Getting into the details of my latest poem, The Platform. Written in light of Mental Health Awareness Week…

As I stated in my last blog post, I’m going to make myself more of a presence on YouTube (and I would appreciate any subscriptions going). And for my first proper video, I thought it was appropriate to address Mental Health Awareness Week, which ends today. You can view the video separately, so I won’t reiterate the message contained therein. I will, however, take this opportunity to go into a bit of detail about the poem that follows it. Written especially, after years of sitting on the idea, I am happy to present The Platform.

The Poem in Detail

In a pre-COVID world, I used to travel by train a lot. And, while I can’t remember precisely when, I once had a thought, while waiting at Branksome railway station, that people have and do attempt and indeed commit suicide, simply by stepping off a platform. An awful thing to imagine, of course. But it sparked the idea for a drama, in which seven people, for their own respective reasons, have all come down to the same railway platform to commit suicide. In the drama, which was going to be titled The Platform, none of the seven people would get to kill themselves, because an eighth, unseen person manages it. However, the experience is sobering for the other seven, who actually come together as a unit. Fulfilling needs in one another that they had been lacking alone.

Obviously this idea remained dormant for years, until I was thinking about Mental Health Awareness Week. And how I’d like to write a poem whose stanzas could be read in any order. One that didn’t follow the traditional vertical format. Lo and behold, The Platform resurfaced. And while it could just as well serve as the basis for the drama it was meant to be in future, I think it works just as well as a poem. With each stanza representing a person standing on the titular train platform.

I prefer to let people interpret the inner meanings behind each stanza. Who each person is and what their vulnerabilities are. Are they tales of loneliness, social anxiety, and bog standard depression? Or do they touch more on the ideas of autism, blindness, and racism? I’d like to let you join the dots for yourselves — why not post in the Comments section what you think each person represents or suffers from.

However, the final stanza, deliberately placed in the traditional position, is hardly ambiguous. One step down (off the platform) leads them to freedom. And pain for those who know and love them.

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One more time now — looking behind the writing at the poem I wrote most recently: A Modern Wasteland…

It has honestly been such fun exploring this poem these last few weeks. Definitely going to try to do more poetry, in and around my other writing projects, in the future. But for now, let’s finish off with A Modern Wasteland‘s fourth and final chapter. Titled with my personal favourite line of the four used from The Sermon on the Mount: …AND TURN AGAIN AND REND YOU.

A MODERN WASTELAND

IV. AND TURN AGAIN AND REND YOU

To my little estate I now retire

My sitting-room, my settee

Supine upon this couch I now expire

And muse on how I got here.

They all tell me not to dwell on past failures.

Impossible when all you see around you,

The endless visits from the Duvaliers,

The cards and biscuits – they’re all that’s left

Meanwhile, she’s out there somewhere – the victor with the spoils.

Her crimes were more on par with those of Marion Crane

Than with those of Lady Dedlock.

And yet ‘twas I who was dubbed profane.

A spectral voice inquires, “Could you forgive her?”

“Forgive her? Forgive me!” I realise I’m being an disgracious host.

“Has anyone offered you tea?”

They sit and stare – have I become the ghost?

“Monsieur — Sir Jack and Mr Gibson are leaving,” I’m told.

“Oh God, how rude of me,” I say.

And thus on reality I have an ever-loosening hold,

Lost in this mire of melancholy.

I resolve to sit here in my turban,

My monocle and my cigarette in a holder

And languish here for years uncertain

Diminishing.

It was here that I was really inspired to expand upon the whole poem and turn it into a prose narrative. Oddly enough, the only line where I had to cop out — for lack of a rhyme for “failures” — sealed the deal. That will hopefully settle any queries that anyone has about what I meant by “the Duvaliers”. When I eventually get around to turning the whole Modern Wasteland into a prose piece, the Duvaliers will serve as supporting characters, as will Sir Jack and Mr Gibson (named after two of my best friends – just the latest in a series of allusions I like to include).

Who can pick out the cultural references in this stanza? And what they might mean? Well, for those still unsure, it’s a comparison between Marion Crane, from Robert Bloch’s Psycho (or more specifically Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation thereof where she was played by Janet Leigh), and Lady Honoria Dedlock from Dickens’ Bleak House. Last week, you saw the narrator decide to let go of his failing marriage. Now we learn that, rather than sleep with men she wasn’t married to (as Lady Dedlock did), she embezzled money, as Crane did. Now riddled with grief and almost catatonic with depression, our narrator falls in and out of full consciousness, only partly aware of the visitors who show him support.

And that’s that! Thank you all as ever for your support. More updates and side-projects to come in the new year.

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