Roger Robinson’s has just won the TS Eliot poetry prize for his beautiful poetry collection, A Portable Paradise
You can listen to him read the title poem on BBC’s Front Row (14/1/20) at 23 minutes. The poem begins with the line
And if I speak of paradise I am speaking of my grandmother….
Roger wanted to convey how memories of his beloved Trinidad (where he spent his early life), could evoke a sense of paradise and connection with home/spiritual wellness – and in the poem his grandmother tells him to connect, using all his senses, to his memories – if necessary in a quiet space to make it easier.
This is often how a craniosacral therapist begins treatment. We try to help clients connect with a time and place when they felt deeply connected with nature -and to bring this memory into the present as strongly as they can. By evoking this memory the physiology of the body quite naturally responds. The defended state, or state of alarm that we can grow so used to living with, because it feels ‘normal’, begins to subside. The heart feels more open and calm.
Do listen to Roger reading his poem – and I hope you find your own portable paradise within!