It's Not That Bad #9: Poems to get you through this heatwave

+ some reading recommendations, a special prompt and ramblings on rest

Jun 17, 2022

Hello, hello,

It’s June. Which means Gemini season, frozen margs and sunburn.

I’m late with this newsletter, but that’s okay, because its theme is REST. A word I’m not always familiar with, or good at doing. But, for the first time in almost a decade, I’ve just taken a proper break. I left my job of four years, a job that was so interlinked with my identity and that I loved a lot - and therefore worked so hard at, with little to no respite. I start a new role on Monday, which is exciting, but for the end of May and the best part of June, I’ve taken some time off. I’ve been to Scotland, Italy and Barcelona - cramming a few years worth of holidays into four weeks. I’ve spent time with friends, family, my cat. I’ve had days organising my flat, writing just for the sake of writing and working on projects that I wouldn’t usually have time to do. It’s been a total reset - the humming anxiety I’ve become so used to, lifted (albeit momentarily). I don’t wake up in the middle of the night panicking about deadlines or wishing for more hours in the day. Instead, I’ve gone for leisurely swims, I’ve made elaborate meals and cakes, I’ve listening to podcast series after podcast series. I’ve spoken about burn out before, having suffered with it a few times and this break made me realise I have been peddling between burn out and exhaustion for years, like a damp finger dipping in and out of a sherbet packet. Rest is so good, and I’m gonna lap it up from now on.

On the flip side, I’d put a lot of pressure on this ‘rest’ period and, because life always has other plans, it’s not been as picturesque as my Instagram might make out - I’ve had a knock back with something I’ve been working very hard on, I became quite unwell this week and I have never been so broke in my life (maybe taking a break from work during the cost of living crisis wasn’t my smartest move). Lol.

With the current heatwave, I think everyone has been forced to rest a bit. This country is so ill-equipped for temperatures over 26 degrees, that we’re all confined to our homes, blinds down and ice also down (our tops). SO IT’S THE PERFECT TIME FOR YOU TO ALL READ THIS NEWSLETTER.

3 Poems To Read RN

1. Beach Body by Kate Baer

Mountain body. I don’t want your

[cropped body]. Give me all the hot body.

Soft body. Curve and dimple big body. Love to see a strong body,

loose body, other kind of built body.

Want to hear your loud body. Lover-in-the-night body.

This is not your mother’s body. And even if it was —

look at how she moves.

2. Pleasures by Bertolt Brecht

The first look out of the window in the morning,

The old book found again

Enthusiastic faces

Snow, the change of the seasons

The newspaper

The dog

Dialectics

Taking showers, swimming

Old music

Comfortable shoes

Taking things in

New music

Writing, planting

Travelling

Singing

Being friendly.

3. Spring Wedding, From “A Hundred Lovers” by Richie Hof.

The day before we married, we napped

in the afternoon, with no sheets over us

and felt the breeze from the lake

on our backs and butts and legs. It felt different, a small

rebellion, though we’ve slept

in one another’s arms for ten years,

like little beasts, vulnerable

and hairy, with saliva and our skin

the next day

we were men again: ironed shirts, knotted

ties of silk, deodorant, parted hair, promises:

We will have children.

We will buy another house.

One of us will get cancer.

All of our parents will die.

Culture & Such

Quick read:

'Celibacy As Survival.Sex dominated my life for years. When it stopped, the truth behind why became impossible to suppress’ by Fariha Róisín, she wrote this insightful piece for The Cut and it was a gorgeous read.

https://www.thecut.com/2022/06/choosing-celibacy-as-survival.html

Long read:

Louisa Reid’s ‘The Poet: A novel of toxic love, unspoken rage and fighting back’, is everything I’m enjoying in literature right now. It’s satisfying, it’s raw, it’s so wholly feminine.

Watching:

I devoured the seven episodes of ‘Everything I Know About Love’ - like everyone else, I love Dolly's writing and this series didn’t disappoint - it’s a dedication to the sesh, to female friendship, to bad romantic choices, to Kate Moss’ Topshop collection.

Let’s finish on a prompt, inspired by the above…

What invokes tween nostalgia for you? Is it queueing outside your local Topshop, with all your Sunday job money held tightly in your palm, ready to purchase *that* one-shoulder Kate Moss dress. Is it meeting friends in the food court? Sharing fries and milkshakes? Write it all down, and then construct it into a rambling verse. Then, write an introduction, a list of things that you have to do now that feel so adult, that tween you had no idea about. A bit like this one I made earlier…