One Global Voice

Expressions – English

“Dispatch from Ward C”, those wounded words in a hospital room

Gaia Resta

This poem by Sarah Lubala is a voice. It’s a voice that speaks to us as it reads a dispatch from a psychiatric ward. In a dreamy, surreal atmosphere, we see fleeting images as if browsing pictures taken in a hospital: a dead bird on the back stairs, the noisy corridors, a roommate with a razor blade… And these images get mixed with distant memories that suddenly and uncontrollably emerge and take over, making room for personal and intergenerational trauma. In the meantime stonewashed linen is “summering at the window” as a sign of hope, that life “out there” is possible – through acceptance and healing.

Leggi di più
Leah Gerand Soko

“A letter to my best friend” is a letter to oneself, a hope for healing

Gaia Resta

Tanzanian author Leah Gerald Soko recounts how she wrote this poem at night, her mind storming and troubled. Feeling useless and unable to do anything about her challenges in life and above all, feeling she had no one to talk to, she turned to writing. A letter to her best friend becomes the chance to open up about her innermost feelings, to face her difficulties and encourage herself to accept her pain and be responsible for her own recovery. In Leah’s words, writing has been “a breakthrough towards depression and anxiety” and it represents now a way “to heal and feel strong about myself”.

Leggi di più

“Finally at peace”, the last bullet will let you fly high in the sky

Gaia Resta

Reem Yasir, Sudanese poet, opens her poem “in medias res”. The protagonist has a gun in her hand, it’s loaded. There are three bullets, three chances of ending it. Of silencing that evil voice in the head that has always commented every action and thought insulting and belittling. But the protagonist misses and the voices becomes even more cruel. The final lines of the poem portray all the contrasting emotions that can be felt in such a desperate moment: the exasperation of a soul that can’t find any peace and the unspoken, touching desire for a different life.

Leggi di più

“Mental Mess”, the generation that dreamed of peace and freedom

Antonella Sinopoli

“[…] for pieces of me are everywhere… and in everywhere… are their names… the ones who faced death and still breathing… the ones who faced death and got the likes of me choking for air ever since… But yet… In everywhere, there are still dreamers I know will create realities my mind can’t yet comprehend… I mean, even babies are born fighting… resisting… hands in fists… so here is to the generation that dreamed of a better nation… dreamed of peace, justice and freedom…” Those are Rajaa Bushra’s words for the young sudanese revolutionaries. A revolution that in Rajaa – and many others – has brought a never healed trauma.

Leggi di più

“Living with bipolar disorder”, questioning yourself and reality

Gaia Resta

Self-awareness is the first step towards healing and young Kenyan writer Emily K Millern knows it well. She often writes about her mental health struggles and so trasforms an unusual topic for poetry into art, achieving a therapeutic effect for herself and her readers. Sharing personal experiences – as her bipolar disorder – “reminds us that we are not alone, we are part of a bigger fight and we all have a role to play”, as she said. In fact, Emily strongly advocates for raising public awareness on mental health, a subject as sensitive as underestimated and neglected.

Leggi di più

“Bitter sweet” is the skin cut that suffocates the screaming soul

Gaia Resta

Mental illness can include a variety of symptoms; sometimes self-harm can occur. In a vicious cycle, the individual punishes his/her own body – the shell containing a suffocating inner distress – and takes somehow pleasure in it. In this poem Mercy Bibian describes with brutal honesty the “journey” to self-harm in scenes of cinematographic inspiration. So the reader witnesses the first cut and then the following ones, up to the establishing of an addiction to pain, to blood, to cutting – an act that almost inconceivably provides relief of unbearable thoughts and feelings of anxiety and depression.

Leggi di più

“I Want to Fall Apart Quietly”: there’s hope at the end of sadness

Gaia Resta

A versatile artist from Zimbabwe, Chioniso Tsikisayi reveals in this poem a peculiar approach to mental health themes. A moment of awareness about an imminent psychological breakdown is represented with a very light and even sweet touch: the fall can be as beautiful as the rise. In the author’s own words: ““The light-heartedness of my writing is an ode to my inner child who chooses to see beauty in the midst of chaos. I think the literary space is already saturated with great, sombre pieces of writing, but as a young girl navigating the world, I don’t want everything that I read to be too heavy.”

Leggi di più

“In This World of Ours” society teaches us vanity and isolation

Redazione

“No man is an island” reads a renowned verse by the English poet John Donne: we are all part of something larger that is humanity. But modern communities are organized in societies that tend to highlight individualism up to the point of leading people to isolate, especially those who can hardly handle cruel social pressures. This is the context of Nigerian author Ayomide Inufin D’great’s poem, its key word being “loss”. We lose our head, our energy, our course, our core values; and we look for a foothold in vanity, in the decadence that envelops us and from which we can still – maybe- save ourselves.

Leggi di più

“Poetry, Pain, Blades And Grace” a night of silence and screams

Redazione

Day follows night incessantly and with no mercy for those who don’t see the point of this alternation. Society crashes – with its questionable demands – the frailty of those who feel inadequate compared to the world around them and to others. When these feelings become overwhelming, there seems to be only a solution: suicide. But society labels and judges even this extrema ratio. So, in the words of Kenyan author Young Nino, what is left is “drinking your soul away” or anything that can soothe that pain “that takes away your will to live“.

Leggi di più

“The African Madman” who dines with dogs, mocked and alone

Redazione

The unaware protagonist of these verses is described in three scenes: the place where he barely sleeps and eats, his weatherbeaten body, his condition as a prisoner of his own mental illness. Such a life is here described through the lenses of poetry to convey that same message that both scientific and artistic communities are spreading: mental health conditions must be destigmatized and people affected by them must be treated, instead of being socially isolated. In this concise and powerful poem, talented Ugandan author Amanya Aklam has managed to restore literary dignity to the life of a desperate man.

Leggi di più