{"id":329,"date":"2021-12-13T09:00:01","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T09:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/beatofourhearts\/?p=329"},"modified":"2021-12-13T09:00:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-13T09:00:01","slug":"poems-by-sheena-sen-the-well-of-loneliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/beatofourhearts\/2021\/12\/13\/poems-by-sheena-sen-the-well-of-loneliness\/","title":{"rendered":"Poems by Sheena Sen: The Well of Loneliness"},"content":{"rendered":"

After each of the workshops we conducted in the summer and autumn, we invited participants to submit any additional writing or creative work that they felt inspired to do after attending the workshops. One of our participants, Sheena Sen, sent us some wonderful poems and reflections on her experience of participating in the workshops, and more broadly, on loneliness and belonging as an LGBTQIA+ person.<\/p>\n

In a series of posts, we will showcase Sheena’s work and reflections, and pause to think about how they shape understandings of LGBTQIA+ loneliness and belonging.<\/p>\n

Sheena’s first poem, ‘The Well of Loneliness’, explores the emotions surronding experiences of loneliness over a period of time.<\/p>\n

Titled after Radclyffe Hall’s\u00a0The Well of Loneliness<\/em> (1928), Sen’s poem is, to my mind, a tribute to Hall’s painful experiences of loneliness as well as bringing the idea of ‘the well of loneliness’ into the twenty-first century. Hall’s story, ‘Miss Ogilvey Finds Herself’ (1934), was used as one of the prompts to get us thinking in the autumn workshops.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>

Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Lonelines<\/em>s (1928)<\/p><\/div>\n

In that place of despair
\nwhere emptiness swilled
\nand spilled its bile
\nof discontentment
\nI stood there barefoot
\nIn the silence of pleas
\nand known certainties
\nnow traceless in a past
\nthat held the pieces of me
\nIn my sense of belonging
\nin my split sideways
\ndreams and in sentences
\nwhere words have wobbled
\nfrom one side of reality
\nto places I barely could see<\/p>\n

In the familiar and formal
\nIn informal discretions
\ninside a fragility borne
\ninside the parameters
\nof fear and acceptance
\nIt is there where I leaned
\nbetween mirrors
\nand laughter made
\nof small bubble tears
\nthere I felt most alone
\nas I breathed out for fear
\nand in for my courage<\/p>\n

at the well of my loneliness
\nI remember how fast
\nmy own heart can beat
\nat a sentence wide open
\nto someone\u2019s rejection
\nin the depth of a memory
\nas I tentatively trace
\nthe years of my longing
\nin the pit of despair
\nI learned there how pain
\ncan visibly bleed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I asked Sheena about her poem, and she explained to me how she wrote it and what it means to her.<\/p>\n

The poem was written in the midnight hour, somewhere between silence and stillness is where it began. In the recalling of the discussions shared in the project around belonging and loneliness and what came from the personal accounts of those people who opened their hearts up to strangers in honesty.<\/p>\n

It matters to be integral to speak openly; however painful the sound of a truth might be, it is imperative to think about what makes us feel a sense of acceptance and belonging in a world full of diversity where oppression, or the fear of it, even now still finds me. I am a lucky one in my finding my identity and sexual preference; it came relatively easy with more acceptance than rejection, but it\u2019s the essence of fear that beats in a heart full of uncertainty that you can\u2019t see, and that\u2019s why I wrote it — as a collection of thoughts from my own history and the pieces of those in the LGBTQIA+ community who have had their struggles too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For me, the images of breathing and a beating heart capture the immanence of loneliness and the way it can manifest in physical sensations. I am reminded too of the broader capacity of the heart to ‘bleed’, but also how pain can be a source of learning. This is a paradox of LGBTQIA+ loneliness as well as other forms of emotional difficulty: painful as these experiences are, sometimes they can be sources of insight into ourselves and other people. Sen’s poem does that for me: it reveals the speaker’s journey, oscillating from loneliness, pain, and longing, to moments of courage, learning, and remembering — literally, collecting the pieces of oneself and placing them back together in a new mosaic.<\/p>\n

— Richard Vytniorgu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After each of the workshops we conducted in the summer and autumn, we invited participants to submit any additional writing or creative work that they felt inspired to do after attending the workshops. 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