Zoe Brooks’s “The Gypsies in the Room” is #281 in the never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM

Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? The poem is about the death of my mother from Alzheimers, so in some way it had a very long germination. The poem comes out of the many hours I spent sitting with her, watching her slow decline. I didn’t plan to write a poem on the subject and initially I didn’t want to. But emotionally important poems have a habit of creeping up on me. (Above: Zoe Brooks in April of 2021. Copyright granted by Zoe Brooks)

The poem needed a tangible image for her decline and it came after her death. My mother died at the end of June 2019. To help cope with my grief I undertook the practical task of sorting through Mum’s possessions. One was her handbag and purse. Like most women Mum and her handbag went together everywhere, even though in the months leading to her death she had little need for them. Both the handbag and purse were old and worn-out. As I emptied Mum’s purse I found coins which had slipped into the torn lining. (Below: Zoe Brooks as a baby with her mother Dorothy. Copyright granted by Zoe Brooks)

There was also an important incident which took place as Mum slipped away. The family was around her, but she was talking about “the Gypsies” that were standing by the wall. Mum and I had talked about how her maternal grandfather was probably Romani. (Below: the Romani people during pre-war Europe)

The most important stage in my writing is a stage of allowing the poem to marinate in my brain. This happens in the area between conscious and subconscious. British poet Angela France talks about the toad in the back of head, which sums up for me how this stage of the process feels. (Below: Angela France. Web Logo Photo – angelafrance.co.uk

After this there is the point in which the poem comes out on to the page. I encourage the “toad” by reading poetry before I settle to sleep. This was the case with this poem. I was just dropping off to sleep, when the poem arrived, and I wrote it down in long-hand in my notebook. I made a few changes, moving a line and a few crossing outs, and went back to sleep. In the morning I read the poem out loud. Doing this is always important for me, because hearing the poem highlights elements that don’t work. It is only after that stage that I typed up the poem. (Below: Zoe Brooks’s notebook. Photo Credit and Copyright by Zoe Brooks)

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. I wrote the poem down in my bedroom. On the walls of the room are lots of prints from a collection of Czech graphics. In the corner at the foot of my bed is a small desk with laptop. I inherited the house from my aunt and this was her workroom too. (Below: Zoe Brooks’s writing space in her bedroom.)

What month and year did you start writing this poem? July 2019

How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?) Here’s a photo of the one and only draft.

Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us? “The arm reaches out” (Below: Zoe Brooks’s rough draft of her poem “The Gypsies in the Room.” Credit and Copyright by Zoe Brooks)

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I believe a poem exists between the poet and the reader and it can take on meanings from both. I have read this poem at various events and I know it hits home with the audience. Alzheimers is such a terrible illness and so many people have lost a loved one. I hope this poem talks to them.

The poem explores how grief is triggered by simple physical things, I am sure I am not the only relative who has found going through a dead mother’s handbag particularly painful. The purse is also a metaphor for the disintegration of the brain through Alzheimers.

The poem also talks about death being part of a journey, a continuity that her ancestors and we the next generation are part of. (Below: Zoe (right) with her mother, Dorothy. Copyright by Zoe Brooks)

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The whole poem is emotional for me. But the image of the purse with its meagre contents is particularly so.

Has this poem been published before? And if so where? The poem was published in my collection “Owl Unbound” by Indigo Dreams Publishing in October 2020.

The Gypsies in the Room

It is the unstitching

of the mind,

we tell ourselves, watching

as she slips further from us,

like an old purse,

the lining opening

to reveal lost coins.

Morphine and dementia

see the gypsies in the room,

silent in a row.

The ancestors come to greet her,

we joke,

to watch over the journey

we cannot take with her,

not yet anyway.

The coins jingle,

crossing the palm

of the ferryman.

Zoe Brooks lives in the Cotswolds in the UK. She has been widely published in print and online magazines and appeared in the anthology ‘Grandchildren of Albion’. Her long poem ‘Fool’s Paradise’ won the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition award for best poetry ebook 2013. Her collection ‘Owl Unbound’ was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2020. Zoe helps run the Cheltenham Poetry Festival and has gained a reputation as a performer of poetry. (Below: Zoe Brooks reading her poem “The Gypsies in the Room.” Copyright by Zoe Brooks)

https://zoebrooks.blogspot.com