As part of our Peace Day celebrations we were very pleased to welcome Rachel Kelly – journalist, author, workshop leader and ambassador for SANE. Rachel came to talk about her experience of mental distress, her poetry workshops and her book, Black Rainbow, which tells the story of how she overcame depression through poetry. The event was also an opportunity to share readings of poems brought by Rachel and by those in the audience, including members of CoolTan’s Poetry Group and Creative Writing Workshop.
Rachel first became unwell in 1997. ‘Everything seemed to be going fine until one night when I couldn’t get to sleep’, she said, ‘I had chronic insomnia for three days. I was coping with two small children and supporting my husband’s career.’ She began to experience intense and constant anxiety, as if she was falling all the time. She became unwell for six months and later had another period of illness lasting a year.
When Rachel was in hospital, her mother held her hand and shared healing words with her. ‘She shared a line from Corinthians: “My grace is sufficient for thee, My strength is made perfect by weakness”. This was the first time I felt a positive stirring of will – my strength would be made perfect. It helped me find a different story in my head.’ she told the audience.
So began Rachel’s long journey back to wellbeing, with the help of the healing words of poets. Her favourite is George Herbert, a 17th Century poet. ‘I’m quite sure he suffered from a mental illness’ she said, ‘He wrote poems as prayers – none of them were published in his lifetime. When he was dying he said to a friend, “Please publish them if you think they could help a poor dejected soul” He wanted to share them with people who suffered.’
‘It’s hard to concentrate when you are mentally unwell’ Rachel explained, ‘you can’t read a whole book, sometimes you can’t even read a whole poem. I often just put a line up above my mirror to get me through the day.’
The audience were keen to know about Rachel’s own writing. ‘It’s powerful to think you might be helping someone else with your writing and this is very good for your mental health. It took me six years to write Black Rainbow’ she told us, ‘It was rejected loads of times until a friend said I had to get an agent and recommended one. The agent told me to rewrite it, to “show, not tell”. He told me, “take out anything that doesn’t respect your readers”.’ after that, there was a great deal of interest in the book and a bidding war between publishers for the rights.
Rachel runs Healing Words – a series of workshops in which participants can share the poems that have helped her and can also bring their own to share. ‘The Ancient Greeks used poetry. Apollo was god of both healing and poetry. Shamans also used affirmations and healing mantras to help people find a different narrative,’ she says.’There is something healing and consoling in poetry. I do a four-part workshop, the first part focuses on understanding darkness and despair. I share five or six poems in each workshop and people all respond differently. The workshops follow an arc from dark to light. We work through “ordinary human unhappiness” as Freud called it.’
We hope very much that Rachel will return to CoolTan Arts soon to run some workshops. Her book, Black Rainbow, which won the prize for Best First Book at the 2014 Spear’s Book Award, is available from Yellow Kite, priced £8.99. Rachel has kindly donated some copies to CoolTan Arts, these are for sale for a minimum donation of £1. Drop by and pick one up!
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