To Be Remade

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You're listening to Lifejacket by Artful Scribe.
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Episode 1. To be remade. I'm your host, Antosh
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Voychik. What is your lifejacket? It could be
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something literal, physical. Something you are
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clad in. The space you occupy. A portable sanctuary.
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A buoyancy aid. Evermore, for me, the life jacket
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is language. The written word. The broken line.
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The story. Language. Language that writers of
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all forms and disciplines ease or reveal or define
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the current I find myself floating along. We're
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all in the river after all. Let us take some
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time to listen to its gifts. This listening is
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an invitation to pause, to drift, wade in the
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waters and listen to the voices around us. This
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is Lifejacket. As autumn begins, the leaves curl,
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the dew turns frost. School returns, the day
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draws in the nights sooner. The airs wait wetter,
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flavours arrive, the birds migrate, the bugs
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sleep. The world is remade. I am slower with
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the light, as it too seems slow. I witness the
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colours I take for granted, that oh so English
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green change, remade in the slowing light. To
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be remade is a gift of a phrase from poet Concha
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Mendez, whose poetry exacts intricate notions
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of change, want, longing, and whose poetry we
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hear in these currents today. In the words of
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poet, translator and arts creator Harriet Truscott,
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who we will hear read Mendeth's poems, Contra
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Mendeth was a Spanish poet, dramatist, printer
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and editor who was most active as a writer between
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the 1920s and the 1940s. Part of the generation
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of 27, she defied gender stereotypes to write
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and travel widely. The Spanish Civil War made
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her a lifelong exile. and she lived the second
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half of her life in Mexico. Over the course of
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her life, her poems shift from vibrant statements
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of desire and possibility through grief at the
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loss of her first child and her country to an
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expression of the role of the poet as a truth
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-teller in the world. Truscott read Mendeth's
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poems at Artful Scribe's Lit Fest 24 as part
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of the Modern Poetry in Translation Showcase.
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I want to play you a sequence, a current of Conscia
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Mendeth's poems, drift in her language and interrogate
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the pressing notions of being remade that Mendeth's
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poems render into language. Rest. I don't want
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rest. I want... To live, head spinning in the
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sun. I'll sleep late later when a stone rests
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in the shade. But now I want to breathe and be
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and make and be remade. I want to leave a long
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wake in the water. Restless and unafraid. To
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the moon. A plane ride to the 1919 moon. Why
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not inside a missile shot from a shining cannon?
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This bright January night sky, clearest I've
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known. I vault high towards the moon. So much,
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so many somersaults I'll try and fail despite
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my aluminium wings. A plane ride to the 1919
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moon. Mendeft speaks of an erred moon, invites
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me to contemplate those specific moons that have
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held my gaze through a sky clearest I've known.
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I too have known skies, these fleeting dream
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lines, quicken their lance, their somersault,
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and it's a January night after all. The lines
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and the music of the poem are that of leap and
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dive. The lines, why not, inside a missile shot,
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those anchoring ot sounds, bring in this sense
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of heaviness, that sense of the heaviness of
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the shining cannon. It seems to mirror our attempts
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at change to be remade in spite of everything,
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in spite of every attempt and failure. Mendeth
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really renders that balance between those weighty
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decisions and those dreams that we feel as light
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as air. This also echoes the act of writing a
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poem. Whenever I write, I find myself piloting
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the heavy clunk of a feeling or an experience
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or an image that I am attempting to bring into
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language so that it reads light upon the page,
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so that it might be as light as a dream. Mermaid.
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My arms, the oars. The keel, my body, rudder,
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my thoughts. If I were a mermaid, this poetry
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would be my song. I want a range of interchangeable
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smiles ordered from a department store of feels.
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I want to buy smooth phrases and smooth gestures.
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I want to pin smooth faces on like shields. I'd
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like to find lies hanging in my wardrobe. I'd
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like to put on fancy dress deceit. I want to
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go round giving party goers a guilt -free kiss.
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a lipstick target on their cheek. Since I've
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been invited to the party, I want to, but I can't,
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be like the rest, to smile and nod my way through
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their manoeuvres. My hands, a bloodless white,
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the perfect guest. Mendeth remakes herself as
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a mermaid, the body and conscience changed to
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the physical. That line, rudder, my thoughts,
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has this deft doubleness to it. The thoughts,
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rudders, the rudder moving thoughts, the space
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around the line like water. And with interchangeable
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faces. The speaker of the poem remakes themselves
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in the presence of others, grappling with the
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chameleon or the pressure to be presenting the
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way one is expected. For Mendeth, a live pressure
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at her time of living. Song. Midnight. White
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star. and one far song. The night chimes on and
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on, the singing gone. Fear is yellow and death
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is that sky, precarious and bewildering. It's
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that guiding light, so we shut our eyes and follow.
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We play long games in the uncertain miles as
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we walk towards that star, that high, final door
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lintel, as we step into the empty. Yes, I know
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now, cold is white. And fear is yellow. These
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two poems meditate on knowns and unknowns. From
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the poem Song, I ask, was that star for our song
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sung to us? To Mendeth all those years ago, and
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each night that song is remade by the stars that
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are not gone out just yet. In fear is yellow.
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The white of the star returns as a coldness and
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the poem meditates what is unknown to Mendeth
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to arrive at language, at definition in the final
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lines. Though colours often ring of abstraction,
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white and yellow here are total. They are in
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totality. They become the synonyms of cold and
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fear. Must be my last loss. I repeat each time
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grief rips apart the sky, leaving me weeping.
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I don't want to learn that we are each a sea
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where losses come as waves, breaking, always
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breaking. I don't want rest. I want to live,
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head spinning in the sun. I'll sleep late later
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when a stone rests in the shade. But now I want
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to live and be and make and be remade. I want
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to leave a long wake. In the water, restless
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and unafraid. To not want to learn that we are
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each a sea where losses come as waves breaking.
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The line breaks are like that of a wave, the
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sensation that we have made it past the loss.
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And there it moves with us, with the tide breaking
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back on us. on its way back out to sea mendeth
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posits that time is the sea the sea is time in
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this poem with the echoing each time we are each
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a sea those two vessels are tied speaking of
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each other and there's something so cosmic about
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the poems i've found whenever i am in a time
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of want be that for change or to not want something.
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I am in tension with cosmic forces. And in the
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poem Rest, you've heard it twice in this sequence.
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It is the poem that Mendeth asks to be, make,
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be remade, to be granted a long wake in the water,
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to be given time to trace one's remaking and
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make of oneself and simply to be. That is our
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invitation, and perhaps the world's invitation,
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to be, make, be remade. I hope you've enjoyed
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Contramendeth's poems, that they have woken language,
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thought and feeling. sensation experience in
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you. Harriet Truscott's reading of Mendeth's
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work was the first time that I interacted with
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the poet's poems and I hope if this is an introduction
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for you, you go on to read Contra Mendeth. Two
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of Harriet Truscott's translations of Contra
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Mendeth's work are published in Modern Poetry
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in Translation, the Focus on Water issue. Harriet
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Truscott is a poet and arts organiser living
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on the edge of the East Anglian Fens. Her poetry
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appears in journals including Magma Poetry, Poetry
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Wales, Under the Radar and The Dark Horse. Her
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work explores themes of place, family and memory
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and also sex, pigeons and apple crumble. Harriet
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has co -curated two literary festivals and edited
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a range of publications. She's currently studying
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an MA in creative writing. in poetry at UEA.
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You can follow Truscott's work at hmtruscott
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.co .uk. The readings of Concha Mendeth's poems
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were recorded at Mayflower Studios, Southampton,
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on the 10th of March 2024. A special thank you
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to the Concha Mendeth Estate for permission to
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air Mendeth's material and Harriet's excellent
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reading of the material on Artful Scribe's Life
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Jacket. Lifejacket is produced by Artful Scribe,
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a not -for -profit writer development agency
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based in Southampton, supporting emerging and
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continuing writers in Hampshire, Dorset and the
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wider Solent region. I hope that Concha Mendeth's
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poems, language, experiences have brought you
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to some sense of buoyancy. Artful Scribe is supported
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by Arts Council England. I am your host, Antosh
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Vujicic. This is Lifejacket. Stay buoyant.