Poetry review – JUST BREATHE: Emma Storr is moved by Trish Kerrison’s poems dealing frankly with the challenges of long-term illness
Just Breathe
Trish Kerrison
Five Leaves Publication 2024
ISBN 978-1-915434-24-1
pp 60 £8.50
Trish Kerrison’s first collection is an astonishing and brave sequence of poems, celebrating the joys and anguish of parenting two sons with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The book reads as if just one child is the subject, but in reality Kerrison must have gone through many of the described experiences twice over. At the front of the book she has adapted the Beaufort wind force scale to apply to breathing capacity. The highest grade is Storm (10) described as ‘full ear-splitting force from the lungs of a hungry baby’ to Light Air (1) ‘not enough breath to live on’. Her Beaufort Scale of Breathing (BSB) appears as a marker throughout the book for the inevitable deterioration in respiration that occurs as a child with Duchenne’s grows up. Perhaps Kerrison’s experience as a former nurse led to this creative interpretation as numerous scales and measurement protocols are used in healthcare to assess patients’ health status.
Kerrison uses many different poetic forms, including concrete poems such as “Breathing Space (1)” and “Holding my Breath” to emphasise the physical consequences of disease. She is expert at using white space on the page to complement the content. She also revisits themes that illustrate the increasing lack of breathing capacity over time. Self-pity is completely absent but the speaker’s anger often flares when the government or the under-resourced NHS refuse to supply necessary equipment or facilities.
The initial poem, “First Breath”, gets a hearty 10 BSB. Kerrison reflects on the mysterious physiology that ensures a newborn baby takes its first breath:
Muscles pull tight,
draw in the gaseous concoction,
A hundred million alveoli poised
to plunder its riches.
What sorcery is this that conjures
life from thin air?
“Breathe Easy” celebrates early childhood and the many games that include singing, huffing and puffing, blowing bubbles and becoming breathless with laughter. This poem is graded 9 BSB. The five year old subject has no difficulty blowing out all the candles on his birthday cake.
Sadly this situation changes and in “Deep Breath” the child is ‘Panting /chest heaving / like Great-uncle Chain Smoker, /every breath a heavy labour;’ A brutal diagnosis is given in the poem which gives this collection its title, “Just Breathe”. The speaker is told bluntly: ‘wheelchair – ventilator –dead by eighteen’. The impact of this news takes the speaker’s breath away, a fact cleverly conveyed by the spacing and short, punchy words in the text.
I no longer know how to
breathe
a stutter
a gulp
a gasp (is that me?)
and later on:
breathe in
breathe out
breathe in
is there any such rhythm
that can keep to the runaway scattergun beat
of a breaking heart?
By twelve years old, in the poem “Holding my Breath”, the birthday candles have to be blown out one by one and the Beaufort Scale of Breathing has dropped to 6. The child has another associated problem with a curved spine, pressing on both heart and lung. He requires surgery to correct the scoliosis. Ominously a ventilator lurks at the bottom of the page:
Ventilator on the shelf
winking,
clocks the wonky spine –
like a fox, eyes glinting,
clocking the open henhouse door –
bides its time.
We will meet this machine many times later on in the collection. The poem deftly conveys the risk of surgery, the agony of the parents waiting for the outcome and the huge relief when the child breathes on his own again after the operation:
No-one dare take a single breath
until he gasps for air,
looks me in the eye.
So Mum, he says
I didn’t die.
Both mother and son are admirably resilient but there are times when their needs are ignored or denied. In two poems “Short of Breath” and “Breathing Space (3)”, we learn that the family have been denied a cough-assist machine by the NHS because apparently there isn’t sufficient evidence it might help. In fact, these machines can be crucial in helping prevent infection in someone with compromised lungs. The speaker is furious, outraged and points out the importance of having a properly funded NHS.
By eighteen years, the son has to rely on his friends to blow out his birthday candles. Meanwhile the ventilator speaks in its own voice in “Breathing Down His Neck”, a clever use of this expression that emphasises the metaphoric and actual role of the machine.
From the shadows, I observe
the change; his breaths rapid, shallow.
It’s time to make my move,
to become his closest friend,
one he can depend on
for life.
Gradually the ventilator becomes a permanent feature ‘like some annoying aunt / determined to be ‘of use’.’
The Beaufort Scale of Breathing has dropped to 3 and speech is only possible in time with the machine. “Breath-taking” emphasises the ventilator’s power:
Without so much as a by-your-leave,
her victory is complete:
assisted breathing
to life-dependency
in three short years.
This life-dependence on the ventilator is further demonstrated in the two poems “Scream” and “Last Gasp”. In both, the ventilator sends out an alarm signal that suggests either an internal malfunction or that the person attached to it has stopped breathing. Either could lead to death very rapidly. Thankfully both situations are remedied and survival ensured but we are made painfully aware of the son’s everyday vulnerability:
Life on a knife-edge
common cold
to
common death
“Bad Breath” provides another example of the limitations of NHS resources and the seemingly arbitrary decisions made about who has the greatest need:
Weak-chested; he’s on their list
for a letter, seven pages:
stay at home, stay at home, stay at home,
signed ‘Matt’.
We draw our own conclusions
policy and practice lay bare
the truth:
the bed in intensive care
is reserved for more deserving cases.
By this stage the poems are scaled 1 BSB (not enough breath to live on). Any trip in a car involves meticulous planning to make sure the ventilator is charged, the spare ventilator and battery are also available and that the car doesn’t break down. The calculations are overwhelming and listed with wry humour and sums on the right hand side of the page in the poem “Memory Game (Part 2): Mental Arithmetic”.
Despite the difficulties and anxiety involved in caring for someone with a life-limiting condition, the poem “Breath of Life” rejoices in the fact that the son uses his limited breath to sing while at a concert with his friends: ‘every exhalation / spent giving life to the raucous anthems / that span his twenty-eight years.’ This moving short poem is an anthem to happiness, to survival and the son’s ‘unquenchable spirit’.
The final poem in this collection “As I live and breathe” is a poignant contemplation on the way the majority of us take breathing for granted and can never know what it is like to depend on a machine to keep us alive ‘to know / that life depends / on the flick of a switch.’ The poem ends:
Can we, who breathe easy
ever fully comprehend
what it means to live?
Jan 15 2025
London Grip Poetry Review – Trish Kerrison
Poetry review – JUST BREATHE: Emma Storr is moved by Trish Kerrison’s poems dealing frankly with the challenges of long-term illness
Trish Kerrison’s first collection is an astonishing and brave sequence of poems, celebrating the joys and anguish of parenting two sons with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The book reads as if just one child is the subject, but in reality Kerrison must have gone through many of the described experiences twice over. At the front of the book she has adapted the Beaufort wind force scale to apply to breathing capacity. The highest grade is Storm (10) described as ‘full ear-splitting force from the lungs of a hungry baby’ to Light Air (1) ‘not enough breath to live on’. Her Beaufort Scale of Breathing (BSB) appears as a marker throughout the book for the inevitable deterioration in respiration that occurs as a child with Duchenne’s grows up. Perhaps Kerrison’s experience as a former nurse led to this creative interpretation as numerous scales and measurement protocols are used in healthcare to assess patients’ health status.
Kerrison uses many different poetic forms, including concrete poems such as “Breathing Space (1)” and “Holding my Breath” to emphasise the physical consequences of disease. She is expert at using white space on the page to complement the content. She also revisits themes that illustrate the increasing lack of breathing capacity over time. Self-pity is completely absent but the speaker’s anger often flares when the government or the under-resourced NHS refuse to supply necessary equipment or facilities.
The initial poem, “First Breath”, gets a hearty 10 BSB. Kerrison reflects on the mysterious physiology that ensures a newborn baby takes its first breath:
“Breathe Easy” celebrates early childhood and the many games that include singing, huffing and puffing, blowing bubbles and becoming breathless with laughter. This poem is graded 9 BSB. The five year old subject has no difficulty blowing out all the candles on his birthday cake.
Sadly this situation changes and in “Deep Breath” the child is ‘Panting /chest heaving / like Great-uncle Chain Smoker, /every breath a heavy labour;’ A brutal diagnosis is given in the poem which gives this collection its title, “Just Breathe”. The speaker is told bluntly: ‘wheelchair – ventilator –dead by eighteen’. The impact of this news takes the speaker’s breath away, a fact cleverly conveyed by the spacing and short, punchy words in the text.
I no longer know how to breathe a stutter a gulp a gasp (is that me?)and later on:
By twelve years old, in the poem “Holding my Breath”, the birthday candles have to be blown out one by one and the Beaufort Scale of Breathing has dropped to 6. The child has another associated problem with a curved spine, pressing on both heart and lung. He requires surgery to correct the scoliosis. Ominously a ventilator lurks at the bottom of the page:
Ventilator on the shelf winking, clocks the wonky spine – like a fox, eyes glinting, clocking the open henhouse door – bides its time.We will meet this machine many times later on in the collection. The poem deftly conveys the risk of surgery, the agony of the parents waiting for the outcome and the huge relief when the child breathes on his own again after the operation:
Both mother and son are admirably resilient but there are times when their needs are ignored or denied. In two poems “Short of Breath” and “Breathing Space (3)”, we learn that the family have been denied a cough-assist machine by the NHS because apparently there isn’t sufficient evidence it might help. In fact, these machines can be crucial in helping prevent infection in someone with compromised lungs. The speaker is furious, outraged and points out the importance of having a properly funded NHS.
By eighteen years, the son has to rely on his friends to blow out his birthday candles. Meanwhile the ventilator speaks in its own voice in “Breathing Down His Neck”, a clever use of this expression that emphasises the metaphoric and actual role of the machine.
Gradually the ventilator becomes a permanent feature ‘like some annoying aunt / determined to be ‘of use’.’
The Beaufort Scale of Breathing has dropped to 3 and speech is only possible in time with the machine. “Breath-taking” emphasises the ventilator’s power:
This life-dependence on the ventilator is further demonstrated in the two poems “Scream” and “Last Gasp”. In both, the ventilator sends out an alarm signal that suggests either an internal malfunction or that the person attached to it has stopped breathing. Either could lead to death very rapidly. Thankfully both situations are remedied and survival ensured but we are made painfully aware of the son’s everyday vulnerability:
Life on a knife-edge common cold to common death“Bad Breath” provides another example of the limitations of NHS resources and the seemingly arbitrary decisions made about who has the greatest need:
By this stage the poems are scaled 1 BSB (not enough breath to live on). Any trip in a car involves meticulous planning to make sure the ventilator is charged, the spare ventilator and battery are also available and that the car doesn’t break down. The calculations are overwhelming and listed with wry humour and sums on the right hand side of the page in the poem “Memory Game (Part 2): Mental Arithmetic”.
Despite the difficulties and anxiety involved in caring for someone with a life-limiting condition, the poem “Breath of Life” rejoices in the fact that the son uses his limited breath to sing while at a concert with his friends: ‘every exhalation / spent giving life to the raucous anthems / that span his twenty-eight years.’ This moving short poem is an anthem to happiness, to survival and the son’s ‘unquenchable spirit’.
The final poem in this collection “As I live and breathe” is a poignant contemplation on the way the majority of us take breathing for granted and can never know what it is like to depend on a machine to keep us alive ‘to know / that life depends / on the flick of a switch.’ The poem ends: