Encore Performance: “The Delight of a Sick Day”
A Spoken Word Poem, With Audio
I currently have a few new poems on the boil, but none are yet quite cooked. In the meantime, I’m re-sharing the last of the Golden Oldies republished recently by The Goat @The Scene & Heard. It’s one of my earlier poems, from my first few weeks on Medium, and was written during (you guessed it!) a sick day, soon after I returned to work following a lengthy sabbatical — and quickly succumbed to the dreaded winter flu.
It’s an example of trying to combat writer’s block by using a little trick I learnt in counselling training — if you’re stuck in a moment with a client, then use the moment itself; feel into what the stuckness is and name it. It’s a technique that may also be familiar to practitioners of mindfulness mediation — when inner peace is blocked by thoughts and feelings, then observe them, name them, then let them go. Well, that’s the start of the technique — of course, transforming the moment into poetry then becomes a way of holding on it, rather than the letting go.
So that’s the germination of this poem. The finished product is in the link below. Oh, and did I say it comes with bonus audio? Narrated in the moment — you may even be able to hear that thickness in my voice.
Enjoy!
