I have only heard Seb speak once at a poetry event, the poem below, (and a mad one about croissants!) and the performance stayed with me. This episode is exactly why I decided not to solely focus on recovery as it might usually be spoken about in addiction and sobriety. Rather, understanding that we all experience things that have a profound effect on our lives and can shake us to our core. Causing a need to grieve, rebuild and find a path forward in a state that is forever changed. Seb approaches the topic of losing his brother with disarming, gentle humour. A nostalgic commentary on life and how things like sport permeate into our collective psyches. Providing a place of context we can work from to understand what someone might be going through. I loved the portrait shoot, just hanging out with a ball, talking about life and the love of a global game. This is a touching and tender tribute to family, coming of age and brotherly love. Thank you Seb for finding poetry, memory, and the humour in grief.
Please be mindful WSR content can be thematically sensitive.
Seb Bance
Poetry wasn't something I ever set out to use as therapy. But over time, it became just that, a place where I could hold my feelings still for long enough to really feel them, especially ones I normally try to avoid.
My mum always loved poetry and shared that love with us growing up. That love has circled back around in my adult life, becoming something we now share as a practice. In recent years, we've been writing poetry and sending it to each other - sometimes about my brother, who passed away not long ago, and sometimes just about beauty in the world, things we want to notice and hold on to.
For me personally, poetry has helped in ways I didn’t expect. I tend to avoid things, tasks, emotions - anything uncomfortable. But writing poetry requires me to sit with the feeling, to notice it, to pull it apart and play with the strands. I leave notepads scattered in different rooms of the house, so when something surfaces: grief, joy, confusion, laughter - I can write it down in ten seconds and get back to whatever I was doing: dishes, playing with my daughter, procrastinating. It’s not about writing perfectly, I can always come back to it later; it’s about pausing long enough to be present.
Writing for my brother has been a strange sort of gift. It takes me right back to our earliest memories, playing football as kids, to the warmth of having a big brother who had my back and gave me confidence. He believed in positivity, sometimes to the point of absurdity, and remembered to find joy even in the worst moments. In the weeks after he passed I kept finding myself on my balcony laughing through sobs while writing poetry about him. I’m sure the neighbours thought I’d lost it, but honestly, it was beautiful.
Divorce can be incredibly hard on children and families. It shakes the structure of your world. But it can also open unexpected doors. My parents separated when I was four. Around that same time, my brother Ali introduced me to football. It became our escape: a place for joy, beauty, and fun. He was just eight, but already responsible enough to take me to the park. There was only one time it ended in blood, only one. Just one, for an eight-year-old boy with a four-year-old. Not bad. And, and, to be fair to him, he used his brand new white T-shirt to apply pressure to the cut. I've got a little scar by my eye that you can see. Ali said that moment kept playing in his mind in the days before he died. That moment of him looking after me, that protection he had as an older brother for me, his younger brother, played throughout his mind. As if the instinct to protect me was imbued in his soul.
Grief can be a swirl of millions of emotions in moments that seem both endless and fleeting. But there’s something strangely fascinating about that too, experiencing emotions so visceral and new that they become, in a way, intriguing and worthy of study. Even the hardest ones. Even the ones you’d never wish on anyone. Experiencing that new emotion is kind of cool in and of itself, there’s value in being able to say, “I’ve never felt this before,” and just sitting with that, experiencing and observing it for the first time.
I don't like the idea that death is only sad. When I remember my brother, I want to remember the joy, the belief, the determination, the refusal to acknowledge (out loud at least) that things could go wrong. Ali said his cancer diagnosis was the best thing that ever happened to him. Personally, I could think of news I would rather receive. But that was Ali. He used it as a chance to reassess his life and focus on what mattered to him. He gave me that same push - his last gift to me was a script I had written - a very Ali gift (cost him nothing) - with a note that read “Stay inspired, this was so good mon Frere.” Signed Ali* Even at 39 he used his childhood signature The first 3 letters of his name and then a star.
Looking back at the script Ali gave me back. It's not great, but it's a start. And, more importantly it’s a reminder that if I don't put myself out there and open myself to feedback and criticism, how will I improve? A reminder that even if my writing isn’t perfect now, it’s a start. But for Build Me A Shelter, that's different. I might be a more skilled writer in the future, but I won't be able to write it how I did then. And that's because there won't be a way to capture the memories and emotions attached to them in that same way again. There's no way to experience that feeling for my brother again. It's unique to that moment, to the immediacy of my grief. It reflects on my life with my brother from my first memories to the moments and days after he passed. I wanted to capture the humour, joy, hope, sadness, regret, sorrow, belief, silliness that captures my brother. My feelings now that he has gone. He built me a shelter throughout our lives, and now I have to remind myself I don't have to stay hidden under it, I can step out, take what he gave me, and keep building something of my own.
Build me a shelter (for Ali)
Build me a shelter from
Goal posts, park fences, jumpers
and the belief I felt from you
Each time you took me with you and said:
“Seb’s playing too.”
Build me a shelter from
Skateboard wheels, big hills
and your friends’ shouts of “CAR!”
Build me a shelter from
Matching white Umbros, Diadora boots one size too small
and a ball that curled from one side of the goal to the other.
Build me a shelter from
Swaps, got, got need
and the feeling of pressing the shiny Man U badge
into our shared sticker collection.
Build me a shelter from
A million cups of Earl Grey tea made by Grandma,
3 chocolate biscuits, Sega Mega Drive
and me constantly asking you for the MS Dos password to Championship Manager 2
Build me a shelter from
My brother The Captain, goal kicks to the halfway line,
Ruddy cheeks, blue skin, league titles
and being the best teammate you could be.
Build me a shelter from
Your friends and my friends which became our friends
3g pitches, karaoke rumble, nights out, nights in,
Romantic Match of the Day with Gary Linekar, Ally McCoist talking about stanchions
and a million shared jokes.
“What the hell’s a stanchion anyway, Ali?” (Ali laughs).
Build me a shelter from
Getting crushed by waves on surfing trips and please please build me a shelter
from that weird room in France me you and Stefan shared
where the shower was in the centre of the room
and only the mist on the glass spared us the glare of 3 full moons
after a sweaty, 10 hour day of cycling.
Build me a shelter from
Watching you bury your head in the sand and pay no attention when things got heated.
It’s cooler in the sand anyway.
Build me a shelter from
Practicing stepovers and round the worlds in the garden and that
Instinctual feeling, knowing exactly where the other person would be.
Build me a shelter from
Watching you face death with certainty, clarity and purpose.
From showing the beauty and wisdom in knowing you are going to die
and doing everything in your power to make the world a better, happier place.
Build me a shelter from
Your voice in my head screaming ‘Nuts!’
Every time my daughter backheels the ball through my legs.
Build me a shelter from
Each time we make a choice to believe that we deserve success and happiness
and knowing you are here with us when we do.
Build me a shelter from
When I was writing this and crying
and Proclaimers 500 Miles comes on your spotify playlist
and I start laughing because I know you would be too.
Build me a shelter from
All the times I want to send you a message but can’t.
Build me a shelter Ali.
Build me a shelter.
On Writing
I’m someone who usually has a lot of work in progress. I find I need to trick myself into working so, having options is helpful as I tend to avoid what I am actually supposed to be working on. In no particular order: I have just finished writing a book, it’s a Sci-Fi comedy called 3000Ander. Hopefully, that name isn’t taken. It’s set in and around the year 3000 and the main character is called Ander. See what I did? It’s currently spread across 5 or 6 notebooks and I’m in the process of typing it up. I have a sitcom in development with my wife, which we’re really enjoying putting together. I write quite a lot of poetry that will never see the light of day, some which I share with friends and loved ones and very few which I decide to share publicly. I wrote a series of poems recently while on holiday with my partner which I’d like to share at some point and will be looking to go to some poetry nights in the next month or so to perform (I’ll probably ask Tim about the nights he’s going to and follow him to one). I did my first standup a few months ago and am planning to do another at some unspecified future date. I’m currently stuck between performing in character as “Poetry Graham” the worlds greatest lover, poet and baker versus as myself and am trying to find a happy medium between the part of me that enjoys poetry and believes in its power and the part of me that enjoys laughing at people like me who enjoy poetry.
On Inspiration
My mum. She writes beautifully and has a way of expressing complex emotion in just a few words. Reading her poetry is always a useful way for me to learn a new word or two. Whenever I see sunlight cast in shadows between the leaves on trees I think of a line of hers where she describes us as her ‘sun-dappled children’. It's the sort of sentiment I like, remembering to take joy in the small moments of life and the people we love.
Write Speak Recover, in collaboration with TheNeverPress is an open, free collection of original portraits of poets using their art to find strength in their recovery journey from any form of dis-ease.
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If you need support, here are some resources:
Samaritans
Alcohol Change
Recovery Dharma
Alcoholics Anonymous
Be kind. Stay present. One moment after the next.
This article was put together by Tim Foley, the WSR contributor, Graham Thomas and Rosie Cook.
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