It was going to be great. I wrote it more than seven years ago, in two bursts after work with mugs of tea at the kitchen table. It was really, seriously great. It was called The Writing Group. Voiced by an unnamed female protagonist who surprises herself by deciding to leave the group she was instrumental in setting up. It contained a man with a ‘Darwinesque beard’. It was the best thing that I had ever written.
And when we moved house recently, I lost it. In the great clear out, painful and necessary, of last summer, I must have jetisoned the notebooks onto the wrong pile. For seven-plus years it had lain in the darkness, unloved and untyped. Each year, in my journal, I would refer to it. This is the year I will send out my story, I said. It was a seriously beautiful and heartbreaking story. Up there, definitely, with, well, anybody. Obvious to me now, it was so good it frightened me. Hence not quite (ever) getting round to type it. And actually send it out into the world.
Its brilliance put me in mind of that great poem of absence, Mark Halliday’s The Missing Poem. I read it again this week. Boy, is it good.
In the missing poem all this pools into a sense of how much
we must cherish life; the world will not do it for us.
I mean, come on! Those lines on their own are good enough to make me want to throw all of this in and go and live in a hut somewhere. He’s right. The world will not do it for us. And if we don’t type our genius poems and stories, we are not going to do it for us either. This is (another phrase to die for) ‘the cool flash of what serious is’ (which seems to surround me, perhaps all of us at the moment, no?). The days are long and the years fast, etc. But it’s true, it’s true. Type that rubbish/genius poem/story and send it out. The ‘news of the accident-/
or the illness- in the life of someone/ more laced into your life than you might have thought’ is literally a moment away.
I discovered the disappearance of my story on a Sunday morning, as the world was sleeping. Pyjamas and yet another cup of tea. The place on the shelf where I left it no longer contained it. You would think after eight or so books I would have got just a tad more professional by now. But no. It was a lovely story. I was proud of it. (But not that proud.) How much we must cherish life. The world will not do this for us. It has become a song I ‘forgot to love’.
Lifesaving Poems 
I relate to this closely. I once wrote a piece about my experience of menopause. I know it doesn’t sound all that engaging but it contained all my mother ever taught me about menstruation (not a lot) and her own experience of wombs and what they do to us. Most importantly, I wrote about how surprised I was to feel a weird sense of loss, like a bit of myself fading away, and realising that this was it, this was the m-pause itself happening. If I could only find what happened to the document, I would know how I felt then, whenever it was. But the file vanished. Completely. Somewhere in a computer it disappeared, along with the feelings it described. And now I know I felt a lot of things around then, and that they weren’t what I expected, not in the least. But I’ve no idea what they were. And will never know again.
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Dear Nell. This is heartbreaking. On all the levels. Thank you for saying so. I appreciate your support and generosity more than I can say. With very best wishes as ever, Anthony x
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Do you think the words or some of them will ever return sufficient for you to piece it together again? PS. I see you live in Devon. Me too — near Totnes. A small world. Take care, Julian
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Thank you, Julian. No, I don’t think the words will return. The episode is teaching me to write more often and to save things as I go along – something I thought I had been doing for 20+ years. But a notebook in the bin is a notebook in the bin. I am slowly saying goodbye to what I created and did not finish. Devon is great. But so wet atm! With thanks for your support, Anthony
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Sigh, I am a grief guy, well, that’s what I do for a living, and your words resonate.
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Thank you for saying so. With appreciation, Anthony
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Should I read it?
x
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Yes, Ann! But it’s lost. It’s gone. I will never get it back. X
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Anthony, a wonderful post. l have moved too many times in my life and seem to have misplaced too many stories and poems and plays in the process. Let that be a lesson to me (but I know it won’t be). I try to remember words I read years ago about love – give it all, because there will be more where that came from!
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