The University of the Self #35

Hibernaculum

Image description: A heart-shaped stone is painted with a brightly coloured selection of heart-shape and round/swirly repeat patterns. The colours are mainly reds and blues, with yellow, white and green. The heart stone is resting on dark brown wood and behind are some real green cowslip leaves and another rock.

Hibernaculum

\hye-ber-NAK-yuh-lum\

Noun

A winter refuge built from leaves and other materials

Somebody once said that we are all meant to have a book inside us.
I don’t know if this is true, or what kind of book they were referring to either—
a novel? A pamphlet? Maybe they meant what I think of as book books—
r e a l l y  r e a l l y l o n g  books, built from bazillions of words

(like Don Quixote),      or
memoir or biography, history, science, space, politics.
Maybe something off the beaten track—

coming out in 2023 from A. Press! 100 Mismatched Socks I Found Under My Bed.

Maybe I should be writing that instead.


I’ll tell you a secret. For as long as I can recall, I have wanted to be a writer.

Other (perhaps less kindly) people have joked that we are all meant to have a book inside us but in many cases, perhaps it ought to have stayed right there. I don’t like things like that—folk might get to thinking their own inside book isn’t good enough
to be let out. It might stop them writing it. Write yours right out of yourself,
if you can—if nothing else, at least it will ease that itchy pen.

What if every one of us does have a book inside, but some don’t know how
to let their books out? This is a complex thought, awaiting exploration in a book
of its own. I spent the first 42 years of my life in this uncertain space—
I felt books wedged inside my skin, uncomfortable as bricks inside a stocking.
I never in a million years thought even one would come out.

I’m thinking here of confidence, support, belief, accessibility.
Gender, socioeconomic status, equality, discrimination, resources.
I’m thinking of Imposter Syndrome —

a creature that chooses form according to your own worst fears. It tells me that I will
never make it as a writer. It knows that I am thinking of it, even when I pretend I am not. Despite some success with my poetry, I suffer this creature every day.

Words, however, appear to be its kryptonite—
the more of them I read, write, use and understand
the potential of, the more it is subdued.

I really wanted to let my book book loose from where it nestled inside me
like a hedgehog, hibernating in the undergrowth that filled my head.

Why not [I told myself] stop wondering what sort of book a body is meant to write
and put something, anything down?

Write as and when the ideas occur to you—
whenever you have feelings you wish to express,
or you find subject matter you are interested in.

I began to uncurl my words onto         Shy Scraps Of Paper
and stuffed them under the bed. I was like the fairytale pea princess, vertiginous
atop all those layers.

A major barrier for me has been permission. I needed to give myself permission
to write. There are many factors out there already, conspiring to prevent you—
negative past experiences, class, self-esteem, earning a living, caring, responsibilities, health, stress—must you (I told myself) add yet another barrier?

Permission, for me, has been about pushing on through, being kinder to myself, kicking myself up the metaphorical bum and taking baby steps into the wonderful, terrifying territory of writing.

Giving myself permission was fundamental. It’s no good other people telling you
YOU CAN DO IT, if you won’t tell the same to yourself. There will always be
battles to fight in, so don’t be your own worst enemy.

Be your own best friend.

I came from a home where books and reading were not prioritised,
yet I can’t recall a time when I didn’t adore books. I craved books—
the catnip of their smell, the narcotic joy of their feel, their weight.
The headiness of each page’s crinkling, the….well, you get it.
Thank heavens for the library, that was almost two mile’s walk away.
For charity shops and jumble sales. If not for them, when would I have read?
My favourite books at the time were pony stories, like Ruby Ferguson’s Jill series,
Patricia Leitch’s Jinny at Finmory stories, and her heartbreaking Dream of Fair Horses.
Maybe, with guidance, I would have read more, read differently, learned more.
I was happy with these books at the time. That’s the important thing to remember.

When I was about eleven, my older brother borrowed Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy
from the library. We marvelled at how thick it was, like three doorstep sandwiches on top of one another. This was my first real contact with a book book.
I don’t know if my brother ever finished it. When the time came to return it,
I promised that I would do it for him myself. I said this because I really, really, really
wanted to read this book.

I thought I’d be able to read it in a couple of days and pop it back, with nobody
the wiser. I tried to read it. I failed. I couldn’t understand so much of it—
I had never read a book anywhere near this lengthy and dense and it defeated me.
At the time, I hated it for the way it made me feel. It made me feel thick.
I stuffed it in a corner and went into denial.

Many weeks later, I was Found Out. There were fines to pay, for the non-reutrn
of the book. I got yelled at. This book really was about the powers of darkness!

In the end, I did not let this book defeat me. I put a few years of graft in before I found I COULD read it. I still do this today—if I feel a book is taking my mind in too large a leap forward, I put it to one side and read other books. Every time I read, I try to ‘upgrade’. I try to ‘read better’. Then I have a go at reading the book that defeated me again. Sometimes I manage it and sometimes I have to keep on trying. All this has taken me years and years and years.

I often worry that the ‘muscles’ needed to read the big stuff were not developed or triggered early enough in life for me, and that I will never be the reader I dream of being. I love books so very much. I find it so strange that they have the power to make me feel so inadequate, so frustrated and so sad, as well as so happy, inspired and fulfilled. I can’t be the only one who feels like this?

Anyway, I completed the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It felt like a massive victory. Every few years, I read it again, to remind myself I am capable of more that I think. Sometimes, these mountains need a bit of time and work before their summits can be attained (I also went on to read The Hobbit, which, had I known, I would have started with, and The Silmarillion). I have many books I either haven’t read yet, or haven’t finished reading. This is OK. What I have is the potential to read them and I find that a comforting thought.

Every time I witness someone describing a childhood of reading, of access to shelves
full of well-worshipped tomes, of discussing books at the dinner table, I feel cheated.
I feel a sense of loss.

I feel a little envy too. We’re allowed to have emotions, you know. It’s often best to admit to them, acknowledge them. Face them honestly and try to move on.

I cure myself with thinking how grateful I am that I own books now. I look at the shelves of books that I own. I have forced the scales to balance a little more my way.

I found that poetry was a brilliant means of making me pick up a pen. A rare book in my childhood home was a tiny little book called Gems From Keats, which had belonged to someone in my mother’s family. I was obsessed with the poem Meg Merrilies, which I used to cry at the end of, and the poem To Hope (especially the first verse). You might be able to tell how important this verse was to me as a lonely, bullied and introverted child by this picture I drew when I was about eleven years old (my imagination was a little more limited then, and all I could think of to represent hope was the dove on Noah’s Ark). I painstakingly copied the verse in the best handwriting I could manage.

Image description: A sketch made using different weights and grades of graphite pencil. It is a drawing of Noah’s Ark (a large boat), with an abstract sun, sky, raindow and waves behind it. There is a dove flying in the front, holding leaves in its beak. Underneath is a handwritten poetry verse.

I dabbled with poetry’s wonders in secret when I was a teenager but poetry, I believed (like archaeology, skiing, candelabras and cravats) was intended for someone else, and not for the Likes Of Me.

I wanted to be a writer. I just didn’t know how.

I didn’t think it could be as simple as picking up a pen . I wasted years in jobs I hated,
made decisions based on stubborn denial of my heart’s desires, and vented my frustrations through self-destructive behaviours. My undiagnosed autism left me vulnerable, unsupported, struggling, lost.

I shall cut a very long story short.

Eventually, I began to dip in and out of other poet’s books. I gradually met poets.
I started to talk about poetry A LOT. At the age of 40, I finally began to live. I became wonderfully absorbed in the genre. I fell in love with poetry’s searing gems.
Finding poetry was a miracle. I thank goodness for it every day.

I forgot about book books. When the pressure [I had put myself under] to produce
that novel or fail was removed, I experienced the freedom of flitting from verse to verse as I pleased. I spent a decade

Getting Serious About Poetry—

wrote hundreds, thousands of poems,
learned how to submit poems to magazines
and anthologies.

Read huge amounts of poetry and poetry theory.
Whenever possible, attended workshops and readings.

I did a pamphlet, then some collections.
I won poetry competitions.
I did guest readings.
I did an MA in Writing Poetry.

Perhaps it’s the joy I find in poems that differentiates a poetry collection from a book book for me. Perhaps, if I can ever crack the code of how to write book books, as I have (in some ways at least) cracked the code of poetry collections, they will cease to have this curious hold on my mind. They will just be books, and I might at last relax, let go of the anxiety, kick self-doubt to the kerb and write those, too.

I shall also add this essay to my achievement list. I still wonder when I will, with any degree of confidence, refer to myself as a writer. Is this essay permission?

Who will tell me for sure that I am a writer?

Will I ever be a writer?

Is it the act of writing that makes me a writer?

Am I a writer now?

(This essay was first published in a shorter form in The Alchemy Spoon in 2022)

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