Launch of collection of poetry with Syrian refugee voices – On the Other Side of the Beach, Light, by Daniel Skyle

 

On the other side of the Beach, Light – voices of Syrian refugees on war, flight, and building a new life, is a unique collection of poems based on interviews the writer Daniel Skyle did while volunteering for years with Syrian refugees. He interviewed them, then wrote their stories as poems to help people understand refugees more.

Many of those he interviewed later were test readers of the collection, to make certain they felt their voices came through as they wanted. 

And these are the voices of refugees: their love, their incredible bravery, their grief, shaped by experiences during conflict and flight. The collection takes us on a journey to highlight the refugee experience of war, surviving the sea, and integrating in a new place.

Most of those interviewed fled from Syria, but the poems are written to show the experiences of refugees from all conflicts, all wars, to help people understand more about refugees and why they flee. These are the voices of both the living and the dead, showing our common humanity through love, compassion beyond belief, and how we all can heal from trauma.

Haunting in their detailed evocation of what it means to live through conflict and leave your home, Daniel Skyle's tender, vivid and redemptive poems give voice to the victims of the war in Syria. Coaxing the sublime from a terrible violence with "a desperate gentleness", this collection will stay with the reader long after the last page has been turned. 

               – Jack Houston, author of The Fabulanarchist Luxury Uprising (The Emma Press)

 

These words really describe mine and others stories, emotions, and memories. This is our life; this is how we felt. It is so important and wonderful that people can read these stories. Especially those who have no idea about how refugees have suffered in war, and what their situation was like when they left their country, and the dangers they faced during their journey to Europe. We had no choice. A thousand thank yous for telling the world about the stories and pain of refugees.

                                                                                                    – Hanna, refugee from Syria 

 

Published by Stairwell Books, April 2022: You can pre-order the book here!

Contact for the collection, readings, and book commissions: skylewriting at protonmail dot com. You can also follow his writing and peek into coming collections and novels @skylewriting on Instagram, or at Daniel Skyle - Author on Facebook.

#poetry #syria #refugees #writing #سوريا# لاجئ #ukraine #ukrainerefugees #danielskyle #love #ontheothersideofthebeachlight #杜甫 #诗集 #难民 #الشعر

Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: Still, life

 

One thing that the pandemic has done is to help us understand how precious life is.

Death: we are losing people on a daily basis. They are vanishing, leaving, stepping off, while we are still here.

I find myself looking more at people´s faces. The life there, the amazing tiny mimicry that moves smiles and frowns and laughter lines.

How they move, how they breathe, the folds of their clothes.

Sometimes in sadness, sometimes in anger, sometimes seeing frown lines set, and still, they´re alive. So am I, for the moment. We are still sharing the stage of this time and this place, still stumbling through our lines, still wondering what our part is in all this – are we the hero in this play? Is it that person over there? Are we just a supporting actor, are we getting some really good lines this time? (I´ve forgotten my lines! I´ve forgotten my lines!!).

I wrote the poem below during a train journey I had to do. I sat there, just mesmerized by this woman in front of me. Both of us alive on this edge of life and death.

Both of us still here, still breathing, when so many are not.

Still, life

  

Your cheek a bird´s wing;

me on an essential work trip

you heading somewhere

in the seat

in front of me

your window reflection

shifts between old masters;

your small nervous fidgets

with your hair, with your furtive

compact

make you more beautiful to me

a priceless still life

finding ever more beauty

through the small movements of humanity.

We live in a pandemic

the death around us

makes that triangle

of your elbow

those folds of your red sweater

seem even more

amazing, more precious still;

the sketch changes,

you fret, bite a fingernail

rest your cheek in your

palm, close your eyes

as we travel deeper,

into history.

                   – Daniel Skyle

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

#poetry #love #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #skylewriting #authorsofinstagram #COVID19

Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: NHS heroes – the Covid tattoo

 

One thing that has become very clear during the pandemic is the incredible work done by hospitals and those working in health care.

A problem with it is that much of it is hidden, seen daily on the wards and by the staff, but of course not seen in the street, therefore it can be easy to miss, easy to misunderstand, easy to minimise.

It is a vast machine helping us, ranging from doctors and nurses to clerical staff, porters, lab workers, and the ambulance crews.

Even if health care staff are trained and often used to seeing death, I still wonder how big issues with post traumatic stress we will see over the coming years once the pandemic is gone.

Those who get problems, will they still get the support they are getting now? Will they get help and understanding, five years after the pandemic?

I hope so.

The anti-maskers and conspiracy theorists are seen, often very visibly in the news or in protests. But the health care staff who take care of us if we not only catch Covid but catch it bad, they do much of their work and heroism in closed wards, under thick levels of PPE protection, short of staff and during long shifts, heroes hidden in their healing work.

I hope our sincerest and deepest thank yous keep going to them, even in the years to come when the pandemic is gone.

Covid tattoo

 

The PPE mask´s

bruising butterfly mark:

a tattoo on heroines

and heroes.

                     – Daniel Skyle

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

#poetry #love #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #skylewriting #authorsofinstagram #COVID19 #NHSheroes

Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: Infected – will it be me?

 

Will it be me?

Will it be someone I know?

A friend of mine is in her early forties, and got Covid. She has diabetes Type 1, but is strong and healthy. Even with that strength, she got clear symptoms, shaking off most of them in ten days, but it took almost five weeks until all symptoms were fully gone.

And for some, it can go scarily fast from infection to death. It really is an awful thing, this pandemic, surrounding us while we try our best to keep living life anyway.

I wrote this poem from the viewpoint of a patient that has a bad case of Covid, and who lies there, looking at these kind, tired faces behind the PPEs, who keep helping and helping and helping us all.

Infected

Surviving

will it be me

will I lie there

watching the gentle song of kindness

sung behind tired PPEs

will it be me

lying there

seeing eternal grief

smile through visors

at me

while the virus is stealing

my lungs?

Will it be me?

Will they keep singing

their quiet compassion choir

for me

even if

I leave?

 

                          – Daniel Skyle

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

#poetry #love #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #skylewriting #authorsofinstagram #COVID19 #NHSheroes

Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: the memories are getting through the gloves

 

I wrote this poem thinking about the health care staff that simply are burning out during the pandemic.

I hope there are fewer of them than I think, but looking at the pandemic and how many health care staff are forced to work very long shifts while seeing ever more death, this is an attempt to write a quiet song for those who feel this, and haven´t got enough time to heal from it yet.

They are of course also seeing all the patients they save, all the patients that walk out of there even though odds were bad when they came in. There are gold and stars in the darkness, too.

I hope they get time to heal from all this soon.

Through the gloves

 

My hands are dipped in memories

slip

they slip through my medical gloves

as I hold the hands of Covid patients

when they tremble,

clench them back as they gasp

gently hold their hand with love

as they slip

away

as they leave

memories

my hands

are getting dipped in their

memories

more and more the plastic

seems a permeable membrane

I wash my hands harder

disinfect

I just try to open my heart to them

but it´s fraying, you see

it´s beginning to feel like

fraying

tattoos

their memories

they slip

slip through my gloves

                            – Daniel Skyle

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

#poetry #love #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #skylewriting #authorsofinstagram #COVID19 #NHSheroes

Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: writing poetry during hard times

 

                                                                                            Petter Pettersson
 

Hard times make some people write poetry, while some cannot.

For myself, the hard times have always become an even stronger fuel for my writing. I´ve always been grateful for this, and seen it as a blessing; it helps something good come out of it.

In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic began taking bites out of us, I began writing poems for my next collection.

Sometimes my hand just seemed to write them by itself, pushed by an internal tension that forced me to get them down on the page.

How does one write about something as monumental as a global pandemic?

One pandemic later

 

Will I love again

one pandemic later?

Will I live again

one pandemic later?

Will I long again

get loved again

one pandemic later?

Or will I leave

never to be seen again

my name forgotten

never to be said with love again

one pandemic later?

                          – Daniel Skyle

Few of us in our time have lived through something similar; maybe the rare living survivor from the time of the Spanish Flu could describe how much worse things were for them when there was no cure, not much understanding what was happening.

And we are seeing the first real pandemic in a time of social media. For good and for bad, humanity is now woven closer together online, supporting each other through love, yet more at risk of incorrect information on the pandemic and the vaccines finally coming.

How does one write about something that touches every soul on the planet, either with the grey brushstrokes of worry and sadness, or with the thick charcoal lines of grief and death?

My hand keeps moving, keeps forcing me to put these thoughts and dreams of the pandemic down on the page.

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

#poetry #love #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #skylewriting #authorsofinstagram #COVID19

Pandemic poetry @skylewriting: writing about grief

 

 

And so we come to grief.

During this year, even if we haven´t been directly touched by death ourselves and had our heart ripped out by loss, we have still been human beings alive in a herd that suddenly sees many of its members die and vanish.

Knowledge, love, and grandparents; the libraries of the herd vanishing, one by one.

Even if not touched directly, I think many are more affected by this background choir of grief than they realise. Single voices rising in lament, joining into a chorus, then going quiet, one after another.

And for some of us, that grief has been personal, immediate. A new abyss to face, to try to build bridges across when we can´t even remember what a bridge looks like anymore.

The Empty Chair

The empty chair

across from me

is where my friend

used to sit

she was a

nurse, you know?

Then the virus

came

gave her 15-hour days

the face mask

butterfly-tattoo

she shoulda got

a medal

she would never

get to wear

The empty chair

across from me

is full of love

my grandma

used to say “I keep

my love in all of you”

the virus stole

her final breath

and left her love

in all of us

and in that empty chair

across from me

The empty chair

across from me

is where you sit

as always laughing at

me with me

the politicians

helped the virus

steal you

kissed by both

the ventilator and my lips

now in every

empty chair

I see you sit,

smiling back at

                   – Daniel Skyle

Daniel Skyle

@skylewriting on Instagram

https://www.facebook.com/skylewriting

#poetry #love #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #skylewriting #authorsofinstagram #COVID19 #covidheroes