The Poetry of Grief
Alan Durant, poet, is also a widely published and award-winning author of books for children of all ages, including a picture book about grief, Always and Forever, which he has used for workshops at similar past Festivals. His wife and soulmate, Sam Van Riet, died of cancer in South Africa in 2023. He came back to England devastated and broken, couch-surfed for months but eventually gravitated to Hasting. It is here that he has found some solace through friends and a new partner.
It seemed to me a rare act of courage not only to employ the art of poetry in the mitigation of one’s own grief, but also to expose these poems publicly. He brought along a selection of mementos: a kintsugi ceramic, a book called Hope illustrated by Sam, some Bobbi Brown eye shadow, de Botton’s Art of Travelling, were among them. Using these as pointers he recited the whole series of poems from memory, tracking his grief journey from her bedside through his memories of her to his continuing search (as Orpheus) to have her live again, the near-travesty of her ashes in a biscuit tin, to the kintsugi bowl, given to him by his new partner Sofia.
Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending broken porcelain not to hide the joins of broken pieces but to celebrate them: “… my heart cracked and broke/and shattered into a thousand fragments/which I did not believe could ever rejoin repair/and here I am two-and-a-half years after/my cracks inlaid with the gold of love and friendship/improbably held together by lustrous scars.” An extraordinary metaphor for the process of grief. He does not, as he states, believe in healing, but in ‘restoration and repair.’
His recitation style is deceptively conversational, but Durant has an erudite understanding of poetic form. The villanelle “I am the One Who Lights the Lights that Light Up The World”, for example, has a religious connection, or connotation, and echoes both in form and content Dylan Thomas’ famous Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, managing at the same time to be intensely personal.
The final poem, Goodnight, My Heart, was read to music along with improvised piano accompaniment by his best friend Max. Durant’s descriptions of the progress and form of his grief were so palpable, and the poetry so highly charged, that to applause by clapping felt tawdry and inappropriate. Evenings like this are rare and to be treasured.
Alan Durant read the poetry of his grief at Mike’s Shop, 74 Norman Road, on Sunday 24 May.
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