A year ago I introduced readers of this website to an old friend, Sarah Nock, who had written an insightful – and surprisingly funny – account of what it is like to suffer from Parkinson’s disease. (My review of Ponderings on Parkinson’s is still on-site.) Now she has published another book of a quite different kind: an anthology of verse, but one with a difference. In her introduction, Sarah tells us that at one time, pre-Parkinson’s, she had suffered from insomnia and caused her restless mind to summon up poems she had learnt or remembered. Later on, when her attacks were at their worst, she found that having poetry read to her gave her some relief. However, as she didn’t always like the poems her readers chose, she began to compile her own collection, adding to the learned-by-heart insomniac repertoire others that she liked and didn’t find tiring or boring. This anthology is the result.
Views differ on the efficacy of what is called ‘alternative medicine’. Sarah believes in at least some of it; I tend to the view expressed by Richard Dawkins, that any therapy, if it meets the stringent criteria of effectiveness required by conventional medicine, ceases to be ‘alternative’ and becomes simply ‘medicine’. Those that fail to meet those criteria are simply unproven and not yet to be relied upon. That said, experiments have shown that some people find relief from hearing music (and cows and hens are reported to produce more milk or eggs when serenaded), others from looking at favourite paintings. Whether or not the relief is purely in the ears and eyes of the sufferers, it appears to be real to those concerned, so there is no reason to suppose that spoken poetry may not produce similar effects if one thinks it will: a sort of aural placebo effect, perhaps?
Sarah makes no claim that what works for her will do so for others, so what she has produced is as idiosyncratic as any other verse anthology, with the variation that she has included some poems that have not previously been published, among them some by friends and one of her own.
How does one review an anthology? If you start out by wishing some of the items had been excluded and alternatives put in instead, you are not addressing this book: you are simply mentally compiling an anthology of your own preferences. Any anthology is a job lot and you have to take it all as it comes. I found many of Sarah’s selections familiar, others not at all, but none that I actually disliked – which probably just means either that I am prepared to give any poem a chance, or that I lack sufficient discrimination on the subject. Whether you will like it must depend upon your on personal tastes and how nearly you share Sarah’s.
The cover picture is interesting and its choice very Sarah. I’m not sure how well it will reproduce here (it is far from distinct on the cover itself) but it shows a garden with a figure departing to the left. That figure is Sarah herself and was taken by a friend soon after the Parkinson’s diagnosis was confirmed. ‘When I saw it,’ says Sarah, ‘it all became clear to me: there I was walking out of the picture! That was what was happening and what I had to prepare for.’ As it turned out, she is still in the picture and this book is another example of her preparations.
Published in paperback by Ferry House Books 191 pages
ISBN 13-978-0-9557011-1-5 £6.99
