Jean is a maker of magic.
You can feel it moving around him as he enters a room. An aura of wonderful otherness as if he wears a cloak of creativity. Ready at any moment to whisk it into action and spring into sorcery! That’s how his poems and performances feel, incantations that pull you into his wild and whimsical world.
I remember when I first saw him sitting perfectly still at the Lost Souls poetry event, notebook held to his chest, and thinking “whatever he has to say, I want to hear it”.
Get to know him and you’ll understand there has been difficulty and danger on his path. Though, equipped with his ever present book of spells, he has conjured a way for himself. Jean’s performance’s are often brief compared to others, however they live with me long after the evening. That’s what you’ll find here, an enigmatic edition of Write Speak Recover. It will leave you wondering, checking hilltops for a silhouetted figure and catching music on the breeze.
Please be mindful WSR content can be thematically sensitive.
It could be said that I’ve been writing all my life - whether that’s poetry, stories or other similar tomfoolery. My parents both work in the theatre, so I’ve been submerged in the arts for about as long as I’ve been able to speak. But if you’re asking about how long I’ve been writing, speaking, processing, recovering - to be honest, that’s fairly hard to narrow down.
I have always written about day-to-day sorrows. I think you sort of have to. It’s better to know them, name them - it’s an important step in not letting them engulf you. The thing is that I don’t think I ever did it consciously. Growing up, mental health was never really at the forefront of my mind - you can thank our delightful schooling system for that. School notwithstanding, though, I don’t think we’re ever really taught to be in touch with our emotions, or how the world likes to swoop down and pick away at them. On a more personal level, it means I’ve rarely had a chance to step back and think “what the hell?!” - that just isn’t very English, is it? I think many of my poems now serve as an ode to that - not so much to any trauma I’ve been through, but to the sheer exhaustion that follows. Obviously we all interact with pain differently, and pain comes in more flavours than we have palates, but burnout’s a beat we can all dance to.
The Clockwork Knight
He’d make aimless trips
in the dunes of Yliaster,
The sand stained dullest lavender.
Once probably resplendent,
Now lustre-starved.
The sky blunt and grey,
Clouds stolen away.
If you narrowed your eyes,
You might catch him trudging through the sand -
His armour shadow-kissed
and fraught with rusty cogs,
Helmet awash with
soured iron,
Gnawing at his vision.
Every step reverberating with
silence,
save the clump, clump, clump on desolate sand.
As he walks with the gait of a marionette.
He wore on his belt
an empty scabbard,
An effigy to his countless battles.
Notched by his conflicts with the silver-scaled wyrms,
Scuffed here and there
by his wars against the copper-veined orcs,
The paint chipped and worn
by the many-eyed seraphs,
Who heralded the millennium.
A patch of blood or maybe oil (they say his veins ran with the stuff)
where the cutting edge should have been.
He fights no more, but
sometimes you can watch him settle atop a dune,
Hear him play his flute.
A melody of rust and
oil burned through.
Strident noise,
A great ballad's residue.
On the writing process
It’s pretty rare for me to have a hard-and-fast process where poems are concerned, as my brain often closely resembles the guts of a spaghetti dinner. More often than not, they come to me in a wave of caffeine-soaked inspiration, and these are typically the ones I’m most proud of - however The Clockwork Knight is a pretty marked exception. I had the idea for it several months before sitting down to write it, so it had plenty of time to simmer and really figure out what it wanted to say. As such, the actual “writing” of it took roughly 20 minutes, with its intended subject matter fluctuating thrice throughout (as subject matter is wont to). Overall, though, I’m quite happy with the outcome, and it served as a nice opportunity to unpack the academic burnout I was working through at the time. I wouldn’t want to shackle the poem to that experience, though.
Favourite poets, poetry nights, books or other resources:
I find myself influenced by Yeats, Heaney, a bit of The Libertines and maybe just a dash of Bukowski. Lately though, I’ve started taking notes from the classics - a bit of Sophocles here, a bit of Sappho there, or more recently, just anyone I hear on stage and find inspiring. I try to stay a bit fast and loose when it comes to inspiration.
A closing note from Tim
In closing, I thought I’d add this poem I wrote as I was on the bus to meet Jean for the photo shoot. I felt inspired that morning by what I knew of him and was nervously anticipating the meeting. I feel as though he spirited this into my mind.
The way out
(For Jean)
You know when you’re wandering out in the woods where all around is black and none in the world knows where you are. Only apparent in existence by a coordinate, completely alone, no signal on your phone, no one to know your position. A silent, solitary condition, only your feet feeling the pull to let you know you are still on the planet. All around the whispers of your ghosts moving through the trees, eyes clasped closed. The slight suggestion of sunlight in the veins. Those that carry the blood of the lives lived behind your lids.
You stand so still, only the smell of the forest to consume you as you consume you too. Folding inwards as the branches and spirits pull at you. As you roll into your deep in the darkness searching in a scream for some meaning, some magic, that might show the path. Willing your wisdom to wrap you in a warm embrace amid the tangle, the dank underneath.
When, without warning,
the
words
come.
A curl of a question at first, a slight suggestion of a story forming in your tailbone. Coiled in the coccyx. Then, pushing up through the pelvis. Around each vertebrae, with every vowel, the soft syllables, sliding over the spine, organising into lines, characters clicking into their place. Paragraphs pressing up into the mandible, moulding the mouth into movement. As your eyes snap open!
Awake now, crackling with courage speaking at first, then shouting! Spouting, a sweet sound of discovery, feet moving without thought carving a pathway of recovery. As the trees move as one as you go, commanding that they and all that live in them embrace your flow, suffocated by your sound.
All that was bad and all that was broken all the baleful brutish beings that bound you are banished as you beat to the rhythm of your clarity!
Your profound poetry.
Your words winding the way.
To sanctuary,
to safety,
to rewrite your history.
So,
friends
you know,
you know,
when you’re wandering out in the woods where all around is black,
where no one will hear you shout,
trust,
trust your words,
your words,
will walk you out.
Write Speak Recover, in collaboration with TheNeverPress is a collection of original portraits of poets using their art to find strength in their recovery journey from any form of dis-ease.
We invite you to follow Write Speak Recover on Instagram and to reach out to Tim Foley at WSR or us directly at the zine to learn more, or see how you can help us further the reach and impact of these brilliant, resilient voices.
Be kind. Stay present. One moment after the next.
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