If you remember last week, I talked to Nalougo, one of the members of ‘Write to Life’ – the creative writing and performance group of Freedom from Torture (established in 1997, the longest-running refugee-writing group in Britain, and the only one specifically for survivors of torture.) And this week, I’m delighted to bring you another member of the Write To Life group – Tanya.
Tanya explains what writing means to her, how it helps the healing process – and she reads some of her work: her piece ‘Surviving Covid – and then the brook dried up’. And earlier in the programme, her poem called ‘Treasure’.
The Write to Life creative writing group have some great projects up on the site including: alphabet of poverty, An A-Z of Poverty a really powerful description of the asylum process – and a series called ‘Lost And Found’ – a combination of speech, song and recorded sound performed by a cast from Iran, Cuba, Uganda and Burundi.
And again you can find all these at Freedom From Torture.
A huge thanks to Tanya for being part of this episode, and to the Arts Council of Ireland for their continuing support.
Transcript:
Bairbre:
Hi, and welcome to this week’s episode. Hope you’re all well. If you remember last week, I talked to Nalougo one of the members of Right to Life. The creative writing and performance group of Freedom From Torture – just to recap – Write To Life, was established in 1997 and is the longest running refugee writing group in Britain, and the only one specifically for survivors of torture.
And this week I’m delighted to bring you another member of the Write to Life group, Tanya. She explains what writing means to her, how it helps the healing process, and she reads some of her work.
This is Tanya.
Tanya:
It was very therapeutic for me. It’s when I joined Freedom from Torture. When I joined Freedom from Torture, I was like you know, when you go into a shop, you find some goods are damaged. Then you buy them, you go home, you open them, you find the contents are as good as the ones that are not damaged.
So when I came in, I was a damaged person. And then they started just, they took all the levels of labels, you know, damaged by torture, damaged by wall, damaged by circumstances I was not able to control. But they brought out the good contents now, which I’m going to be reading to you. Good writing. They brought up the good writing in me.
Yes. You know, when people see you as damage, the value in inside of you is not the same as those with the, their whole package, with their labels intact. But what’s damaged may be is the can or the label, but what’s inside is very special and unique. That is what we are finding here from Freedom From Torture.
Bairbre:
That’s a really beautiful way of putting it. Mm-hmm.
Tanya:
It’s like when you go on a holiday, you leave your plants for a week or two, you come back, they’re wilted, and then you put some water in, you see them, the leaves become clean. They become healthy. The flower flowers, and then the fruits.
That’s us. We have been watered here at Freedom. We have been nourished here. We are receiving a lot of nourishment from the staff and then meeting other people. We have been in the same situation as you. There’s something special in being together when you have suffered. It’s very special. It brings something out in you and seeing someone suffering as you, that empathy and compassionate spirit is very good.
Yes. Mm-hmm. And we are building into each other, brick by brick. Not very fast, but the structure is coming out when you build into each other by sharing stories, eating together a lot, there’s a bonding that grows on when you hear things together. Yes.
[MUSIC]TREASURE
What is your most prized possession?
Your car?
House?
Jewellery?
Business?
People spend a lot of money to protect their possessions.
What travels faster than a car?
Glitters more than jewellery?
Gives more protection than a house?
I have something more
precious than all these.
In it flow the streams of life
When I’m happy, it’s so light that I can float
When I’m sad, it’s so heavy I can barely move.
It can break, invisibly, and with no wounds or symptoms
but next day it has mended itself again.
When I lose it, it finds me again
It’s my best friend
It makes me laugh.
I always wonder
What is it made of?
Some describe it
As just an organ in a body
They are wrong!!
It can expand to take in the whole world
It can shrink to focus on a flower
Which will absorb it completely
It cannot be contained.
It transports me to far-away countries
The stories I hear
See
Read about.
Day and night it pumps, filling me with memories
Of sounds and smells
Of that day in Kew Gardens.
With no WiFi
No electrical signal
It tunes in to those beautiful
Songs and sounds.
When I lose my sight
Hearing
Speech
It’ll still be seeing
Hearing
Talking
And leaving
Footprints of love
Where I walked:
My Heart.
[MUSIC]I’ve written most of my pieces when I’m at my lowest. Because I found that some people tend to indulge in drugs or drink just to doubt the pain and the egg and maybe whatever emotional state they’re in. Myself, I find writing is very therapeutic to me because it’s an outlet where I pour out everything on paper.
Whether it’s my anger or frustrations, I just write it all down. And then give it to anyone to read. And I found that very, it’s very good, especially at night when I cannot sleep. I just write and write and write and write what I’m feeling. And sometimes it comes up very, very touching because it’s what I’ll be feeling.
So it’s easy. It’s very good to write what you feel because it’s okay not to be. Okay. I think it’s being, showing you are a human being. When you show you you are hating or you are not. Okay. So I would urge a lot of people to try writing a lot. It has helped me a lot.
[MUSIC]SURVIVING COVID
And then the brook dried up…
What happens when everything dries up in your life ?
The things that used to brighten your day
The people whose laughter put air under your wings
no longer come to visit
The air escapes and you are earthbound.
The friend you had lunch with
now eats alone
The doctor gives you instructions on the phone
You are told to dial 111.
The brook begins to run dry.
No one coming up the driveway
No crunch of wheels on gravel
No patter patter
of feet
No squeals of
‘Nana! I have lost a tooth!‘
The food we planned to share
spoils in the fridge.
The daily errands we used to take for granted
have become treats
remote as the stars.
Never had it entered the heart or mind
that one day
we would be more afraid of each other than burglars
Everything swept from under our feet
No stability in life.
My brook began to dry up.
It started with the raging headache
The backaches
Then the cough joined in:
persistent, irritating
like a dripping tap.
The fever,
not to be left out
came in and made its habitation in my body.
Diarrhoea, raging like a storm,
also settled in.
Not to be outdone were the taste buds
They left me, taking with them the appetite
that would have helped me battle the invaders
I had no energy to take a bath
(Luckily I couldn’t smell myself either)
I just wanted to sleep
and sleep
and sleep.
The brook is dry, cracked and dusty
And now I feel the fire
First my head burns like molten metal
My mind is in denial
“This can’t be it”.
I wait, when I should have fled,
and let the flames envelop me with delirium
I sleep, and wake, and
sleep, and
wake
Minutes are hours, slipping away
then jerked awake by a shower of sparks under the skin
My brain stops.
Everything I eat tastes like poison
No appetite
No rest
Who’s this, pounding in my head?
The brain sends its messages
but they get lost on their way
The joints lie there
dull and aching
Going upstairs, carrying a bag of cement
not possible
They tell me:
‘Self-isolate for ten days’;
Ten days!
For weeks the firestorm rages,
consuming me
Fever, vomiting, backache, delirium
While my body is tossed to fro without mercy
And when I most need others; help
The others are kept away
No cups of tea
No one to change my tangled, sweaty bedding
No cool hand on my hot forehead
No knock on the door,
no voice asking, ‘How are you?’;
And then, as courage fails me
When I no longer care
if I live or die, just then
the fire begins to burn itself out
I make myself do little things
The first cup of tea
The insulin injection
I force myself to eat
the soup I cannot taste
I try to replace the fluids I have lost
For three days I survive on
oranges and Vitamin D3
I realise I can taste the oranges
They taste like summer
I feel their nourishment trickling through to my feet
I start to think, 'I might survive'
I decide to live.
The hazy, jumbled world
begins to clear and take shape
The days arrange themselves
in the right order again
The sleep is proper sleep that brings healing
The birds return, singing, ‘Good morning, lazybones!’
My heart calls back, ‘Thanks for waking me!’;
The brook fills up with cool refreshing water,
my parched soul has been restored
No more self-defeating thoughts
No vacant stares
The brook is flowing again.
Bairbre:
That was Tanya reading her piece, ‘Surviving Covid, and then the Brook dried up’ and earlier in the program her poem called ‘Treasure’.
If you wanna know more about the Write to Life Creative Writing group, you can find out more@freedomfromtorture.org. They’ve got some really great projects up on the site, including alphabet of poverty, an A to Z of poverty, which is a really powerful description of the asylum process, and they’ve got a series called Lost and Found, a combination of speech, song and recorded sound performed by a cast from Iran, Cuba, Uganda, and Burundi.
I’ll put links in with the show notes, and again, you can find all of these on the Freedom From Torture site.
A huge thanks to Tanya for being part of this episode and to the Arts Council of Ireland for their continuing support. Thank you for listening. Bye for now.
