Matt Bryden Poetry

Ninny, the Invisible Girl, Tove Jansson

I gave a research lecture at Falmouth University this week. It was great to take the opportunity to visit the campus, try the Spring Ale at the Seven Stars and sample native oysters at the Beach House. Here’s the abstract of my paper ‘Good Grief – Literary Techniques for the Navigation of Trauma in Poetry and Song’:

In Levels of Life, Julian Barnes claims that grief – like sexual intercourse and having children – separates those who have experienced it from those who have not. Complicated grief can leave a person in a position in which, although the world keeps turning, they are trapped at the point of their trauma, endlessly replaying events in their mind to no positive end. How to break the spiral?

With reference to Nick Cave, Bruce Springsteen, Jack Gilbert, Mimi Khalvati, Ted Hughes, Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, Charles Schultz, Tove Jansson, Blade Runner and Twin Peaks, we will look at alternative approaches to regaining agency – including finding pattern in the past, thinking mythologically and seeking out the missing directly.

Can the act of writing replace a spiral with a narrative arc? Can writing about grief provide an agency lacking in life? Can, as Nick Cave claims, grief result in becoming a more total human being?