The Nerve Centre Profiles: Val Walsh.

Val Walsh has been performing her poems in the North West for 7 years. As well as being a regular at Liverpool’s Dead Good Poets Society (DGPS), she has performed at Liverpool’s Poetry Café (both at Costa Café and the Bluecoat); at various local community and political events, such as the Peace & Ecology Festival and May Day Festival; as well as at the Bluecoat during the 2010 Arabic Arts Festival. As a result, two of her poems are to be translated into Arabic and published simultaneously in English in an online Arabic newsletter. For 3 years she has also contributed to Liverpool’s annual Poetry Marathon, as part of National Poetry Day.

Together with poet Anne Candlin, and on behalf of exiled Palestinian poet, Nahida Yasin, long-term resident in Liverpool, Val has performed Nahida’s poems at various venues and events in the North West, for example organised by Friends of Palestine, CND and the Arabic Arts Festival.

She has organised women’s poetry events for International Women’s Day and Merseyside Women’s Movement (MWM) for 4 years. Two years ago she was responsible for bringing together a group of local women poets to create a performance for the multidisciplinary and multimedia arts festival, PAX, held at The Black-E, with lighting projections by artist, Hambi Haralambous, and harp accompaniment by Stan Ambrose. Out of this emerged the idea of EMBRACE, a loose association of diverse women poets in Liverpool, who perform integrated sequences of their poems as a creative act of collaboration and community. 

Her poems have been published in a number of magazines over the last 6 years, including LAPIDUS: Creative Words for Health and Wellbeing, and Liverpool’s NERVE, as well as online (e.g. 2 poems as part of the ‘wall’ of 800 poems to mark Liverpool’s 800^th Anniversary as a city in 2008).

Rooted in women’s lives and experience, they are pre-occupied with the personal / political dilemmas of living and being: problems of survival, well-being and intimacy; the ethical and political issues attendant on the struggle to ‘be human’: to avoid abuse, exploitation and complicity; to mark and challenge injustice; as well as celebrate our loving and the power of the natural world.  Poetry digs deep and involves exposure, of self and other. Sometimes this also produces humour.

'Levator Ani' from Womens Poetry Group Embrace.

From Pat Fearon of the womens poetry group Embrace, from which member Val Walsh will appear on 26th August at The Nerve Centre with poems and stories, comes the poem 'Levator Ani'. An introduction to the poem is below:

On Saturday, I tried to gather poems according to the theme of Regeneration.  I included four on this process: a woman's regeneration after divorce; then two on the degeneration humankind causes this planet, one locally and one worldwide.  Finally, I offer here, an example of the kind of moves we should all be making, to pre-empt degeneration, that unpopular concept, a combination of preventive medicine and self-help, otherwise known as personal responsibility.  I chose to use humour for this.  Perhaps I should add that the levator ani is the muscle supporting the pelvic floor which helps to prevent incontinence of bowel and bladder.

LEVATOR ANI

She’s standing at the bus stop with that look upon her face:

Absent minded; enigmatic; she’s staring into space.

She’s in another world, you see, of secret exercise.

The muscles of her pelvic floor are tightened till they rise

Then loosened and let fall again, in satisfying sag.

Oh, what a risk she’s taking should those weakened fibres flag!

There’s sympathetic scrunching up, for fear that she might leak,

From all the women here.  You’ll see them tensing as I speak.

She’s serving you a coffee on the café’s counter top

But what goes on behind it is the thing that must not stop.

That enigmatic, absent-minded, introspective stare

Bears all the signs of exercise of Someone’s pelvic floor.

And once you’ve learnt to recognise those secret goings-on

You’ll feel your pelvic muscles rise, your peace of mind quite gone.

So, don’t let it annoy you, as you wait to be admitted

To the station, or the theatre - where e’er they tear a ticket.

If she has that ramrod stiffness and that other-worldly gaze

And you can’t get her attention - her eyes just seem to glaze -

Don’t hesitate to ask her if she’s exercising tension

Upon her pelvic muscles, intending the prevention

Of those Tena Lady moments we all want to evade.

It feels so good to empathise, to share in her crusade.

And perhaps to share your feeling that men should do it too,

To cut down on their tendency to fart and follow through.

The Nerve Centre. 

 

Beautiful Words for Difficult Times

On Saturday 14th August, the second day of what promises to be an epic four weeks of The Nerve Centre, Val Walsh presented us with some poems and stories from Embrace, A Liverpool based womens group who perform across the city at Community Centers and Cafes. Some highlights of the poetry Val read are presented below. Following the poetry is a brief introduction to Embrace. Val will be at The Nerve Centre again between 3pm and 5pm on the 26th August for some more poetry and stories. 

As promised, here are some of the poems Val presented. 

Life Saving

You kept your hands clean,

by abstaining, doing nothing.

You evaded responsibility,

by hiding in the shadows.

You avoided rejection,

by not coming forward.

You played safe, by

withdrawing from the fray.

You betrayed your talent

by allowing your creativity

to sink without trace.

POETIC, CONTENT

Poetry turns language.

Squeezes fresh juice out of

familiar fruit. Pushes hope

outdoors, edging love on

to the street. Touching

strangers without intent.

Poetry forges fragile

communities in its wake.

Fashioning dreams for now.

Sticking around for tomorrow.

Preparing us for the long haul.

The Loving Touch

          There are people and situations that make you feel

          not just competent, but radiant. And that orbital glow

becomes in turn a gift to others. The circle of human

sustainability; the web of connection that makes dreams

and adventure possible; daring against all odds: reeking

havoc with self-doubt, negativity, subjection.

The micropolitics

 of social and political change

        involves the loving touch.                                                                        

 

EMBRACE is an informal group of diverse women poets, living and writing in and around Liverpool,

who perform together at local community events.

The team embodies women’s diversity: of lived experience and social positioning; and our multiple, complex identities, across, for example, differences of age, ethnicity, faith and social class. 

Through our writing and performance, we juxtapose and interweave our social and cultural differences and experience, including the trauma of separation, loss, illness and bereavement; our critical awareness of intimidation, exploitation and stigma; and our understanding of how women are affected by violence, occupation, asylum, war and exile.

We also draw on the joy of loving, parenting, caring, befriending, and the demands and satisfactions of involvement in the public domain via paid employment and/or community involvement and activism, including our activities as poets in the community. We believe we have a crucial, creative role to play as women in that public domain, as well as on the home front.

As women and as poets, we scrutinise abuse and exploitation;

we evoke the healing processes of conversation, community and creativity; and assert art, love and humour over the dead hands of fear and guilt.

We are the sum of our parts.