When we think of grief, itâs usually connected to the physical death of a loved one. But loss takes many forms â the end of a relationship, career, dream, way of life â and it will touch us all at some point.
Yet, we seem to know so very little about how to cope when it does.
Grief has teeth is a raw, moving portrayal of love, loss and soul awakening, told across 55 poems and short essays based on the authorâs life.
Beginning from childhood days of ânot fitting inâ, the collection moves through the darkness of death, heartbreak, violence, illness and trauma, eventually putting the pieces of Self back together and returning to the light and fire of life.
This book is both an exorcism and a battle cry, to let others on the journey know they are not alone â and that they, too, can make it home.
When we think of grief, itâs usually connected to the physical death of a loved one. But loss takes many forms â the end of a relationship, career, dream, way of life â and it will touch us all at some point.
Yet, we seem to know so very little about how to cope when it does.
Grief has teeth is a raw, moving portrayal of love, loss and soul awakening, told across 55 poems and short essays based on the authorâs life.
Beginning from childhood days of ânot fitting inâ, the collection moves through the darkness of death, heartbreak, violence, illness and trauma, eventually putting the pieces of Self back together and returning to the light and fire of life.
This book is both an exorcism and a battle cry, to let others on the journey know they are not alone â and that they, too, can make it home.
Trauma bottlenecks in bloodlines until we break the cycle.
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MELTING POINT
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We marinated in master stock
developed over generations
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slowly tenderising
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into manageable bites
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Even the toughest cut of meat
succumbs under steady heat.
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THE TURTLE ALWAYS GETS THERE IN THE END
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My twin sister and I are the youngest of seven. Mumâs first marriage gave us two older brothers and three older sisters. We arrived when they were mostly grown.
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I was born breech â âbum firstâ, as Mum used to say.
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This reluctance to show my face continued into childhood. I was painfully shy and stuttered, so preferred to let others speak for me. I usually hid behind my twin, occasionally peeking out from behind her back, curious but cautious about this strange, loud world.
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I was born eight minutes late, they said. Perhaps I just needed more time.
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I believe everything has happened exactly when itâs meant to.
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GATEKEEPERS
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I asked why itâs called a ribcage
to stop your heart flying away, they said
I want to let it see the world
you need to keep it safe
they said
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I wish I could open the side gate and show you
the blood-caked bandages keeping it whole
the shrapnel that shredded muscle and bone
lodged in the brain so the cogs get stuck
sending pain to foreign parts
of this tired faulty machine
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They always said to shut the gate
youâre safe inside
they canât come in
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I want them to
I want them to see
the beautiful world inside of me.
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BLOOD, SWEAT AND FEARS*
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I know what it is to see the world through sadness thatâs not your own.
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When we were young
Mum would sweat trauma
if you got close enough
itâd get on your clothes
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He used to beat me black and blueâŚ
One time he held a gun to my headâŚ
I never got to see my baby before they took him awayâŚ
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The women in my family tend to sweat
maybe itâs genetic
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He raped me most nightsâŚ
If it wasnât for the kids Iâd have done it long agoâŚ
Maybe we just donât get to be happyâŚ
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I shower a lot.
MY HIGHLAND HOME
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My ancestors are Scottish
on both sides
we have our own tartan
and auburn hair
thickened-cream skin
the whole kilt and caboodle
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Dad played the bagpipes
my sisters and I danced
in Highland competitions
in Australian heat
it was never cool
neither was the weather
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Everyone knows the Highland Fling
more disciplined than it sounds
my favourite was the Swords
it keeps you on your toes
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you leap across star-crossed blades
starting slow and careful
speeding to a jig
if you knock the swords
youâre done
Tiptoeing around hazards, hey?
I won awards for that dance
medallions for a metal dalliance
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My twin liked the Sailorâs Hornpipe
in regulation white-and-blue suits
you had to jump like Gene Kelly
for approximately six minutes
and smile while you did it
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Our sister liked the Irish Washerwoman
another folk dance of the working class
draped in hearty musical-for-the-masses
a proud tradition
lost in translation
lost on the average Australian
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Thatâs the beauty of heritage
a sense of belonging
when you feel out of place
a home you may have never seen
but felt and traced.
IN THE CLOUDS
I always aimed high. Literally.
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Every time my parents turned around I had scurried up one of our red-brick archways, then landed on my feet like a crouching cat when they yelled to get down!
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I scaled trees. Sat for ages among the leaves.
Singing songs, staring wistfully into the distance.
Always a ballad. Always a dramatic expression of love.
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The roof was another sanctuary from sound. I sat on the crunchy seventies-orange tiles or the hot flat tin, depending on the weather or how high I wanted to be.
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Sometimes I read, sometimes I wrote. Sometimes I broke twigs and pondered things.
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Who am I? What does it all mean? Where do I fit?
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One day, I stretched my mind like an elastic band to look at myself from the outside in. I saw a bubbly girl living in a bubble. The veil was thin.
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I snapped my consciousness back into the confines of my brain and scurried back down, on the panicked hunt for one of Mumâs consuming hugs.
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UP NORTH
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Grandpaâs property ended where the jetty began; where his paw-paw and mango trees were replaced by coconut palms and made the sea smell of the tropics.
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My sister and I liked to run through their cascading shadows at sunset as the peachy pink sky waved goodbye. Dad trailed behind in his usually calm way, as we popped like hot corn up ahead.
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Itâs hard to run with a bucket of bait. The handle snaps at your legs like the gums of baby turtles. Inside, the squid guts squished and squelched.
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It always took forever to get those slimy guys on the hook â and when done, youâd smell like one. Maybe the lingering stench was payback for sacrificing their bodies for sport.
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We each cast a line and waited, that delicious moment of potential bubbling underneath. We unravelled our kid-friendly reels a little more; staring intently at the sea as the line slackened.
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Suddenly, a ripple. A gurgle. A tug. A puffed-out blowfish emerged through the surface like a freshly born baby.
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It looked scared. I threw it back.
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THE VISIT: PART I
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We were young when Mum started telling us about our eldest brother.
He was delivered stillborn at full term when she was 17.
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It was 1963, and the staff of the country hospital said it was âGodâs willâ before they took him away.
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Mum never got to see or hold him.
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As he never took a breath, the baby didnât require a name, they said.
Mum often cried in the quiet, wondering how she could have prevented the loss. Wondering why nobody else seemed to acknowledge heâd existed.
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Two years later, she moved into a new house with a healthy baby girl while her husband worked away. Mum spent most nights comforting my eldest sister in the dreaded silence.
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Soon, she began to have the same vivid dream. Over and over.
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Three small angels flew up through the kitchen table, then circled her for several minutes before disappearing the way they came.
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After the fourth night, she told Grandad. He said it sounded like her son and guardian angels coming to reassure her she was safe.Â
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After a week, she started talking to them like people. On the last night, their visit lasted only seconds. Comforted, she never saw them again.
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In 1999, after 36 years, Mum was able to legally name her eldest son.
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SCHOOLED
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When I was little, I liked to read encyclopedias and atlases.
When I was eight, I learnt how to spell âCzechoslovakiaâ. I couldnât wait to share.
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Kids groaned. The teacher said no-one likes a know-it-all.
I didnât understand.
Knowledge brings joy?
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Sticks and stones may break my bones
but when will names not hurt me?
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Wise up, kid
You took a daisy to a gunfight
Youâre too sensitive
Fear smells like blood
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Youâve got to toughen up.
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HOW TO BELONG
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Teenage life
itâs too much
this heaving heaviness
that shrouds my body
clouds my mind
squeezing awe through pores
like Vegemite worms
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Itâs not mine
itâs yours
the fractured souls
who think you need fissures
to fit in
who chip at foundations
and call it preparation.
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YOUNG LOVE*
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At 20, I got what Iâd always dreamed of: romantic love.
Turned out, it was neither.
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I soon thought it was normal for a partner to:
call you fat
and ugly
say his friends thought the same
punish you with silent treatment
ignore you for a week
lie to your face
yell in your face
turn up at your workplace
interrogate acquaintances
get friends to âtestâ your fidelity
read your emails
twist your words
track your car
punch a hole in the wall
threaten self-harm
say youâd never find someone else
(who else would put up with you?)
follow you to another country
never say sorry
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I began to believe all romance was a masked dance, perfected in closed rehearsals. A place where you learned to leap weightlessly on eggshells; spin your mind like a pirouette; swallow your voice like water.
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Eventually, I found the nerve to leave. It took hours to get him to let me go.
Five missed calls from my sister. I drove home.
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Relief.
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It was better to be alone and not lonely than lonely and not alone.
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THERAPY IN THE AFTERNOON
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âYou walked into this room like youâre apologising for taking up space in the world.â
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My therapist observed me until I sat down.
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âI know,â I replied.
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Iâd seen her for a few months to try and unravel the sadness â and more recently, anger â to get back to Me. You see, I never had it before. I was always quietly bright. Somewhere along the way Iâd become a sponge full of water that wasnât mine.
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We scoured through my life like archaeologists, gently brushing dirt off the bones of my past.
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âYou have remarkable insight, Louise. I see you have so much potential thatâs desperate to come out but itâs like you have chains padlocked around you. Does that sound about right?â
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I told her I knew one day Iâd bust free of everything thatâs holding me back. But I couldnât just sit around and wait. I had to keep searching for a key. Any key.
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She said the key was Me.
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I am not ashamed to admit that the beautiful cover of Louise Baxter's poetry and short prose excerpts drew me in but it did not prepare me at all for what I would find inside.
This is an incredibly powerful work of personal examination and candidness, a map of the author's experiences of grief. As she explains, grief is not just caused by death or the end of a love; grief manifests itself in many ways throughout our lives and we may not always realise that we are grieving as a result. In Baxter's book, then, there is the full range of human experience, some of it traumatic and abusive and not necessarily in the personal remit of every reader. However, her writing is figurative and emotive and revealing and I could not help but be moved by it.
There is a wide variety of verse here: two line poems juxtaposed with others that pass a page. Poems like Watch Out for Sharks are pithy and direct, a short advisory message to those who are vulnerable as is Strong Roots, where the poet addresses herself, ending with a direct statement; whereas Anger is a poem which rails against the views which are used to pigeonhole the behaviours of women with lines like "vigilant not suspicious/sexual not promiscuous", succinctly highlighting the fine line of the perception of them from others, that women have to navigate.
My favourite poems came early in the book: I really liked How To Belong, a poem about the awkwardness and pressures of fitting in as a teenager - to mould oneself or not to mould - and Young Love, a poem that describes a toxic relationship and totally subverts the overly romanticised view that the poem's title suggests.
The book is structured to correspond with the author's life journey, starting in childhood and progressing linearly through her growth as a person, describing incidents as well as revelations that have shaped her through their emotional impact, as well as the resulting grief. There is a lot of sadness here but this is counterbalanced with hope and the collection ends in a way that will show that these negative remnants can be thrown off and mastered with support (and a little mysticism). Overall, I came out from reading the collection with a sense of having been immersed in someone else's emotions but feeling lighter for the sharing.