cover to cover, and made me feel every inch The Poet. To this day, Benedetta’s wisdom and gentle ways stay with me, and she has visited us in Cambridge. Perhaps I will post separately the poem I wrote her inspired by a rather persistent and dramatic Toad!!
Thursday 11 May 2023
THE WIRE
Monday 1 May 2023
SPRING WEDNESDAYS WITH SAMMY, THE WISE GAMJEE
Daisies are out for as long as the mowers keep away. The vast arms of the blossom trees cast shadow nets into which we rest, before throwing and catching the ball. I’m usually curled up in bed before we leave and then, with any luck, immediately after… Sammy curls in beside me, when nothing more fun begins to look likely.
In the middle of tulips and crocuses and flowers that look like fried eggs, a tiny snail like a tasty snack makes of the world their oyster. So far, uncrushed, still living.
And sometimes, a gate… leading to the unknown, where wild hearts of horses run free and the mysterious scent you are following with great interest and intrigue, may never reveal itself.