The Day Hospital

By Sally Read

Across one day in London, twelve elderly men and women sit in flats, walk, or wait, and speak about their histories, their hopes, their loves, their disappointments and griefs -and above all seek to express who they are and what their life has been. Most are immigrants -Irish, West Indian, Polish, Italian, and German, struggling with a feeling of rootlessness. Drawn from Sally Read's experiences as a community psychiatric nurse in central London, these twelve monologues are the voices of schizophrenia, dementia, depression, and anxiety. Authentic and moving, they form a vivid portrait of the capital -its richness and its sadnesses, its waves of immigration, and its living witness to the devastating effects of World War II. Four of the voices are Jewish refugees who arrived in London as children, leaving parents to die in Nazi-occupied Europe. Candid and vivid, these monologues make us privvy to entire lives through a poetic voice that is at once brutally realistic, and beautifully realised. Above all, these poems give marvellous expression to people whose speech, memory, and coherence is often marred by illness. The result is a stunning insight into other people's stories, and how we may come to measure our own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Mar 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780370910

Book preview

SALLY READ

THE DAY HOSPITAL

A Poem for Twelve Voices

Across one day in London, twelve elderly men and women sit in flats, walk, or wait, and speak about their histories, their hopes, their loves, their disappointments and griefs – and above all seek to express who they are and what their life has been. Most are immigrants – Irish, West Indian, Polish, Italian, and German, struggling with a feeling of rootlessness.

Drawn from Sally Read’s experiences as a community psychiatric nurse in central London, these twelve monologues are the voices of schizophrenia, dementia, depression, and anxiety. Authentic and moving, they form a vivid portrait of the capital – its richness and its sadnesses, its waves of immigration, and its living witness to the devastating effects of World War II. Four of the voices are Jewish refugees who arrived in London as children, leaving parents to die in Nazi-occupied Europe. Candid and vivid, these monologues make us privvy to entire lives through a poetic voice that is at once brutally realistic, and beautifully realised.

Above all, these poems give marvellous expression to people whose speech, memory, and coherence is often marred by illness. The result is a stunning insight into other people’s stories, and how we may come to measure our own.

Cover photograph by Ron Dobi

© GETTY IMAGES

Sally Read

THE DAY HOSPITAL

A poem for twelve voices

For Kerry Lee Crabbe

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following, in which some of these poems first appeared: Sally Read reading from her poems (The Poetry Archive, 2010), The Manhattan Review and Southword.

Thanks to Gregory Leadbetter, Roddy Lumsden and Baron Wormser for their continuing support; to Agnes Macioł and Tom Grubb for checking the Polish lines; to Asceterium Sanctorum Trium Hierarcharum for helping me to face the larger questions; and to Fabio and Celia for giving me the time to ponder them.

CAST

All patients of The Day Hospital for the Elderly in Central London

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

8am, NW1

1. Pat

2. Theresa

3. Agnieszka

* * *

10am, NW1

4. Maurice

5. Jack

6. Bridget

7. Barbara

* * *

3pm, W1

8. Anna (Kriah – the rending of clothes in grief)

9. Catherine

* * *

5pm, N1

10. Daniele

11. Ruth

12. Tatiana

* * *

NOTES

About the Author

Copyright

8am, NW1

Traffic is gridlocked at Parkway, Camden High Street junction. Rats run over empty pizza stands. Voices, footsteps are lost to the rising wash of traffic. Smell: weed, rotten cabbage, cold stone, exhaust.

Bodies streaming out of the