Poem
Gwyneth Lewis
HYPNOSIS KNITTING
HYPNOSIS KNITTING
HYPNOSIS KNITTING
A day of wordless misery,thorns in the heart
that refuse to budge.
No matter, I’m keeping company
with myself, though hurting,
redeeming time that was torturing me.
My grandmother’s craftwork,
I suddenly see,
was self-medication,
her fanciest knitwear
anti-depressant hosiery:
a stance against her melancholy.
This pattern wants only rhythm from me:
no judging, no knowing,
just moving on
into a future. I’m working three
axes. First a new personality
made from my patience.
Second, a scarf
composed in calm,
a respite from my usual self-harm.
The third is my finest.
Look! I’ve unpicked
myself from my worry, a delicate stitch
into the present. No one can see
this last. Mindfulness charges the air,
arrays me in intricate gossamer.
© 2007, the BBC
From: How to Knit a Poem
Publisher: BBC Radio 4, London
Commissioned by BBC Radio 4.
From: How to Knit a Poem
Publisher: BBC Radio 4, London
Gwyneth Lewis
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1959)
Gwyneth Lewis was Wales's inaugural National Poet from 2005-06, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She wrote the six-foot-high words on the front of Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre, rumoured to be the largest poem in the world.
Poems
Poems of Gwyneth Lewis
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HYPNOSIS KNITTING
A day of wordless misery,thorns in the heart
that refuse to budge.
No matter, I’m keeping company
with myself, though hurting,
redeeming time that was torturing me.
My grandmother’s craftwork,
I suddenly see,
was self-medication,
her fanciest knitwear
anti-depressant hosiery:
a stance against her melancholy.
This pattern wants only rhythm from me:
no judging, no knowing,
just moving on
into a future. I’m working three
axes. First a new personality
made from my patience.
Second, a scarf
composed in calm,
a respite from my usual self-harm.
The third is my finest.
Look! I’ve unpicked
myself from my worry, a delicate stitch
into the present. No one can see
this last. Mindfulness charges the air,
arrays me in intricate gossamer.
From: How to Knit a Poem
Commissioned by BBC Radio 4.
HYPNOSIS KNITTING
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