#poetry – The Misspraxic Blog

Poems for Dyspraxia Awareness Week

Click to find out more about this year’s *Dyspraxia Awareness Week* from the Dyspraxia Foundation.

My hope to publish this at the start of Dyspraxia Awareness Week was of course an ambitious one… It has been a busy week with a few dyspraxidents for good measure – before you ask, nothing too serious, just broken glasses and a mishap with the hair straighteners resulting in minor burns…! It shouldn’t come as a surprise at this point, since us dyspraxics certainly aren’t known for our spatial awareness and coordination.

And on that note – I really hope that the following poems can be relatable in some way, whether you have dyspraxic traits yourself, or know someone who does. As always, feel free to let me know your thoughts in the ‘Comments’ section.

Take care,

-Misspraxic

1. bruises

the greenish bluish tones of cerulean

mixed with a dash of ochre

create an image – not the impressionist greens

found in Monet’s lush poppy fields

and not the strong blues flowing down the Seine

but the textures of unruly paint dots, erratically

splattered spilled stained

they bleed all over my pages

but my legs and mind do try ever so hard

to keep up with a weary world

where there’s somehow no security

in the greens of a paintbrush

that cannot guarantee my protection,

for I’m the amateur artist who lacks control

like that old car with the dodgy motor

that nobody trusts enough-

my skin is left tired and tainted

by these greenish bluish blotches

and risk cycles round me in circles.

i never progress past yesterday’s chapter

of knocking falling staining –

these marks are less than flawless ceruleans

and lesser than crisp impressionist skies

but these are the honest blues beneath my paper’s edges.

more than the reductive label of the “Clumsy Girl”,

I beam with a creative license

and my bruised and battered bluish greens

make my skin tough enough to take

the hurtful words and leave my legacy

as I knock and fall and always

return to the page every single time.

2. paper crowns of envy

Have you seen her heels,

the ones pulsed with envy studs that shine

as she strides across the office like it’s

her palace and she’s real estate royalty?

Have you seen the way she flaunts

her haute-couture laces in a void of pricey premiums,

internally screaming, “Look at me”?

But she only looks at me with a shiny branded fixation

like a Waitrose security guard she subjects me

to scrutiny from head to toe for tomorrow’s urgent yesterdays,

my last-season eBay dress my unshaven legs and the ghastly gap

that makes my teeth protrude in an ugly unfashion.

I return her glare, for I see through her masking tape glory

and the paper crown she idolises, especially when

she dares to demand I leave my personality

outside the door. “And where’s yours?”

3. Do they see what I see?

I’m disconnected

from the false connections that the masses crave to touch,

quick clicks to links that redirect the engine of the heart

back and forth away from you. A nano-second

is all it takes to churn up a multitude of possible solutions:

Siri, Alexa, I bet you can’t explain – what does it even mean

to be faced day to day with pixels and promises of meaningful

clicking and Likes and Care emojis that never quite fulfil?

Forever in “public” mode, my pain sinks into a certain state of

behind the scenes coping, with Stories and Tweets that seem to be

removed from any authentic storytelling, like the kind you have to sit around for-

I’m disconnected

so tell me this, do the masses see beyond the cyclical games

that re-tweet themselves into an ever-Beta version?

How ridiculous is it to want to click “Undo”

and warp this reality into my Beta version

with a more balanced voice a stronger smile or a faster Intel Core Processor?

Search me and then you’ll see my pain

persists like a Trojan virus from a Justin Bieber advert on the side of Facebook,

waiting to pounce and then it sprouts

up all over the place, picking away at the scabs of my

internal wiring and desperate to be seen.

4. Reset my compass

the cogs of my mind spin both slower and faster than you could ever tell

when you watch me outside the Co-op, looking lost in the weeping wells of time.

magnetically challenged and pulled towards the edge

to navigate the winding lanes with a semi-functioning GPS

is like navigating my differences when a magnetic force

snaps like a car in slow-mo, anticipating the crash but too slow to stop it.

you propel my gross motor, fine motor movements but still I press

the wrong buttons and stop then start all over

the pavement’s sharp edges and ons and offs rattle me

as a million sparks swelter underneath my cotton sleeves.

the cars and lorries and buses screech in a foreign way

and yet they cross my path daily, like false friends.

National Poetry Day – Choices

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Earlier this week it was National Poetry Day, with the theme for 2021 being ‘Choices’. It felt like a very fitting theme, given all the changes and uncertainty we are having to adjust to. Admittedly, I am two days late (would it really be Misspraxic if I weren’t?!)… I still wanted to mark this day by sharing a few of my poems.

I wrote the first poem this week, on the theme of ‘Choices’ – my poem is about centering yourself as a priority when making difficult choices, which is not always easy to do. I wrote the following poems at various points during my first year in teaching, to try and express the experience of teaching and learning through the pandemic – I hope they can resonate with some of you in some way!

Next week is Dyspraxia Awareness Week – the theme is ‘Primary and Secondary Education’, so I will aim to post about this and share another set of poems about dyspraxia then. In the meantime, have a look at the Foundation’s website for resources and information about how you can get involved in Awareness Week.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments, and do check out other poems and brilliant resources from the National Poetry Day website here.

Until next time, take care everyone.

– Misspraxic

1. the uninvited visitor

she didn’t choose the uninvited visitor

who ‘forgot’ to knock every time

and pushed into the line without a pass

she didn’t choose to press the pause button

when in full flow, targeted by the visitor

who jammed the system into overdrive

and no, she didn’t choose to be chronically

dysfunctional, beating a skip and

skipping a beat, her paper heart in shreds

what was that you just said?

no, she didn’t choose for her wires to fizz and flare,

numbed into discomfort. she didn’t choose to count

the dead ends at this crossroads,

drained, there was now no space left but to

pause and listen to the currents

that kept the machine whizzing on and resist its pull

and as she made the decision to ‘re-start’,

she could see a blank canvas sky

graced with stars of connection,

where she could still choose to paint

the warmest smile and still hug the empty corners with her hope.

creased all over, she could still choose to hold on

despite the visitor’s prodding and pricking, she knew

the interference would grow duller and defeated as time went on,

as she could now see it clearly: she must choose herself everyday

2. Freedom Day?

Today’s date is July 19^th 2021 and today we are learning about ‘question forms’

and questions form on the page, as forming questions

becomes our Learning Objective that’s etched

onto my pages too. we run in parallel, a mirror lesson from me to you to me again,

from pixellated Chrome lessons in my living room and back

to the pandemic classroom where you are confined

to a jagged danger line, disjointed and perhaps

a warning sign that this safe box got crossed just too many times,

as we were pushed to ‘think outside the box’ in our teaching,

a word used loosely now, ‘teaching’ from my living room

on ‘Freedom Day’, pestering students to pop their gum in the bin

and just listen to the sounds of Miss, “you’re laggin”

and muted tones and shuffled seats,

a futile command to “listen” – but who would?

to a blur of a leader projected onto my future whiteboard

that wouldn’t break down- will it show us what to expect for 2021?

3. Climbing the walls in 2020

in twenty-twenty we were held

only by the silver birches, the beeches,

not those beaches, but in Epping.

we simply missed being sun-kissed

and hugged by the arms that once knew

old grins, gone in a beat, Missing-In-Action

in twenty-twenty-one our vase is still missing

the plot, its cracks let out all the

water, half empty

energies drained on pointless floral yoga,

goodbye clematis, alstromeria, gardenias-

your petals bloomed only last season

and you now pose a risk to our health,

climbing up the trellis in a resistant gang

against the locked-down iron bars of prison cell gardens.

now it’s only us who are climbing

the walls, desperate to grab a hug stuck in time,

stuck in twenty-nineteen.

4. Why?

Even Better If

the retired lines of Chronic Fatigue

scrawled by dud pens

didn’t make it onto the whiteboard,

now grey board- bored like you.

Even Better If

the wavy panic lines didn’t wash out my cheeks

and If the torn-down posters

somehow weren’t on display today,

If they just hid away in the bin.

Even Better If my mask did a Better job

of masking creases on waterlogged sheets

of paper scattered between Year 7 and 10

and if the creases on a bed unmade at 6,

weren’t unseen all day.

Even Better If we could go without

the background groans that yawn around the room

and fidget with fatigued,

unanswerable whys-

“miss, why?”

[For those reading who aren’t familiar with the ‘What Went Well’/’Even Better If’ feedback style that inspired the above poem, Why?, ‘EBI’ this is a common example of ‘Assessment for Learning’ in UK schools and suggesting how students can improve their work.]

A Misspraxic Christmas update

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Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since my last update…! It is an understatement to tell you that this term has been a challenging one for schools, students, their parents and staff. As you will have already gathered, students and at times whole year groups have been instructed to self-isolate at home, with some students missing more months of their education and losing the structure that being in school provides. I now relate better to how it might have felt/feel for my students to be trapped within the same four walls, or to carry a confusing label with a stigma attached, or to be out of sync socially with their friends and family, especially at an important time of the year. Dyspraxia and other hidden learning differences can certainly exacerbate the anxieties associated with COVID-19, as there is a tendency to overthink situations, process them differently to others, and feel the emotions of overwhelm more intensely than neurotypicals might do.

As ever, poetry and the arts provide a helpful way for many of us dyspraxics to process this overwhelm, ground ourselves, and make sense of challenges, hopes, fears, triumphs, and our favourite word of the year, “unprecedented situations”! I know this is the case for my students, too, whose poems and courage to share them continue to energise me and strengthen my sense of purpose as a new teacher. The following poem might not be the most uplifting one I have written in 2020(!), however I am sharing it in the hope that it might be relatable for some of you, whether you are dyspraxic or not:

It is but it isn’t.
 
If it isn’t the label of disordered fine motor control,
then it’s the loss of control in a train engine
planned to stop at the station three days ago,
back before Saturn collided with Jupiter and gave me a new label.
 
If it isn’t a hot turkey dinner made for six, 
then it’s an empty plate and one absent voice
with only several paranoid ones lingering 
in the background of a laggy Zoom call.
 
If it isn’t Tiers like on last summer’s fancy wedding cake,
then it’s only a second-rate ready meal eaten alone 
and its shredded paper wrappings tossed to the bin,
right where Christmas is now, rotting away
 
in the company of crushed-up carrots that Rudolf missed, 
and chicken past its sell-by date. (Let’s not forget 
my own saliva stuck to tears that fester 
in a camouflage trap that convinces even wild animals of its safety.)
 
If it isn’t squeaky-clean laminate flooring and polished windows,
then it’s the insanity of the ones who sanitised obsessively,
who were negative about being on the positive list, 
all in a split second. 
 
You didn't break me like you broke all the others,
shattering their windows, and like you broke Christmas.
You spared me like you spared the turkey I won’t be eating,
and if it isn't Christmas, then it's a miracle that I am sparing others.

“Next time you feel alone, remember that the season of isolation is when the caterpillar grows its wings.” – Mandy Hale

I wish you all a safe holiday period, whether you celebrate Christmas or otherwise. If you are spending the holiday alone this year, then I hope that you can find little joys and lightness among the darkness. All dyspraxics carry inner strength necessary to overcome struggle, even if it doesn’t seem like it – I hope you can recognise yours and learn something from it.

I will write again in a few days with a more detailed review of my first term as a dyspraxic teacher, including some reflections and advice for managing distance teaching and Google Classroom as a dyspraxic teacher, and managing distance learning as a dyspraxic student (along with some hopefully amusing anecdotes as always!).

Until then, do take care everybody,

– Misspraxic

Long, dark November: Held back but holding up

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During teacher training, I was warned all about the challenges of getting through November as a new teacher. This phenomena was referred to as something along the lines of “long, cold, dark November”, when October half-term is a distant memory and the Christmas holidays are too far away to count down to just yet. And here I am – this is no longer a figure of speech! The “cold” part is definitely exasperated by the current requirement to push all classroom windows wide open…

It feels like a small milestone to have already made it past October half term, though, as living a daily contradiction with the label of “lockdown” leaves education settings stretched and squeezed to the limit. I tried to reflect this absurdity in this week’s poem, and hope that it might be relatable for some, whether you identify with dyspraxic traits or otherwise.

Take care everyone,

-misspraxic

Held means Hero

they make a bee line
for the C line tube
where we are all squeezed in:
them with their juice cartons from concentrate
and me with my brain cells concentrated
on just getting through the day,
on getting through to them
in an hourglass squeezed full of sardines
stuck against the frames
wedged open and our few screws
have come loose again
as they shiver the words:

"Miss, do we have to keep them open?"

but coats and mouths are zipped to close
down mentions of the C-word,
for this tube is held
by bleak Outlook pings
and crippling reminders 
that 'Held' means hero in German-
  Held back with 'can't's streaming down my cheeks,
  Held up through the missed minutes 
and unsaid pep talks on weary late nights
Holding us up through the missing links
that test us in tubes
squeezing to burst.

Creativity in the corridors of coping

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I am the teacher tired of paceman-style manoeuvres that create chaos in the corridors of not coping

Creativity tends to be a major strength in dyspraxic adults and young people alike, as we can think “outside the box” in highly valuable ways. These ways might include, but are in no way limited to, creativity in art, music, and our use of language. Creative writing can be a cathartic practice for all of us, particularly in testing times, and I know that this is certainly the case for other dyspraxics too. When you are pushed to your limits, your struggle can fuel a creative energy that enables others to feel and connect with your experience. My students sharing their own powerful poems on handouts in the staffroom this week has motivated me to do the same.

This first poem is entitled “Corridors of coping”, and expresses some of the logistical challenges involved in starting as a teacher this September.

Corridors of coping

armed with dog-eared downside-up seating plans

scrawled with hieroglyphs that hold your gaze –

today’s performance is masked by a face drenched

in sanitised regrets. i only tried to

sanitise my mind, yet my mind is a magnet

for lost words stuck down the back of yesterday’s trimmer.

i misread my timetable and arrived five minutes late,

asking you to fill in today’s missing pages,

not to fill the room with your fits of giggles.

but i can decipher the codes clues to your

barrier to learning familiar to my own barrier to teaching

for i am the teacher who catches you

dropping to the floor without a back-up plan

like a pile of clumsy papers lost along the

one-way maze at rush hour on a weekday.

i am the teacher tired of pacman-style manoeuvers

that create chaos in the corridors of not coping.

i aim to be the teacher who builds a bridge past the haze,

that unexpected rare breed of teacher, like the

novelty of a poem unfinished

As always, feel free to get in touch with your thoughts or any questions via the website and do take care everyone,

– misspraxic