Poetry review – DAD vs DAD: Pat Edwards reviews Helen Mort’s moving sequence about illness and recovery
Dad vs. Dad
Helen Mort
Verve Poetry Press
ISBN 978-1-913917-55-5
£11
There are some poets you can always rely on to be innovative and fresh in their approach. Helen Mort is one of those poets. In this gorgeous hard-back book she explores the painful process of seeing her father suffer two strokes, as well as witnessing his ‘daily hard-worn miracles’ as he slowly adjusts to life and the new challenges it now poses. Mort openly talks about the book neither reflecting her dad’s experiences nor those of her mum as carer, rather about what she sees as ‘a series of movements’ and the time each takes to achieve, as her father learns again to sit, stand, eat, walk.
The innovation comes in Mort’s care to help the reader understand her writing process, her use of chess as an integral backdrop, and her inclusion of erasure poetry as vivid illustration. Together these inform us as we try to navigate the struggle to select ‘moves’, to out-manoeuvre the impact of physical impairment, to imagine the highly intelligent and athletic man now facing such devastating losses, and the collective hurt of those who love him as they rally to help him as best they can.
In “Glyderau” we get a glimpse of the father and daughter as intrepid climbers ‘on the comb of Tryfan under a fin of mist’. The poet’s mind races forward, seeing ‘somewhere in the future’ her father’s ’curved spine’, her ‘steadying hand’, and we feel the love and trust between them. But next in “To enter the ward”, we are transported deep into the horror of a stroke and what it does to a person, how it steals once treasured skills, from the simplicity of writing your own signature, to swimming, and wielding a cricket bat. Mort starkly juxtaposes ability and disability in many of these poems, shows just how near and yet so far apart the two are, when seen through the lens of time. The reader may, in some small measure, sense the pain of losing physical skills, yet also appreciate that this individual possessed such prowess at one time in his life. In “Reflex”, even swallowing is a challenge, and Mort suggests that there were tears and pride to be swallowed too.
The illustrations and erasure poetry on pages twenty and twenty-one, really take us to the heart of the chess metaphor. There is talk of attacks and of being beaten back, there are moves and danger. The reader can easily appreciate the parallels and game-playing at work here. Page twenty-four repeats the capitalised ‘HE HAS NO POTENTIAL’ as if to remind us that medical reports can be bleak and dismissive, forgetting the extraordinary willpower and determination patients can have. Mort also notes the resilience that having a ‘dry sense of humour’ can manifest.
Mort is sublime in her poem “Elk”, in which she takes us to the mountains of Canada to follow
the slow pace of elk, lugubrious, a cougar
rolling the strut-muscle of itself forwards, ever forwards
above the road, along the man-made corridor
All around is danger and Mort sees her Dad, ‘last of all’, dragging himself ‘across the ice…hunched, clearing a path through starlight’. The intensity of feeling, of longing, is conjured in her words, ‘I feel you as pine needles, sleet on bare skin.’
The drawings that follow are mostly black, echoing the depression of being forced to get around in a wheelchair, of being ‘in such a desperate state’. The reader also meets apology and tension which is somewhat mitigated by the innocence of a grandson. Isn’t it amazing how the young give perspective to situations, their matter-of-fact approach to life often an elixir? In “Butterfingers”, Mort watches the impaired man doing his best to bowl at her ‘gleeful son’; that word ‘butterfingers’ so often used to describe the clumsy, the inept, now used to represent her inability to adequately express her love and pride at witnessing this moment.
The notion that, central to any kind of recovery or progress, the repetition of tasks and movements is a necessary part of therapy is illustrated on page thirty-two. This sounds like a pattern in learning chess moves and honing effective strategies. Page thirty-three is a representation of the competing moods and emotions that any kind of difficult learning process might entail, with words like ‘less ness’ and ‘moral decrepitude’ competing with ‘hope’ and being ‘worth it’.
The final poem in the book carries great weight in the title “To stand”. The reader quickly sees that Mort wants us to know that her dad is not only learning to stand up but ‘to stand for something’. There is a beautiful echo of the earlier pine needles in her reference to ‘next-door’s conifers needle-leaf’, and the hopefulness of the word ‘survivors’.
The reader cannot help but be moved by everything this book represents. It is a tribute to a strong and accomplished father, a fine blend of poetry, text and drawing, a clever use of the chess analogy. There is so much to be admired about the tremendous ambition of this project and about the way it achieves an undeniable tribute to an amazing father. All that said, the simplicity of just nine full poems and eighteen illustrated erasure poems packs a powerful punch and challenges us to embrace the experimental nature of this approach. I think it even made me think more widely about father-daughter relationships, about fragility and strength, about what words and images can do, about the game of life itself.
Sep 3 2024
London Grip Poetry Review – Helen Mort
Poetry review – DAD vs DAD: Pat Edwards reviews Helen Mort’s moving sequence about illness and recovery
There are some poets you can always rely on to be innovative and fresh in their approach. Helen Mort is one of those poets. In this gorgeous hard-back book she explores the painful process of seeing her father suffer two strokes, as well as witnessing his ‘daily hard-worn miracles’ as he slowly adjusts to life and the new challenges it now poses. Mort openly talks about the book neither reflecting her dad’s experiences nor those of her mum as carer, rather about what she sees as ‘a series of movements’ and the time each takes to achieve, as her father learns again to sit, stand, eat, walk.
The innovation comes in Mort’s care to help the reader understand her writing process, her use of chess as an integral backdrop, and her inclusion of erasure poetry as vivid illustration. Together these inform us as we try to navigate the struggle to select ‘moves’, to out-manoeuvre the impact of physical impairment, to imagine the highly intelligent and athletic man now facing such devastating losses, and the collective hurt of those who love him as they rally to help him as best they can.
In “Glyderau” we get a glimpse of the father and daughter as intrepid climbers ‘on the comb of Tryfan under a fin of mist’. The poet’s mind races forward, seeing ‘somewhere in the future’ her father’s ’curved spine’, her ‘steadying hand’, and we feel the love and trust between them. But next in “To enter the ward”, we are transported deep into the horror of a stroke and what it does to a person, how it steals once treasured skills, from the simplicity of writing your own signature, to swimming, and wielding a cricket bat. Mort starkly juxtaposes ability and disability in many of these poems, shows just how near and yet so far apart the two are, when seen through the lens of time. The reader may, in some small measure, sense the pain of losing physical skills, yet also appreciate that this individual possessed such prowess at one time in his life. In “Reflex”, even swallowing is a challenge, and Mort suggests that there were tears and pride to be swallowed too.
The illustrations and erasure poetry on pages twenty and twenty-one, really take us to the heart of the chess metaphor. There is talk of attacks and of being beaten back, there are moves and danger. The reader can easily appreciate the parallels and game-playing at work here. Page twenty-four repeats the capitalised ‘HE HAS NO POTENTIAL’ as if to remind us that medical reports can be bleak and dismissive, forgetting the extraordinary willpower and determination patients can have. Mort also notes the resilience that having a ‘dry sense of humour’ can manifest.
Mort is sublime in her poem “Elk”, in which she takes us to the mountains of Canada to follow
All around is danger and Mort sees her Dad, ‘last of all’, dragging himself ‘across the ice…hunched, clearing a path through starlight’. The intensity of feeling, of longing, is conjured in her words, ‘I feel you as pine needles, sleet on bare skin.’
The drawings that follow are mostly black, echoing the depression of being forced to get around in a wheelchair, of being ‘in such a desperate state’. The reader also meets apology and tension which is somewhat mitigated by the innocence of a grandson. Isn’t it amazing how the young give perspective to situations, their matter-of-fact approach to life often an elixir? In “Butterfingers”, Mort watches the impaired man doing his best to bowl at her ‘gleeful son’; that word ‘butterfingers’ so often used to describe the clumsy, the inept, now used to represent her inability to adequately express her love and pride at witnessing this moment.
The notion that, central to any kind of recovery or progress, the repetition of tasks and movements is a necessary part of therapy is illustrated on page thirty-two. This sounds like a pattern in learning chess moves and honing effective strategies. Page thirty-three is a representation of the competing moods and emotions that any kind of difficult learning process might entail, with words like ‘less ness’ and ‘moral decrepitude’ competing with ‘hope’ and being ‘worth it’.
The final poem in the book carries great weight in the title “To stand”. The reader quickly sees that Mort wants us to know that her dad is not only learning to stand up but ‘to stand for something’. There is a beautiful echo of the earlier pine needles in her reference to ‘next-door’s conifers needle-leaf’, and the hopefulness of the word ‘survivors’.
The reader cannot help but be moved by everything this book represents. It is a tribute to a strong and accomplished father, a fine blend of poetry, text and drawing, a clever use of the chess analogy. There is so much to be admired about the tremendous ambition of this project and about the way it achieves an undeniable tribute to an amazing father. All that said, the simplicity of just nine full poems and eighteen illustrated erasure poems packs a powerful punch and challenges us to embrace the experimental nature of this approach. I think it even made me think more widely about father-daughter relationships, about fragility and strength, about what words and images can do, about the game of life itself.