Poetry review – SONNETS FOR MY MOTHER AS LEAR: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is impressed by Martin Malone’s poems about the challenges of caring for an elderly parent
Sonnets For My Mother As Lear
Martin Malone
Mariscat Press
ISBN 978 1 0686756 3 8
£7.50
Many current poetry collections deal with the difficult life experiences of those who are marginalised – or even mistreated – because they belong to a minority group defined, for instance, by race, gender, sexuality, an uncommon health condition (mental or physical) or a particularly dysfunctional upbringing. In Sonnets for my Mother as Lear, however, Martin Malone addresses life difficulties likely to be encountered in some degree by a majority of the population.
Most of us will be fortunate enough to live to an age that we would have regarded as “old” when we were in our teens. And therefore many of us will have to cope with becoming less healthy, less mobile and less independent. When less escalates to a lot less it can be painful not only for us but also for our families. It is particularly hard for children to see parents losing capability and confidence and it gets even worse if they have to start taking tough decisions about their Mum or Dad’s end-of-life care. In this chapbook Malone deals with such a situation and in a sequence of twenty sonnets he chronicles a harrowing period during which a son has to watch his mother become less and less able to take care of herself and ultimately needing to be moved (for her own safety but against her wishes) out of her own house and into a care home. Each sonnet has a line from Shakespeare’s King Lear as an epigraph; and this is appropriate since the mother, like Lear, is experiencing a puzzling transition from self-sufficiency and authority to a state of being confused, lost and ordered around by strangers. Moreover this dislocation involves (or at any rate seems to involve) betrayal by her nearest and dearest.
Malone sets out to convey a complex story featuring many characters in just 280 lines of poetry. The poems are in many voices. Besides the mother and the son I think I detected a conscientious but over-burdened social worker, a home care assistant and a well-meaning neighbour. These different voices all sound authentic even while, in the interests of the poem, they use inventive phrasings and pleasing rhythms. There is also an impersonal bureaucratic voice which I take to be the sound that official forms and questionnaires would make if they could speak (and perhaps with the advance of AI they will one day actually do so).
The sequence begins in the voice of a social worker needing to liaise with several interested parties
It’s always nice
to speak with a family member. I have
tried to contact the care company but
got no answer.
The poem’s speaker is striving to maintain a (slightly strained) note of optimism, including the reassurance that ‘she’s on great form’.
This opening poem mentions a ‘Buddi’ which is a personal alarm for the elderly. This is the first of several new words with which a lay person has to become familiar when they get involved with the care community. Another gadget which appears in the second poem “She through a fish-eye lens” is the front door video-camera which, depressingly, is fitted ‘to catch the girl who steals from you’ and which has to be set up ‘with more tech than a moon shot.’ In due course the camera catches the mother going out to the dustbins and resembling a ’badger sniffing the air then shuffling back’. Evidently this is not going to be an over-sentimental portrait!
By the third poem, however, ‘your Mam’ has gone rather further than the bins and is temporarily missing even though ‘it’s pouring down and her coat’s thin’. It’s at this anxious point in the narrative that Malone introduces the son’s reminiscing voice. In just a line and a half he cleverly captures a long-ago moment in which his mother managed a potential crisis on a big day out. He recalls her
exchanging your plate
for my sugared fish-and-chips
and he realises that he is now the one who will tactfully have to put his mother’s mistakes right as best he can.
Across the whole sequence, the mother’s voice is only heard occasionally, mostly as single-line observations (in italics) about events going on without her. But she does get one whole poem to herself in which we hear an authentic ring of natural speech
She came about half-past three
and I said to her you don’t usually come to me
this late on a Sunday, she said, ‘We’re all
doubling up,’ is what she said to me, so she
sat on that chair while I made us a cup of tea
The sonnets continue to advance the story through conversations between the son and his mother’s carers or their managers. Awkward situations are handled with a mixture of tact (‘Mam’s had the same clothes on for days; / says she’s been washed but I don’t think / she has’) and subterfuge (‘We worry about her eating, you’d best / start hiding cameras around the house’).
There is a constant desire to be sufficiently protective while still preserving some of the mother’s autonomy. But human flexibility is compromised when form-filling is required either to apply for more resources or to get authorization for extra safeguards.
Please do not worry
if you can’t give the data it asks for
it may not apply to everyone; may not
tell us anything of importance at all.
The most powerful of document affecting the care of the elderly is the Lasting Power of Attorney (LPoA) which can empower a child to make all decisions for a parent. Malone refers to ‘the Goneril of my LPoA’ as the son looks ahead to the grim prospect of making choices for his mother that will seem to her as harsh as those imposed on Lear by his daughters.
In spite of the ever-present parallels with Lear, the sonnets are all couched firmly in modern English – with the exception of the second half of XII which has the epigraph ‘Let me wipe it first, it smells of mortality’. Because she is ‘very proud and allows no one near’, Mum refuses help with keeping clean and contracts an infection. The final lines of this poem slip smoothly into Shakespearian blank verse:
So, she that thought to live till grown this old
needs help but will not take it, on the verge
of a much-refused confinement; still queenly
in her way, as the household runs to ruin
At this point in the sequence, the story still has some way to go; and moments of calm and brief remission are interspersed with anxiety and crises. But, inevitably, the mother can’t be allowed to remain in her own house and the son must find a care home and face the financial implications while being accused of wanting to ‘put me away’. Yet there are still consolations once the new arrangements are in place and a strange but workable new mother-son relationship emerges.
Sonnets for My Mother as Lear is a truthful and moving – but not sentimental – collection. There are well-judged moments of blackish humour but the prevailing tone is one of sympathy and love. The sonnets, all unrhymed, employ a variety of shapes but each one is well-crafted and rhythmically pleasing. In short, this attractive small book is a pretty substantial achievement.
Mar 8 2025
London Grip Poetry Review – Martin Malone
Poetry review – SONNETS FOR MY MOTHER AS LEAR: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is impressed by Martin Malone’s poems about the challenges of caring for an elderly parent
Many current poetry collections deal with the difficult life experiences of those who are marginalised – or even mistreated – because they belong to a minority group defined, for instance, by race, gender, sexuality, an uncommon health condition (mental or physical) or a particularly dysfunctional upbringing. In Sonnets for my Mother as Lear, however, Martin Malone addresses life difficulties likely to be encountered in some degree by a majority of the population.
Most of us will be fortunate enough to live to an age that we would have regarded as “old” when we were in our teens. And therefore many of us will have to cope with becoming less healthy, less mobile and less independent. When less escalates to a lot less it can be painful not only for us but also for our families. It is particularly hard for children to see parents losing capability and confidence and it gets even worse if they have to start taking tough decisions about their Mum or Dad’s end-of-life care. In this chapbook Malone deals with such a situation and in a sequence of twenty sonnets he chronicles a harrowing period during which a son has to watch his mother become less and less able to take care of herself and ultimately needing to be moved (for her own safety but against her wishes) out of her own house and into a care home. Each sonnet has a line from Shakespeare’s King Lear as an epigraph; and this is appropriate since the mother, like Lear, is experiencing a puzzling transition from self-sufficiency and authority to a state of being confused, lost and ordered around by strangers. Moreover this dislocation involves (or at any rate seems to involve) betrayal by her nearest and dearest.
Malone sets out to convey a complex story featuring many characters in just 280 lines of poetry. The poems are in many voices. Besides the mother and the son I think I detected a conscientious but over-burdened social worker, a home care assistant and a well-meaning neighbour. These different voices all sound authentic even while, in the interests of the poem, they use inventive phrasings and pleasing rhythms. There is also an impersonal bureaucratic voice which I take to be the sound that official forms and questionnaires would make if they could speak (and perhaps with the advance of AI they will one day actually do so).
The sequence begins in the voice of a social worker needing to liaise with several interested parties
The poem’s speaker is striving to maintain a (slightly strained) note of optimism, including the reassurance that ‘she’s on great form’.
This opening poem mentions a ‘Buddi’ which is a personal alarm for the elderly. This is the first of several new words with which a lay person has to become familiar when they get involved with the care community. Another gadget which appears in the second poem “She through a fish-eye lens” is the front door video-camera which, depressingly, is fitted ‘to catch the girl who steals from you’ and which has to be set up ‘with more tech than a moon shot.’ In due course the camera catches the mother going out to the dustbins and resembling a ’badger sniffing the air then shuffling back’. Evidently this is not going to be an over-sentimental portrait!
By the third poem, however, ‘your Mam’ has gone rather further than the bins and is temporarily missing even though ‘it’s pouring down and her coat’s thin’. It’s at this anxious point in the narrative that Malone introduces the son’s reminiscing voice. In just a line and a half he cleverly captures a long-ago moment in which his mother managed a potential crisis on a big day out. He recalls her
and he realises that he is now the one who will tactfully have to put his mother’s mistakes right as best he can.
Across the whole sequence, the mother’s voice is only heard occasionally, mostly as single-line observations (in italics) about events going on without her. But she does get one whole poem to herself in which we hear an authentic ring of natural speech
The sonnets continue to advance the story through conversations between the son and his mother’s carers or their managers. Awkward situations are handled with a mixture of tact (‘Mam’s had the same clothes on for days; / says she’s been washed but I don’t think / she has’) and subterfuge (‘We worry about her eating, you’d best / start hiding cameras around the house’).
There is a constant desire to be sufficiently protective while still preserving some of the mother’s autonomy. But human flexibility is compromised when form-filling is required either to apply for more resources or to get authorization for extra safeguards.
The most powerful of document affecting the care of the elderly is the Lasting Power of Attorney (LPoA) which can empower a child to make all decisions for a parent. Malone refers to ‘the Goneril of my LPoA’ as the son looks ahead to the grim prospect of making choices for his mother that will seem to her as harsh as those imposed on Lear by his daughters.
In spite of the ever-present parallels with Lear, the sonnets are all couched firmly in modern English – with the exception of the second half of XII which has the epigraph ‘Let me wipe it first, it smells of mortality’. Because she is ‘very proud and allows no one near’, Mum refuses help with keeping clean and contracts an infection. The final lines of this poem slip smoothly into Shakespearian blank verse:
At this point in the sequence, the story still has some way to go; and moments of calm and brief remission are interspersed with anxiety and crises. But, inevitably, the mother can’t be allowed to remain in her own house and the son must find a care home and face the financial implications while being accused of wanting to ‘put me away’. Yet there are still consolations once the new arrangements are in place and a strange but workable new mother-son relationship emerges.
Sonnets for My Mother as Lear is a truthful and moving – but not sentimental – collection. There are well-judged moments of blackish humour but the prevailing tone is one of sympathy and love. The sonnets, all unrhymed, employ a variety of shapes but each one is well-crafted and rhythmically pleasing. In short, this attractive small book is a pretty substantial achievement.