mental health Archivi - One Global Voice

Xabiso Vili sul palco di "Parole in folle" il 15 ottobre 2023 a Padova, foto della redazione

Light, “Tonight, I am the James Webb Telescope”

23 Novembre 20235 Dicembre 2023 Redazione

This previously unreleased poem composed by Xabiso Vili for “Parole in folle” is a gem. And as a gem it shines to lighten the dark. The darkness of the universe explored by the infrared technology of James Webb telescope – the biggest to be ever launched in space. As the telescope receives information about the origin of stars and galaxies, the author open his arms wide and lets memories visit him from the past, bringing him in a dimension where all things has no beginning and no end, in a light that is pulsing with life.

“Nathi’s Eulogy”, yet dying stay contagious

23 Novembre 20235 Dicembre 2023 Redazione

Often suicide deaths are surrounded by silence, by the shame induced by a loved one’s refusal to live. Relatives, friends begin to talk about tiredness, s/he “was tired of living” people use to say. This poem is a rebellious act against such useless, harmful tactfulness. Truth is necessary and healing, saying “suicide instead of tired” is necessary as reading the signs of a deep depression; this is what Xabiso Vili’s verses suggest. In order to save ourselves, our loved ones and all the people like Nathi, those brotherly friends we’d have never wanted to lose that way.

Xabiso Vili sul palco di Parole in folle a Padova il 15 ottobre 2023. Foto della redazione

“Forget How to Die”, fighting against surrender

23 Novembre 20235 Dicembre 2023 Redazione

In this laic homely, the author speaks to the people attending a funeral – the umpteenth. Suicides follow one another, each time in different circumstances: nooses, bullets, cuts… So, this imaginary officiant tells the crowd that we are here riunited to forget how to die and to remember what is there inside us that keeps us going. And makes us declare “I’m ready to wrestle, bring your god and your death. If I lose, don’t you dare lay me to rest. Because my spirit is pissed and he’s fighting next.”

Poetra Asantewa sul palco di Parole in folle a Padova il 15 ottobre 2023. Foto della redazione

“For the Blues”, when hope is a faint rumour

23 Novembre 20235 Dicembre 2023 Redazione

A poem about the blues, that sad feeling that drags you down at the bottom of yourself and makes you question the sense of getting out of bed in the morning. Poetra Asantewa’s verses follow a young woman as her day unfolds and as her thoughts run one after the other. She tries to make sense of her anxiety and her inadequacy feeling instilled by society and politics, so inclined to crush new generations. But hope cannot be crushed because “Yet there’s something about the way an open wound aggregates and remodels to repair itself, that tells me that we’re here for much more than getting lost.”

Those days blurred by the heaviness of being

23 Novembre 20235 Dicembre 2023 Redazione

“In which I tell you all the reasons I don’t want to exist and you tell me to remember” is the poem Poetra Asantewa composed for “Parole in folle”. Here she gets to the core of mental distress. A bundle of negativity generated by anxiety, depression, feelings of uselessness and impotence. A bundle that can be unfastened by a healing voice speaking hopeful words: “Remember that life is breaking all of us, and every breath we take is the body mending its brokenness. Remember that there’s living proof that this heaviness you feel is not new or alien. It is a mangled dark monster that has been battled and conquered by others before you and will be conquered by you too.”

“Wounds of Brokeness”, when healing is nothing but a mirage

12 Giugno 202312 Giugno 2023 Gaia Resta

Sometimes mental issues manifest in waves. Long, apparently peaceful times can be followed by new, unexpected waves of pain. And you find yourself again into waters you thought were already gone and that, instead, have changed their course to come for you. Traumas emerge from the depths of your sorrow and your never fully healed wounds start to bleed again. Ghanaian Afia Amoaa Oppong-Kwakye describes in her poem this condition of incredulity and helplessness in front of the destructive force of mental suffering; something strong enough to numb your will and make healing seem impossible.

“The Day I Will Recover”, the road to healing from mental illness

9 Dicembre 20229 Dicembre 2022 Gaia Resta

A poem conjugated in the future tense, the time of hope and life to come. A life our Rwandan author strongly wants to be free from anxiety and depression. To him, looking ahead to the future means to envision himself as finally healed and actively promoting mental health awareness to stop the stigma. It means being able to pick up a pen and write, returning to the village where you grew up to say to all men that, yes, they are allowed to cry and share their burdens. And, eventually, it means to write on all the walls the word “resilience” so that can anyone can see it and know it.

“Depression”, when it loosens its grip music sounds differently

4 Novembre 20224 Novembre 2022 Gaia Resta

Often people with a (mental) illness turns to personification as a way of coping with it. The illness becomes an entity with a life and a will of its own. So Tanzanian author Delphina Robert writes a letter poem to her despression that has suddently left, after being with her for a long time. Nobody informed her of this “departure” but this new absence makes itself very clear: music has a very different sound now. And despite initially feeling akward in this condition, the loosening of depression’s grip leaves room to relief and to a blank space ready to be filled up with new words.

“Midnight Crisis”, when you take cover under the roof of trauma

19 Ottobre 20222 Dicembre 2022 Gaia Resta

The days go by in solitude; the narrator is far from her family and has no access to means of communications. She then looks at a picture of herself, a glowing and enthusiastic version of herself very different from her perception in that moment. From that observation emerges a dialogue with the self, as she looks for a sense of identity, for personal and family history and eventually, for a sense of belonging. So she returns with her mind to her parents, to her grandmothers and individual and intergenerational traumas, such an “unbalanced cycle of life” we try to make sense of.

“Return(ing) to Sender”, when that illness brings to constant lying

14 Ottobre 202214 Ottobre 2022 Gaia Resta

A visiting mother, a complicated relationship that emerges from the daughter’s hope to avoid the meeting. To avoid her worried and interrogative look on a body that doesn’t “function” properly, that rejects and shuts down. The same body her mother once fed is now rejecting nourishment; and its gradual crumbling and dissolving almost provokes a pleasant sensation, a pleasure that can’t be said out loud. Tanzanian poet Lydia Kasese describes all this and how the certainty that one day we all go back to where we came from turns into an alibi to let the illness nurture you and not react to this force fighting your body and mind.