A performance of poetry, spoken word, music and dance, to talk about a lived experience of pregnancy with the disease of hyperemesis. How to remain connected to life and motherhood, when death feels very near?
In this story, I fall under the spell of hyperemesis to be left undone. Layers after layers, my shields are retreating: first my clothes (what was I naked); then my strength (could I ever walk again?); then my pride (my guts inside out, even my skin was gone). All what is left are bones. We meet in the corner. I first thought they were death, but what they carry is life. Between us, no words. Only sounds remain. As the days grew lighter, their whisper became song. Bearing witness, they guided my breath to find a language to speak of a space where the gods come to life, taking on many shapes and wearing many names.
It has been a year since my article “Doing Academia Differently” was published. Writing the article had been a transformative experience. It inspired me to design my workshops Creative Writing for Academics, and it pushed me to start working as a creative entrepreneur, staying in touch with academia, but from a different position.
While the article was finding its audience, and after I had had the chance to experience the power of making space for researchers to explore their writings in new ways, I experienced one of the most severe winters of my life and had to shut down for a couple of months.
Reading Katherine May’s Wintering helped me make sense of that experience. I loved the way she pays attention to nature’s capacity to adapt to extreme colds. From afar, it then may look as if nothing happens. But when we look closely, we see all kinds of activities going on: burgeons have formed on bare branches, still closed, but ready to burst open when spring comes. Hibernating animals breathe differently, lower their body temperature, change their chemical balance.
Nature doesn’t stop when winter comes. It adapts; it transforms.
So did I, breathing through extreme nauseas, dizziness, and complete exhaustion that came with pregnancy. I entered a subterranean kingdom, a kingdom where time and space function differently. A kingdom of silence. A kingdom of untold stories.
The extremes of being in a woman body is full of silences and is such an untold story. An untold story that I may start writing, bit by bit, as I resurface into the world. Revisiting what it means to be a mother; revisiting what I do for work; finding new patterns in search of equilibriums.
What’s coming up:
And so, we are now a year later, as I gear towards a new season of creation.
These are a sample of activities I look forward to, and I hope to meeting you along the way:
New workshop for grant applicants:
Thanks to a request from Université Saint Louis Brussels, I’ve developed a new writing workshop for grant applicants. The workshop provides tools to uncover the research proposal’s narrative, one of those tricks that tilt a proposal on top.
Sounds like something for you or for your institute? Contact me!
Creative Writing for Academics:
I’ll continue providing series of workshop Creative Writing for Academics, with sessions already book for various institutes at the University of Amsterdam, Nijmegen University, and Queen Mary University of London.
These workshops make space for researchers to explore a diverse and creative pallet of writing styles in their academic writing practice. They are open to all disciplines, and welcome researchers from PhD students to full professors.
Following on previous projects on Social Dreaming, I’ll contribute some of my poems to an artistic exhibition on Social Dreaming held at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. Details will follow, but I already know that the opening is on November 17, 2022.
No-one gives shit a word of praise, as if shit wasn’t precious. As if shit wouldn’t relieve bodies from toxins and skeletons, brown cores, white bones, orange beaks, and blue feathers. As if shit wouldn’t teach children that stickiness is best when avoided with a sidestep, a jump, a stop. As if shit wouldn’t stage equality between shepherds and wolves, queens and beggars, tyrants and peasants. As if shit wouldn’t seed green trees in grey cities, bringing oxygen to the streets. As if shit wouldn’t release amber smells of other times, feeding silvery flies while flirting with the gods, bringing flowers the strength to burst with pink, lilac, and lavender. As if shit wouldn’t invite life into decay, drawing poets to look at a blank page with the nuances of the nothing that illuminates the day. As if shit wouldn’t bring in patience there where speed was in focus, requesting attention there where habits stiffened. Shit is a wonderous waste, but no-one gives it a word of praise.
Ode to the eggsafter Pablo Neruda
Fields,
beaches,
ponds,
and trees
sing
as you
fall
on twigs
and bridles,
feathers,
moss,
sludge,
and sandbanks.
You hug
in groups
of seven,
thirteen,
or fifty-three.
Fragile
and immobile,
you lie
side by side,
defying
your
hungry
predators.
Brown
patches
or turquoise
patterns
become
a soft
embrace,
an act
of camouflage
that protects
your
burgeons
of life
from
our greedy
hands
and
growling
stomachs—
nothing
can stop
our appetite
for
the
vital
protein
running
inside
the elliptical
shape
of your chalky
beige
shells.
In the protected
space
of your
nesting
nature,
your viscous
substance
creates—
a
beating
heart,
followed
by
blood
vessels,
a tail bud,
wings and legs,
eyes,
brains,
beaks and claws,
feathers and scales.
After days
or weeks
or months,
you crack—
in the fields,
and in the trees,
on beaches
and in the reeds,
creatures
crawl,
squawk
and walk
tasting
the air
and the
nourishing
juice
of
food.
Now
rack
and ruin
you stay
behind
as little
dirty
white dots,
composing
compost,
sand
and soil.
Carried
along by
flowing
water,
you become
fertile
ground,
sediments,
and the source
of a new
cycle
of
life.
Fields,
beaches,
ponds,
and trees
sing
as you
fall
on twigs
and bridles,
feathers,
moss,
sludge,
and sandbanks.
You hug
in groups
of seven,
thirteen,
or fifty-three.
Fragile
and immobile,
you lie
side by side,
defying
your
hungry
predators.
Brown
patches
or turquoise
patterns
become
a soft
embrace,
an act
of camouflage
that protects
your
burgeons
of life
from
our greedy
hands
and
growling
stomachs—
nothing
can stop
our appetite
for
the
vital
protein
running
inside
the elliptical
shape
of your chalky
beige
shells.
In the protected
space
of your
nesting
nature,
your viscous
substance
creates—
a
beating
heart,
followed
by
blood
vessels,
a tail bud,
wings and legs,
eyes,
brains,
beaks and claws,
feathers and scales.
After days
or weeks
or months,
you crack—
in the fields,
and in the trees,
on beaches
and in the reeds,
creatures
crawl,
squawk
and walk
tasting
the air
and the
nourishing
juice
of
food.
Now
rack
and ruin
you stay
behind
as little
dirty
white dots,
composing
compost,
sand
and soil.
Carried
along by
flowing
water,
you become
fertile
ground,
sediments,
and the source
of a new
cycle
of
life.
London. September 2020.
Inpired by Pablo Neruda’s Ode to the Tomato and Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market.
I wrote this poem after attending the social dreaming matrix of 30 April, 2020, in the context of Tavistock Institute’s Deepening Creative Practice Programme.
I wrote this poem looking
at Eugène Delacroix’s painting
of Medea (see below), and then
I saw women who had left their
homes to join ISIS taking their
children with them, and Medea
became uncannily modern…
Medea
look!
how tender the touch
how in full light
i hold my children tight
naked
my breasts engorged with milk
the cave was our refuge
on this sunny day
the wind blowing softly
they were taking a bath
look!
those chubby legs
bare-bottomed
little creatures
naked innocence
—i heard nothing
look!
how tender
i hold my children
tight
—the sword is gold
furious and fierce
i held them in my flight
