ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

Introducing Stephen from ‘Stephen from the Inside Out’

This book was written with Stephen’s permission. I read chapters back to him and incorporated some of his comments in the text (italics). It won the Impress Prize for New Writers in 2019, resulting in Impress Books publishing it on 2nd April 2021 (World Autism Day). Illustrations by my niece, E.K Mosley.

There are so many ways to describe a person and they all only touch a particular surface:

Stephen spent 25 years on psychiatric wards,

Stephen loved animals: “As he said with regularity to me (with no heart-warming exceptions), ‘I hate people, but I love animals.’

Aged 45, Stephen was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, now referred to as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Stephen had a lovely smile but insisted he never smiled as a child:

“Stephen nods, repeating ‘never smiled’ and adds, ‘I never ate hard-boiled confectionery, you should write that down.’ He cannot abide the sound of the word ‘sweet’ and he doesn’t like me using it.“

Stephen smoked probably around 40/day as an adult. When outside he would always stub out his cigarette butt, pick it up and take it to a nearest bin.

So many ways to introduce Stephen to you, but I will begin at the end and share with you the preface to the book:

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PREFACE from ‘Stephen from the Inside Out’

It is 2018 and I’m sitting in a small room attached to a public library. I’m here to register Stephen’s death. It is strangely and repeatedly painful to have to keep telling people that he has died. Two days after it happened, I found myself sobbing in the changing room at a swimming pool. Grief surprised me.

The woman registrar facing me is kind and friendly as she asks me questions and fills in the death certificate. Date of birth? 3^rd April 1955. Occupation?

In his whole life Stephen had only one paid job, as a road sweeper, and he lost that after a couple of weeks because he fell asleep. I refuse the description, ‘unemployed’. I consider Stephen for a moment, and then I know what to say.

‘Poet.’

‘Retired poet?’

‘No, just poet’

She writes ‘poet’ and then ‘widower’ and we carry on filling in the form, but a warm wave of pride, happiness and grief rises inside me. How I wish Stephen could see that title. He would chuckle with pleasure, or perhaps look at me solemnly and say ‘Susie, I am a poet!’

I’ve kept a copy of that certificate and every time I remember ‘Occupation: Poet’, a feeling of gladness fills me. ‘Poet’ affirms what was central and precious to Stephen, his love of words, the free spirit that would not be silenced.

When I first met Stephen, this was not what I thought. When I first met Stephen, he was a ‘poor soul with mental illness’ who just needed a little help. And I was going to help him.

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Stephen the poet

Stephen wrote his first poem when he was 11 years old. This next part is taken from Chapter 4 and all of Stephen’s dialogue is transcribed directly from the audio recording I took of the conversations:

Eventually we return to the school and to a seminal moment, when he wrote his first poem. He recounts this to me in the voice of one honouring the sacred: ‘ “The Passing of Steam”. You should write that down. I wrote it. I spent a long time writing it. Four o’clock one Monday afternoon. I wasn’t in detention at all. My English teacher stayed there. My English master was sitting at one end of the room and I was sitting at the other end. He was looking after me while I wrote it. I began writing it at four o’clock and I left there at half past five. I got the late half-past-five train. What a rollicking I got when I got home too! And I’d written that poem. I’d written that poem!’

This was the inspiration, the catalyst for Stephen’s creative direction in life. He carried on writing poetry for the next 50 years.

I’d also written what I call ‘sort-of’ poetry since I was a teenager. I didn’t understand what drove me, until I heard Padraig O Tuama, an Irish poet, explain that he wrote poetry to survive. This from a gay Irishman who lives in Belfast.

     I ask Stephen if he agrees with Padraig. ‘Absolutely right.’

Stephen’s poems are written by hand on A4 pads of lined paper with amendments and crossings-out. Whenever I can, I type them up before they disappear into the mole hills of old post office receipts, charity letters, shopping lists and care agency/DHSS correspondence.

Certain phrases and sentences strike me:

‘An acrylic sensation of despondent desperation and despair.’

‘As the rain so intensely and monotonously yet luminously falls tonight.’

And occasionally surprise me:

‘The sheer ecstasy of the intrepid blackbird protruding onto the waving branches of the tree.’

When I read this back, a deep delighted chuckle emerges from the armchair. ‘Did I write that?’ I confirm that he did and we both laugh with pleasure.

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I want to finish with a poem that Stephen wrote which I have slightly edited. I have not added anything, but have made a few cuts to shape the poem. This poem is not in the book.

Autumn Day in the Garden with the birds and Hope of a Better Future
Stephen - October 2011

Oh, the rapturous, enchanting song 
of these ever captivating, enthralling birds – 
They blend in so harmoniously and intricately, 
a haze of effervescence 
among the fading trees 
and disintegrating leaves.  

I ponder obsessively and contemplate 
a scene of endless paradise and tranquillity, 
ensuing from this agonising and yet futile strife. 
Hope of an incomprehensible all-pervading rapture, 
When travelling days are done.