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Stewart Henderson — How To Speak Love In A Storm?
00:15:32
What is there to say or do when the life of a loved one has been upended and devastated? Stewart Henderson’s poem “How To Speak Love In A Storm?” offers a tender masterclass in how you can accompany someone — or even just yourself — through a time of tumult and pain. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.
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My name is Padre Gautuma and amazingly, this is the 10th season of Poetry Unbound. We began in 2020. We'd recorded it all in 2019, not knowing what 2020 would bring. And during that first season, what moved me so much was hearing from so many people who were writing to say that a poem meant this thing or something else to them during that terrible time of the intensity of COVID and lockdown and worrying. And I heard from so many people involved in healthcare settings. Doctors, cleaners, nurses, patients, families of patients and bereaved people and chaplains. One fellow wrote to me and said that he'd come home from working in a hospital and look at his kids from a distance, and having seen and contained so much pain and shock and unknowing during the day, and at the same time trying not to pass on his anguish to his kids, trying, trying to try on some way of being himself that could give some sense of normalcy to them in whatever way he was able. He was a hospital chaplain and I've thought about him so often in the years since, because the way that he reflected back on the poetry that he'd heard made me see poetry in a particular way, the ways that he was present to his own life, to the life of the people he loved, as well as then to the life of the people that he was meeting in a hospital. I found that to be such a noble work. And I suppose in a way, the choice of this poem for Poetry Unbound Today is an honouring of everybody who does that in their life, in their work, the way that they go about their daily business. How to Speak Love in a Storm by Stuart Henderson. How to speak love in a storm depends on the substance of the voice as the trees rage and roof tiles smash where seagulls are grounded and there is only chaos how to speak love in a storm Is to put up a signpost for the lost as on the bitter hillside you lie murmuring on why is this happening now? Exposure Like a fox circling your lamb's heart. How to speak love in a storm means finding the right inflection, not offering words and hollow prayers, but walking backwards with you into your abandoned years. This poem by Stuart Henderson is from an out of print book titled Homeland that I have had for many years, almost 30 years. And I know so many of the poems in it off by heart because I've turned to them so often. Once a friend of mine was going for a stay, seven days or 10 days at a mental health facility, and he had told me about this he had been in a time of crisis in his life. And I put together a little package of poems, 7 poems or 10 poems, however days he was going to be there. I gave him that amount, I don't quite remember now, and said to him, open up a poem a day if you want. And some of the poems were funny. I thought maybe he'd appreciate a laugh. Hopefully he wasn't offended by those. Some of the poems were meaningful, some of the poems were clever. And this was one of the poems. I didn't know what to say to my friend. He kept his privacies private, as he should. But I suppose I wanted to indicate something of the chaos of all of our lives, something of the storm. He was going through a storm, and no poem is going to solve anything. However, it was a way of saying, I am trying to reach out to you in a storm with something about this. And in the contours, the stanzas, the textures, the carefully chosen language of a poem. To try to say something of love and poetry is sometimes a way we have of saying that we're trying. To. In many ways, I think how to speak love in a storm is something like a masterclass in chaplaincy or therapy or friendship or how to be a good neighbor. Firstly, to be a kind presence in a storm depends on the substance of the voice. Now, I don't think that that means that you have to adopt a particularly sonorous tone to your voice. I think it is to focus us on the substance of love that could be present in a voice when you're trying to speak to somebody who's in a storm, or when you're needing to be spoken to in a storm yourself. And the voice is linked with observation because this poem is filled with information about how it is to observe somebody who's in their own pain. Distress is described by Stuart Henderson in powerful, powerful ways. The trees rage, roof tiles smash, seagulls are grounded. There is only chaos. That's a tempest, that's a storm. And the second stanza does something quite similar. It puts up a signpost for the lost that doesn't put demands to say, move here quickly, you should have done it already. Can't you see the signpost? Hurry on, go. There's your destination. The metaphor of the signpost is wise because signposts stay for a long time, and if you're lost, it can be a relief. And if you're exhausted, you can think well, that will remember the way. Even if I'm too tired to go there now, or even if I don't know how to go there now someone is sharing a way to go and that way isn't going away. What a relief. And after the signpost again, Stuart Henderson returns to careful observation about what it's like to be in distress. This lost person who's on a bitter hillside. And the awful question of why is this happening now? I've always thought that the now at the end of that question just takes a painful question and then adds a deeper part to it. The now at the end of it is brutal and shame as well, because in times of difficulty or a storm, it's not just the event. It can feel like. The exposure, as Stuart Henderson puts it, the shame of, how is it that I can be going through this? How will I talk about this? For so many of us, what ails us can shame us. Exposure like a fox encircling your lamb's heart is how he describes it, the prowl and the prey of it all. I think there's so much tenderness in the word lamb and heart. Of course, there's a sense of feeling exposed here, but the inclusion of lamb's heart, I think, is a way of trying to describe innocence in the midst of a time that might be feeling like anything but years ago, I was falling apart and I was in therapy. I was in my 20s, living in Australia, and the therapist was particularly clinical. He didn't say anything about himself. There was no banter before or after. And during one of the sessions, I happened to mention this poem. I can't remember which part of it I might have mentioned. The exposure like a fox circling your lamb's heart, or the part at the end about walking backwards with you into your abandoned years. Anyway, at the end of the session, at the time when he'd normally be saying, I'll see you next week, he said, could you give me a copy of that poem? And it was the first kind of extemporaneous communication between the two of us that felt like two adults meeting without one being the client and the other being the clinician. And it changed me. I don't know why. Maybe it was the love of the poem. Maybe it was that I thought that I had something that I could offer him that he might want to use for himself or with other people. I have no idea. But this poem is one to which I have such debt and gratitude. The poem and the poet, Stuart Henderson. This poem is arranged in three stanzas. And so the final one, the shortest, I think, is one of the most critical. It's the one that speaks about finding the right inflection and not offering words and hollow prayers. Stuart Henderson is from Liverpool in England, a great city for poetry and music. And I don't think the term thoughts and prayers was used there much or is used there much. So I don't think this poem is deliberately addressing that, but it is addressing the ways within which many of us can be critical of words used loosely in a hollow way. Not offering words and hollow prayers is what it says. There's irony, of course, because these are words. And sometimes we understand that offerings of words are the only thing we can do in as well as attention as well as action, in the ways that we are, as well as the recognition of inadequacy. But somehow, still, the presence with another person, words can be part of that. He is trying to use words to speak about offering something that's more than words, which is acknowledgement and seeing and recognition of that bitter hillside and the exposure and the rage and chaos as well. Of course, the final lines, walking backwards with you into your abandoned years, I think they're so wise in terms of the careful conjugation that they use, the careful images that they use. It's like the person who's being addressed is like Dante. They have to face the Inferno and they have to go through it, but they have a poet like Virgil in the Inferno and like this poem here, as an accompanier kind of a friend. The years, of course, can stretch back into your own history, those abandoned years. I've known a few people who've been among the first responders after a school shooting and have been accompaniers to those poor bereaved families and the abandoned years afterwards as well, which of course, stretch into the future. So walking backwards when you can't see what's coming, but you can only see what's past, this poem holds together a few things. The storm, yes. And it gives such time to trying to make sure to communicate that it's perceived that the storm is chaotic and terrible. And alongside that, what is constant in this poem is. Is the attempt to include love everywhere, repeated throughout. How to Speak Love in a Storm. How to Speak Love in a Storm by Stuart Henderson. How to speak love in a storm depends on the substance of the voice. As the trees rage and roof tiles smash where seagulls are grounded and there is only chaos. How to speak love in a storm is to put up a signpost for the lost as on the bitter hillside you lie murmuring, why is this happening now? Exposure like a fox circling your lamb's heart how to Speak Love in a Storm means finding the right inflection, not offering words and hollow prayers, but walking backwards with you into your abandoned years.
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How to Speak Love in a Storm originally appears in Homeland, published in 1993 by Hodder Stoughton. Though Homeland is out of print, you can find the poem@onbeing.org and on Stuart Henderson's website, stuart-henderson.com A special thank you to Fee Warburton for coordinating the rights.
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To use this poem.
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Poetry Unbound is Andrea Prevoted, Carla Zanoni, Daryl Chen, Sparrow Murray, Chris Heagle, Bill Siegmund and me, Padre Gotuma. Our music is composed and provided by Gautam Srikishan and Blue Dot Sessions.
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These episodes were made in New York.
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City on unceded Lenape land. Special thanks to Will Salwin, Nave Yan and Adam Morell at Digital Island Studios in Manhattan. Thanks as well to Frederick Courtright of the Permissions company. Poetry Unbound is an independent non profit production of the On Being project founded and led by Krista Tippett. This season of Poetry Unbound is made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Our other funding partners include the Liana foundation, the Bidel foundation and Engaging the Senses Foundation. Poetry Unbound would be nothing without the listening community. Thanks to all who listen, who read and give through our weekly Poetry Unbound substack or directly to On Being. For links to the substack and to find out more about Poetry Unbound books and events, visit poetryunbound.org.