The Deepest Thing: A Poetic Memoir

Writing about a disabled family member too often succumbs to clichés of tragedy or overcoming, or a presumptuous appropriation of their voice. The Deepest Thing is something else entirely. These translucent, searching poems live in the real world. With richly evocative imagery, they traverse decades of institutional and social prejudice to honour the improvised “dance” of a farming family and “the things that matter most” to the poet's sister. Simply beautiful. - Andy Jackson

Table of Contents:
Preface.............................................................................................1 The Diagnosis.....................................................................................2   I..........................................................................................................3 Though.................................................................................................4 This Different Life .............................................................................5 Our Father’s Hands...........................................................................6 Farmyard Sonnet................................................................................8 When the cousins visited..................................................................9 When is a miracle?...........................................................................10 Taunts in the Schoolyard.................................................................12 Never the Doctor..............................................................................13 The First Seizure...............................................................................14 1960s...................................................................................................15 The Scholarship Boy ......................................................................16 Remarkable Things Preceded This Night.....................................17 Farming Knowledge........................................................................19 And then there were two................................................................20 With an Unsatisfactory Survival Kit..............................................22 Catching the Bus Home..................................................................23 The Pig...............................................................................................24 Lennox-Gestault Syndrome............................................................25 A Found Poem in my Father’s Handwriting...............................26   II......................................................................................................27 Shifting Vocab..................................................................................28 Australia 2008 ..................................................................................29 When is a Mother?...........................................................................30 Moving into your Space..................................................................31 Measuring the Pain of Epilepsy......................................................32 The Carer ...........................................................................................33 Library Visit.......................................................................................34 Don’t Underestimate the Mothers..................................................35 It Takes a Village...............................................................................36 Introduction of NDIS........................................................................37 Tilting on the NDIS See-Saw...........................................................38 Gym Girl.............................................................................................40 Swim Girl...........................................................................................41 What Gets Us Through.....................................................................42 Feeding Time.....................................................................................44 Mockery in the Workplace...............................................................45 Evidence from the Royal Commission...........................................46 How is it that nobody knows..........................................................50 Measurable Action Following the Hearings of the Royal Commission.................................................................51 Lockdown Retrospective..................................................................53 The Stolen Desk. ..............................................................................55   III.....................................................................................................57 The Shift of Death............................................................................58 Mercy.................................................................................................60 The Neurology of Memory.............................................................61 Travelling Without My Mother......................................................63 Your Place in the Family of Us.......................................................65 Changing the size of a life...............................................................67 Whose Choice?.................................................................................68 Difficult Families..............................................................................69 Noise in the Disability Sector.........................................................70 Silence in the Disability Sector.......................................................71 The End of Summer ........................................................................73 Queuing in Order.............................................................................74 After the Diagnosis..........................................................................76 What We Do......................................................................................77 Word Gifts from Men I Love..........................................................78   IV..............................................................................................79 Straight Talker..................................................................................80 Sometimes I Love My Country but Not This Week....................81 Moments in Bright...........................................................................83 VCAT..................................................................................................84 Colouring your Life.........................................................................86 A Sonnet for My Siblings................................................................87 A Blessing on the Hard Days.........................................................88 Peterborough....................................................................................89 Swirling in the Royal Commission’s Final Report .....................90 Bedtime..............................................................................................92 Family Gatherings ...........................................................................93 Sisters.................................................................................................94 Wislawa Szymborska’s sister does not write poems..................96 Street Parade.....................................................................................98   Notes........................................................................................99 Acknowledgements............................................................101 About the Author................................................................103

About the Author :
E A Gleeson is a poet, essayist and speaker. Her poetry has been published in literary journals and presented in most states of Australia, in Ireland, USA and Estonia. She grew up on a soldier settlement farm in the Western District of Victoria on Eastern Maar Country. In 2014 she returned to this region to live in Terang, and it was here that the first poems of this collection were written. Later poems were written just west of the Campaspe River in Kyneton, on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, where the author currently lives. E A Gleeson has worked in end-of-life care, public relations and education. She continues to mentor newer poets, create funerals and combine her love of travel with discovering and presenting poetry. Her previous poetry titles: In between the dancing (Interactive Press, 2008) Maisie and the Black Cat Band (Interactive Press, 2012) Small Acts of Purpose (Interactive Press, 2017)