The podcast series Conversations about Arts, Humanities and Health, hosted by Dieter DeClercq and Ian Sabroe, is well loved by many who work in the medical and health humanities. The series, supported by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, develops meaningful dialogue and connection between the humanities and medicine. The conversations take place online, and scholars, health professionals and the public discuss how the arts and humanities can inform healthcare. The recording of the conversation is then published as a podcast, together with a reflective summary by Dieter and Ian.
Having enjoyed listening to many episodes, I was honoured to be invited as a guest on the third season of the podcast. I had already had the pleasure of working with Ian, who was a contributor to the Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities, and the care and thoughtfulness with which the conversation was conducted therefore came as no surprise. I met Ian, Dieter, and Jennifer Pien for a preliminary online chat about what areas Jenn and I would like to cover in the conversation, and about topics of common interest, and we agreed a loose series of questions, which would still allow space for the conversation to take its own direction on the day.
It was a pleasure to talk with Jenn about her work with medical professionals as well as her own creative practice. Our conversation focused on the role of writing and personal stories in the medical and health humanities. We explored the relation between the personal and the critical, and we thought about how bringing the personal perspective into academic work does not mean losing a critical voice. More broadly, we thought about the value of lived experience, the meaning of creativity, and the varied craft of writing.
Thank you to Dieter, Ian and Jenn for such a generous, and generative, conversation.
You can listen to the podcast, which is episode 23 of Ian and Dieter’s series, here.
My second visit to The Angel with David took place on a very windy day. As I arrived, David emerged from the memorial in the trees, having made a short recording of the wind in the leaves. I entered the trees and took a few minutes to listen to the dry rustle as their branches waved above me, a sound that I strongly associate with this place. String had been threaded between two alder trees and packages filled with inscribed hearts were pegged to it, which spun and twisted in the air as the wind caught them.
Once we reached The Angel, David took out his new contact microphone, which he was able to clamp onto the ribs of the sculpture, rather than holding it in place as he did on our previous visit. This meant that there was less disturbance to the sound, as interference is caused by slight movements of the hand and the resulting changes in pressure of the microphone on the surface.
We tested the microphone on the west side of The Angel, having climbed the mound after leaving the shelter of the trees. The sound through the headphones was the same low pitch as on the previous recordings, but higher and clearer in tone. As gusts of wind buffeted the wings of The Angel, they resonated down into the sculpture and were clearly audible. David also set up a standing microphone to record the atmospheric conditions on site, so that these sounds could be in conversation with the recordings of the Angel’s interior vibrations.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
David wanted to record at the same points on the Angel in different conditions, so we devised a rudimentary map of the sculpture. Walking round The Angel, I counted twenty ribs and we divided these into four groups of five. We mapped these onto the points of the compass, so that we were recording the west, north, east, and south faces of the sculpture.
Counting five ribs round, David clamped the microphone to the back of The Angel, as high as he could reach. The recording here was different in tone, having an eerie quality like the soundtrack of a horror film. The wind’s gusts were still audible, but less dominant than on The Angel’s western side.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
Five more ribs counted, and we listened to the sound on The Angel’s east face, again placing the microphone as high on the sculpture as we could reach. As on the western side, the wind once more became the prominent feature. David recorded for five minutes in each location, and he explained that, once these files were placed in sequence, the distinctions between them would become more evident.
The final five ribs took us round to the south of the Angel and David fixed the microphone to the front of its feet. Here, the sound was softer and quieter, and the wind was muted. It felt as though The Angel was sheltering the sound, and us, from the force of the wind.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
David had recorded at the site once more between our first and second visits, rising on a misty dawn to capture the site without the constant rumble of traffic. Even at this time on a Sunday morning, the flow of cars had been unceasing, however, and David had noted that his recordings of the Angel picked up the vibrations of passing vehicles. On this visit, we were unable to hear the resonances of the traffic, and it seemed that the vibrations to the structure caused by the buffeting of the wind were more audible, with the traffic noise receding to a supporting note.
As on our last visit to The Angel, there were several visitors to the site when we were recording. It was notable that this time they did not approach us to ask what we were doing. I wondered whether this was because of the shift in the recording equipment that we were using. On our first visit, David had held the microphone to the body of the Angel and looked like a doctor with a stethoscope. The new method of clamping the microphone to the sculpture involved less direct contact with The Angel, and David looked more like a structural engineer visiting the site to make tests. Even though we were involved in the same activity, it seemed that a minor change in the recording technique – namely, how David attached the contact microphone to The Angel – had changed the appearance of what we were doing, to make it look more technical and more scientific.
In her poignant and powerful collection of poems, A Fine Yellow Dust, written in the year following her daughter’s suicide, Laura Apol includes the poem ‘Patient Stone’. The poem is based in an Iranian tradition that when your pain is overwhelming, you go in search of your ‘patient stone’. Once you have found it, you sit alone with it and tell it your story. As you unburden yourself, your pain will lessen and once you reach the end of your story, the stone will break into pieces.
Apol’s poem records an afternoon of searching for her own ‘patient stone’, so that it can hold something of her overwhelming grief. She accords agency to the stone, believing not that she will find it but that ‘it will find me’. But what stone would be the right one for the task? She asks, ‘How large is a stone / that can manage this work?’ Should she carry it home with her when she has found it? Once it has broken into pieces, should she visit it? She concludes by reflecting that she will need to find ‘the right stone’, because, whole or broken, ‘it will be mine for life’.
A few days before the last anniversary of my sister’s death, I was on Lindisfarne, a tidal island just off the Northumberland coast. I had wanted to find a stone on the beach here that would mark this anniversary, and I wandered along the strand looking at the pebbles. I was drawn to the smooth, oval-shaped stones, coloured like the sand, that were piled there. Picking them up, they sat well in my hand, and they had a pleasing weight and heft to them. Turning over one of the stones, I saw that it had been inscribed in pen with a name and date, and I liked the idea that this stone had already been picked up and held by someone else. I put the stone in my bag and continued my walk around the perimeter of the island to the causeway, accompanied by the sound of seals singing on a sandbar just offshore.
It was only when I examined the stone more closely at home that I realised the date that had been marked in pen on its surface was 28 August 2021. Not only had this stone already been picked out by someone else, but it had been inscribed on the anniversary of my sister’s death. It felt that this was the ‘right stone’, and that, even as I had been looking for it, it had found me.
I had recently attended an online weaving course run by Sarah Ward of Lark and Bower. Sarah teaches off-loom weaving, which uses left over yarn to stitch basic weave structures, such as twill and herringbone, around everyday found objects. Instead of writing or drawing on the stone, I decided to make a weaving around it, a practice reminiscent of the Japanese art of wrapping stones. Choosing a plain, natural thread that toned with the sand-hued pebble, I wrapped the warp threads carefully around the stone, working from left to right. I then stitched the weft threads through the warp in a two-twill pattern, working across the width of the pebble from bottom to top. The weaving was a slow and meditative process, taking several days to complete.
I sat with this stone, not to tell it the story of my grief, but to weave around it a thread that, as I was winding and stitching, held memories of my sister. The process of weaving was slow and patient work. The yarn covered over, without erasing, the pen inscription that had already been made on the stone, so that the finished work took on a palimpsestic quality. The stone currently sits on a bookshelf in my study, and I often pick it up and hold it for a minute or so, feeling its weight and texture in my hand.
In her workshops, Sarah encourages participants to place their woven objects back where they found them. For her, it is a cathartic process to return these objects to their original surroundings, enhanced by the weaving. The thread used is a natural yarn, which will degrade naturally over time. I wonder what this stone would look like back on the beach at Lindisfarne, taking its place amongst the other oval pebbles. Would the weaving gradually disappear, eroded by the action of weather and the tides, to uncover the writing once more? Would another person encounter this stone and imbue it with their own meaning and significance, adding another layer to the palimpsest? Would it feel cathartic to return it to the beach on Holy Island, or would it feel as if I am leaving something precious behind?
I have long intended to walk across the causeway to Holy Island, as many pilgrims do each year. Perhaps I could carry the stone with me as I do so, and end the walk by returning it to the strand. This gesture would honour the spirit of Sarah’s workshop by giving the stone back to the island and to the sea.
Picture Credit: Anne Whitehead
References
Laura Apol, A Fine Yellow Dust (East Lancing, Michigan: Michigan University Press, 2021).
I was delighted to be in conversation recently with Rebecca Helman about the Relating Suicide book. Rebecca is part of the Suicide Cultures team at Edinburgh University, a five-year project funded by a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award. The project focuses on the social and cultural contexts of suicide in Scotland, and it has a deep commitment to working with lived experiences of suicide and suicidality.
My conversation with Rebecca began by reflecting on the trajectory of my work and how I came to write a book on suicide. We reflected on the writing of the book during the Covid-19 pandemic, and what impression this left on the work. We then moved on to think about what creativity means in relation to the book and the ways in which its form bridges the critical and the creative. We considered the importance of capturing feeling as well as facts in relation to suicide, which formed an important link between the book and the Suicide Cultures project.
We then focused on the book more specifically. We talked about the structuring of the chapters around a series of questions, and the limits of what we can know in relation to suicide. We thought about the emphasis that I put on the importance of place in connection to suicide-related grief, and about the language of living beside suicide.
Our conversation closed by thinking about the archive, reflecting on the ways in which my book disrupts institutional archives relating to suicide and is suggestive of more creative archiving practices. Rebecca shared the project’s making of a photographic archive, based on images contributed by those affected by suicide. We ended by registering the importance of listening as well as speaking in the context of suicide narratives.
Film still, Where We Will Go (2023) by Kate Sweeney
To mark Baby Loss Awareness Week (9-15 October), I am posting the text of a talk I recently gave at a half-day event focusing on sensitive subjects. Organized by Olivia Turner at Newcastle University, the workshop explored ethics and sensitive subject matters in creative practice.
Working with Lived Experience of Losing a Baby from a Multiple Pregnancy
The film Where We Will Go emerged out of a year-long practice of engagement with two families who had lost one twin from a multiple pregnancy at or before birth. The project team was me, Judith Rankin from the Faculty of Medicine, Nicholas Embleton from the Neonatal intensive Care Unit at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, and the charity Tiny Lives. We commissioned artist-researcher Kate Sweeney as the creative practitioner on the project.
The first phase of the project worked individually with parents, and Kate invited them to go on a ‘memory walk’ in a place that was meaningful for them and gather materials from which inks would be made. These inks were then given back to the parents, and the families drew and wrote with them – Kate has animated these images in the film, alongside footage of the places the parents went. In the project’s second phase the parents were brought together for the making of the film. Attention turned to the text of the film, which Kate compiled from conversations with the parents, as well as to the sound recording of the voices, and reviewing edits of the film together.
In this presentation, I focus on two aspects of the project that resonate with the theme of sensitive subjects. First, I think about the practice of working with a lived experience that the parents still sometimes struggled to think about. Secondly, I reflect on the importance to the film not of twinning but of triangulation.
First, then, the practice of representing a subject that was profoundly sensitive to the parents who participated in the project. They wanted the film to represent their experience, both as a resource for other parents and as a vehicle for talking to their children about their missing twin, or sibling, either now or in the future. But they also did not want to make a film that they would find difficult to watch – they wanted parents experiencing this form of loss to watch the film and be comforted by how other parents had navigated it, so that they would have hope. One mother observed: ‘I’d like the film to be able to help others in those initial days, so that they know it does improve. That you can live beside it. We all move together alongside her.’ The process of making the inks sought to base the project in an activity: the parents were doing and could say as little or as much around that as they wished. The activity was slow and structured, and the parents chose to involve their children and their own parents in the gathering of the materials.
What was striking was the extent to which, in talking about the inks and their making, the parents were able to speak of their loss, and perhaps more powerfully so than in addressing the death head on. Kate spoke of the process of making inks as one that held its own poetic vocabulary of grief. For example, the darkening of the ink as the materials react to the mordant is called a saddening. We thought about the inks as infused with the materials and with their associations. The rose inks were made from petals gathered from the rosebush planted in remembrance of the lost twin in her grandparent’s garden and the fragrance of the ink prompted a wish for the baby’s memory to infuse the heart of the person who opened the bottle, the scent meaning that they too could learn her ‘by heart’. Gathered by the twin’s grandparents, the petals were sorted and sent to her parents in the post, the activity a means of familial connection and itself communicative of hopes that they (she) would survive the journey. Describing the act of making a painted butterfly with her eldest daughter, another mother observed: ‘You put it together and see how it’s separated out, with the inks pulling through’. She then described the responses of her two children to the loss of their sister: ‘Her twin brother doesn’t even know what he’s lost. Her sister feels the loss more because she wanted a little sister. But she would have been more left out if she was here.’ The act of separating out and the inks pulling through bleeds into an articulation of how the baby’s memory diffuses differentially through her sibling and co-twin.
The memorialisation of babies lost at or around birth tends toward the metonymic register. The cast of a footprint is powerful because it is a part of the whole, it stands for what is missing. The inks tend more toward the metaphoric register – they enable creativity because they can be infused with any material that holds an association with the loss. The water is a carrier – of the material but also of the associations with which it is invested. In the Buddhist tradition, children who die are ‘mizuko’, which translates as children of the water. The making of the inks resonated with and formalised the mourning rituals in memory of the parents’ own unborn, or born too soon, children.
In making the film, we were aware that at its heart were two twins who had not survived birth. We were working with two families, first one to one and then together. There were two memory walks – one to a beach and one in the hills. The film was structured around twinning of different kinds, and Kate used the split screen of the film to amplify this motif of the double or twin.
Reflecting on the film, I am struck though by the importance of the structure of triangulation. Every session that we held with the parents involved both me and Kate Sweeney as facilitators. For the most part, Kate led the session, and I was in the role of witness, noting down key words and phrases that then formed the basis of the film text. Sometimes I asked for elaboration of a point, or asked questions and gave prompts. I kept my own sketchbook-journal that recorded and reflected on each session in the following days. After each session, Kate and I scheduled half an hour to talk about what had been shared with us and to record some preliminary thoughts.
In terms of process, it seems to me that the triangulation was vital in terms of the sensitivity of the subject matter. It meant that the therapeutic connotations of the one-to-one relation were disrupted. For a form of grief that has not been recognised and that has felt unheard outside of the family group, the witness-function of the third person in the room seemed important to the parents. The sessions offered them a space away from work and family where they could take time to reflect and to create positive new memories in relation to the loss. One parent noted: ‘With a baby to look after, there wasn’t time then to process the loss properly. The sessions provide a mental space and you and Kate are open and listening. There are no interruptions. The memories are so few and the focus is around the funeral. The project is giving us prompts to create new memories and associations.’ The triangulation enabled the project team to hold the difficult memories between and across the sessions and to shape the film in response to them.
What then is to be summed up from these reflections? The main point I want to pull out of these threads is the value of indirection in relation to sensitive subjects, of coming at things at a slant. One the one hand, the process of making and talking about the inks embedded indirection into the project’s process, making them a carrier of meaning, loss and hope. On the other hand, indirection was achieved through embedding into the conversations a witness, who is an explicitly reflective and recording presence. The ethics of the project then lie not only in enabling the parents to speak of this underacknowledged form of grief, but also in enacting and reinforcing the act of listening, so the parents also knew that they had been heard.
Although the weather is still warm, there is a definite feel of autumn when I visit The Angel today. Leaves have started to fall in the copse of trees, and it is noticeably lighter and less shaded than in the summer months, though there is not yet the open, exposed feeling of the winter season. The horse chestnut tree that stands behind the fence marking the western perimeter of the site is dropping conkers and their prickly cases litter the ground.
The copse was planted at the same time as The Angel was erected and it has now grown to maturity. The main planting is of alder trees, and it is around their slender trunks that many of the ribbons and tokens are tied. Alders thrive in wet ground, which strengthens their wood, and they improve soil fertility on former industrial wasteland. This makes the tree an ideal choice for planting at The Angel site, which was formerly used for mining. Rainwater drains from the mound on which The Angel stands, meaning that the path through the copse is often muddy underfoot. Recent rain has made the ground waterlogged today, and I pick my way carefully where the feet of others have already churned the ground.
An alder wood was traditionally known as a carr and was thought to have a mysterious atmosphere, with the green dye from the tree’s flowers believed to colour the clothes of fairies. When the pale wood of the alder is cut, it turns a deep orange as if the tree is bleeding, which caused the alder to be associated with pain. I think of the resonances of the memorial with these traditional beliefs: children often refer to the copse as a fairy garden, and the bark of some of the trees has been incised with the marks of people’s grief.
The tree at the entrance to the copse is an oak, and its acorns are turning from green to brown. The branches of this tree are always filled with tokens and many objects are placed around its base. Today, a gathering of stones of different sizes is placed nearby, although there is nothing to indicate the significance of this memorial. The tree acts as a portal to the copse and is visible from The Angel, which helps explain why it is the focus for so many of the tributes and messages that are left. Like the alder, the oak also has traditional associations with the sacred, and pagan rituals were commonly practised in oak groves.
A plum cherry tree stands nearest The Angel, marking the head of the steep and often-slippery incline that leads out of the copse. In early spring, the tree is a dazzle of white blossom against blue skies. In winter, baubles and wire butterflies hang suspended from its bare branches. I often think of this tree as a sign of hope, associating its flowers with the end of winter and its decorations with the festivities of the Christmas season.
