Review by Lisa Natasha Wetton of "Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet" by Cathi Rae

This is everyday life, simply depicted, suicide taken in a stride, elongated spaces between the words giving breath where there is none. The reader is given space to pause to reflect and then continue, taking in the gravity of this subject matter in as easy a way as possible. 

          "Is this real?"
          "Shit, I think it’s real"
          "He really really did it"
          running in real time
          while time has stopped for you.

Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet is a series of poems based on real-life stories, creating a narrative that shines a light on issues around men's mental health and the tragedy of male suicide. In her preface, the author refers to it as "a 21st century tragedy." She brings home the finality of life-ending decisions made in everyday circumstances, in order to make individual men visible in a culture that, as the collection quietly argues, has made them very easy to overlook.

Every kind of suicide and situation weaves through this collection. Teenage boys, middle-aged men, drunken fathers snatched from life in a moment that cannot be taken back. Some planned, some more spontaneous, all terminal and unchangeable. The sadness and tragedy are stark and unrelenting, with a wish that it could be something other. 

The simplicity of descriptions mirrors the commonality of suicide. Men of all ages are taking their lives under the compounding weight of circumstances that ground them down - feeling unseen, carrying shame they were never equipped to name, or simply exhausted by the effort of continuing. 

In the opening piece, "Slicing Through the Information Superhighway with a Scalpel," Rae writes about the process with which she created the content:

           my computer glitches
           won’t stop scrolling page after page
           name after name after name
           until I have to look away block away the tears
           writing elegies for dead men I didn’t meet.

Poem after poem, man after man, the weight of it builds and builds. These are not isolated failures, not men who simply couldn't cope. They are every age, every background, every circumstance. "Club 18 to 35" feels like the collection's breaking point. This is an almost-angry reckoning with what we are doing to men, and what we are allowing to continue.

Male suicide is becoming an often silent, global epidemic, with men dying by suicide approximately three to four times more often than women. Rae reaches out to shed light on an issue that must be addressed. These poems provide perspectives of people choosing to take their own lives and how, as well as acknowledging those left behind. 

In "Finders," Rae bluntly puts it, 

          your discovery       just a delay
          in the everyday of commuting home
          a flicker of frustration
          and then reset
          Someone has to find you ... 
          someone who will keep that memory
          forever
          even if they wish they couldn’t
          who might prefer that you had stayed
          unfound.

Here, she acutely presents the devastating impact that ripples out from suicide. Lights go out on a life, as the world inevitably, indifferently, keeps on turning. This is a collection that deserves to be read widely - not as a comfortable experience, but as a necessary one. 

About the reviewer

Lisa Natasha Wetton (aka Lisa Life) is a regular contributor to the English pages of L’eco de Sitges, Barcelona. She is a Creative Artist, Coach & Hypnotherapist. She collaborates on Writing Retreats with American Author Will Bashor, with whom she co-authored Soul to Pages - A Weekend Journey to your Novel/Self-help book, a process used to support budding writers that incorporates meditation and visualisation sessions. She is currently refining edits on her first completed book, A Guide to Spirituality from a Working Class Girl. She has a twenty-year history working in Dance & Theatre and has been based in Barcelona for almost seven years. You can find Lisa at https://linktr.ee/NewLisaLife.

You can read more about Writing Elegies for Dead Men I Didn't Meet by Cathi Rae on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Julie Gardner of "Football, Fighter Jets, Flowers & Everything in Between" by Ellistown Primary School's Year Six Students

 

As the title suggests, there is variety here. Thirty-two year-six pupils from Ellistown Primary School share their knowledge and interests. And what a knowledgeable and interesting group of individuals they seem to be! 

One piece is inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, another by the award-winning short film Little Freak, by Edwin Schaap. We read a fictionalised account of Catherine of Aragon overhearing Anne Boleyn and Henry Vlll. A labelled diagram explains why the Eurofighter Typhoon is so unique, and an illustrated description of Japan Football Trials makes for a fascinating read. A Victoria sponge recipe is a lovely tribute to a nan who baked "so many different things." 

Recurring themes across the collection are ambitions for the future, the importance of friendship and hobbies. There are some spooky stories, eight poems and some impressive illustrations, including a fierce looking Aslan, a dolphin and an abstract interpretation of the school’s houses. A Lego enthusiast contributes a photograph of a model which was made with 2352 pieces and a photograph of a clay and paint model of an ice-cream cone was inspired "by hot summer days, when the SATs are over and we’re having fun." 

Credit goes to the teachers who have encouraged this creative and diverse project, to Constantine who edited the collection, and to the Coalville C.A.N. Community for making the publication possible. I suspect the children will remember this work long after their SATs results are forgotten. As the headteacher writes in the foreword, the children have been given "permission to embrace their own individuality and to find a voice they may not have known they had." 

About the reviewer
Julie Gardner is studying towards a PhD at Nottingham Trent University, focussing on Silence and Voice in the poetry of Vicki Feaver and her contemporaries. Her poetry pamphlet Remembering was published by Five Leaves Publishers in 2024.