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Ways to wellbeing

A Bittersweet Herbal

Read or listen to poems that have been written by poet Gwyneth Lewis as 'word remedies for chronic stress and conditions'.

Posted in: Get creativeOur thoughts and feelings
Gwyneth Lewis sitting in front of a bookcase.
Posted in: Get creativeOur thoughts and feelings

This tool was developed as part of Cultural Cwtsh, which was an online creative wellbeing hub for the health and care workforce in Wales, created by the Arts Council of Wales in collaboration with artists across the country.

In partnership with the Arts Council of Wales, we’re excited to share this mental wellbeing tool, alongside with many other creative resources, with everyone in Wales!

A Bittersweet Herbal

“The reason I write poetry is to change my mind. It’s a form of self-medication through language.”

This is the start of my Bittersweet Herbal, word remedies for chronic stress and conditions. I hope they help you. I’d love to know yours if you’re willing to share.

The reason I write poetry is to change my mind. It’s a form of self-medication through language, one that uses the widest social medium of all, language to challenge, divert and console.

Poetry is always part of a conversation and demands an answer. In this project, I write a number of poems in different modes, addressing varying difficult moods or ‘plant families’.

I invite answers from those who wish to reply with poems of their own. I think it’s important that health professionals who want to write hear each others’ responses to their lives in the pandemic and spark off each other.

I’ve chosen a botanical model because of its natural properties (in the wild or in gardens) has universal appeal and because of the medicinal overtones. I imagine my poems functioning as a seedbed for others’ work. I see the poems – mine and others’ – together as a poetry greenhouse.

A Litter Herbal

On your left is the nest
of a secret drinker: a collection of glass
like a box of jewels.
Tourmaline, garnet shine
through the scrub. No matter

how often the obsessive litter
picker plunders the bower, overnight
bottles – perfect as eggs – and fragrant
with malt reappear, so resilient
is pain and the instinct

to hide it. We could set watch,
to observe this creature
and approach. But no. Anguish
deserves its privacy.

Download a PDF of the poem, A Litter Herbal.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Awake

What woke me was not a kiss
but an injection. Bewitched
by my brain waves, I fell ill
in a genteel herbaceous border,
which is now a thicket of thorns.

How will I ever find
my old life?
Give up. Learn to cultivate
shade, rejoice in mosses.

Download a PDF of the poem, Awake.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Diwrnod arall yn dost yn y gwely

Fe’m lladdwyd, fel gwair
yr ail gynhaeaf, a’m gosod i orffwys
ar fy ngwely, tra fo peiriant salwch
yn rhuo llofruddiaeth

dau gae i ffwrdd. Mae’r ysbryd
gorweddol yn hanner effro
i siffrwd creaduriaid y meddwl.
Mae’r boda a’r brain

uwchben yn barod. Chi nerfau’r
dychymyg, rhof fy nghorff
rhyngoch chi a’r rhai rheibus ond rhedwch
tra medrwch, da chi, am loches

y cloddiau – na, nid fi, ond y gerdd! –
mae’n amser: daw’r barcud i hela,
a chyn hir, fe ddychwel y baler
i ddechrau o ddifri ar y cywain.

Download a PDF of the poem, Diwrnod arall yn dost yn y gwely.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Fatigue

The Tired plant
won’t grow for those
without patience. I have

what it takes, bow down
with the weight
of blossoms so luscious

they deserve to be
laid, not dropped,
on the baize-

green lawn, with the
croupier’s care, who
never despairs,

no matter the odds:
‘Ladies and gents, please
place your bets’.

Download a PDF of the poem, Fatigue.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Flowers of the Wayside and Meadow

B James
Bryn Villa
December 1928

I’m learning the grasses with my Dacu,
who died in nineteen sixty-seven. First page,
he’s keen: Sweet Vernal Grass puts the sugars
in hay. Sheep’s Fescue he ticks, learning the humble
but missing the swelling fashion crescendo
through Pinks, Poppies, Spurges,
not noting – as I do now – that an Orchid’s
two tubers in Welsh are called ‘Adam and Eve’.
Eve sinks in water but, hey, Adam floats…
The Nettle’s a ‘weapon’. Horse-tail, full of silica,
is Brwyn Nadd, (Whetting Rushes),
used to sharpen arrows. Nineteen twenty eight, a decade
after the battle of Ypres, where Dacu was wounded.
No wonder he leaves me when humble Bracken’s
rhizomes are described ‘like soldiers in dugouts’. So I go on
alone to Lichen, Toadstools and the difficult Mosses.

Download a PDF of the poem, Flowers of the Wayside and Meadow.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

On Stopping the Anti-Depressants

A rare plant
has flowered
after fifteen years.
I thought I was dead
or, at least, infertile but look!
I’m blossoming tears

in a fountain of fuschia
blooms, known in Irish
as deora dé, God’s tears. While I cry, I
am him. So, come closer

and drink while you may, before
they turn brittle again and shatter
like glass, scattered around to protect me.

Download a PDF of the poem, On Stopping the Anti-Depressants.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Planhigyn y Niwl

Dim ond mewn cwm â’i gwmwl ei hun
y mae’r llysieuyn yn tyfu
a all wella twymyn teimlo’n ddryslyd.

Mae’n foddion mor brin
nes bod rhaid ei warchod
gan filwyr
a hyfforddwyd i feddwl
yn glir. Liw nos, fe welwch
goelcerth y gwylwyr
yn ymladd eu penbleth.

Yn y glaw, mae persawr planhigyn y niwl yn trechu’r
gorau, ac fe’u clywir yn wylo
dros gwymp dinasoedd yr ewyllys.

Download a PDF of the poem, Planhigyn y Niwl.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Ghost Orchid Scoop

I’m so secret that I’m one of the thirty-six vegetal lamedvivnikim, a justified
plant that holds up the world from a dank

menstrual mangrove. Where is the moth
with the exact-shaped proboscis to probe me? bring me to ecstasy, so that I arch

my back, lift my flower’s white taffeta skirt
to breed? It’s not you, with your porn-
angled lenses, but that twitch in the bark which is

a Giant Sphinx Moth with intent.

Download a PDF of the poem, Ghost Orchid Scoop.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Cerddi Anhysbys

Dydw i ddim, hyd yn oed, yn coelio fy hun.
Dim rhyfedd na fedra i dderbyn gair
neb arall. Rwy mewn rhyw strach o hyd.

Ddoe: rhoi’r gore i farddoni
Bore ‘ma, wedyn, dyma fi
yn clywed rhywbeth, gorfod sgwennu:

gosod geiriau, fel dillad gwlyb
ar lein y frawddeg, er mwyn eu gwylio’n
chwifio’n y gwynt wrth iddyn nhw sychu.

Download a PDF of the poem, Cerddi Anhysbys.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Red Waistcoat

The ewe has unbuttoned her woollen coat
along her sternum to display the scarlet

lining. Her organs are pinned inside,
hot watches. Magpies have seized her eyes

to try out her gaze. It’s a social occasion: kites,
buzzards and their crow companions – anatomy students all –

descend, to attend, in raked seating, Dr Tulp’s
dissection at the Guild of Surgeons, raucous but taking in

every detail and especially craving fat globules
like amber beads concealed on her person.

Download a PDF of the poem, Red Waistcoat.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Blodyn y Gwaed

Fe fwres i ‘mhen. Goeliech chi byth
faint o waed ddaw o’r talcen: disgynnodd
yn rhwyd, fel llen het goctél, a gorlifo
dros wefus cwpan fy llaw. Rhedais allan

i’r stryd, fel un mewn gorymdaith, yn tasgu
rhubannau ysgarlad i ddathlu ‘mod i’n ffynnon
gyhoeddus o haemoglobin – pistyll y llan! –

mam y briodferch yn ei fascinator,
plu carmin yn crynu – to uwch fy mhen
cyn ffurfio utgorn ysgarlad, corn gwlad

Amaryllis yn cyhoeddi ‘mod i’n dechrau blino,
felly dewch a’ch piser cyn i’r clwyf geulo…

Download a PDF of the poem, Blodyn y Gwaed.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Late Blackberries

Nobody picks the late-autumn glut
Inside the graveyard’s kissing gate.

I missed the first sweetness that sheen
of plump lushness, drawing in obliging birds

And the second, each fruit a cluster of dormouse eyes –
the mighty dormouse, whose merest presence

can avert major roads in the planning! Being ill
tastes bitter. Third ripening now and I feel

for fruit not yet sucked dry by moths, false wasps,
not pregnant with maggots – my haul,

dear for being so soon to be gone, imperfect
but here, despite thorns that draw

long, blood-beaded scratches on legs, like autumn’s needle
tattooing haws on the hedge, a self-portrait.

Download a PDF of the poem, Late Blackberries.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

Will I?

The herb called Will I Ever Feel
Better? Is to be used
only to treat the gravest wounds

that must – despite the patient’s protests –
be kept open, so they can heal
from the inside out. Summer comes, summer

goes. So little recovery. Being alive
is both trauma and sovereign
remedy. You cannot choose.

Download a PDF of the poem, Will I?

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

The Beat

I am that untimely tree, out of sync
with seasons, seeking the beat –
called the One – for healing. I’m always too soon

or right after. Just off. I’m still part (however peripheral) of the band, me
with my triangle, waiting and counting

through the cacophony, we’re all playing badly
two, one and I’m in! and we end altogether,
look round in surprise and burst out laughing.

Download a PDF of the poem, The Beat.

Listen to the poem read out by Gwyneth.

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Two women preparing food together in a kitchen Dau menyw yn paratoi bwyd gyda'i gilydd mewn cegin.
Senior mother and her daughter watering plants together with a watering can
A senior man watering a tray of plants in his conservatory.
Woman taking a selfie at Henrhyd Falls