'Still I Rise' by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

When I was younger, I loved poetry.

The first poet I became obsessed with was Thomas Hardy.

Although I was only a teenager, and hadn't yet experienced true loss, his tragic pieces about heartbreak spoke to my adolescent soul. I adored Hardy's novels, but his poems were something far more special.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Next, whilst studying Theatre at university, came Shakespeare.

I always knew he'd been a genius - he's our national writer, after all - but trying to actually stage his work, instead of simply reading it, showed me just how brilliant he was.

Performing Shakespeare unlocks another level to his words; his language may be wondrous on the page, but it becomes magical in the hands of talented performers on the stage.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

But, after university, I lost the poetry 'bug.'

I still read the occasional piece, and thanks to a close friend being a performance poet, I enjoyed seeing him 'live.' However, the novel, screenplay, and stage-play were my literary forms of choice.

Poetry became the equivalent of an estranged family member; they'd infrequently surface, and then disappear again, and my life wouldn't be much different one way or another.

But that has all changed this year.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

I am slowly recovering from my break-down, but there are still legacies from it.

One of the most noticeable is my lack of concentration. Despite always having been a voracious reader, I haven't finished a novel or play since I left the psychiatric ward. I read a lot whilst I was there, but since my discharge I just haven't. I simply can't manage it.

With their range of various characters, and sub-plots, the world of a novel, or play, is too much to hold in my head. It overwhelms me. At present, I don't have the mental capacity.

So I've returned to poetry.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

With its sparse economy, not only has it enabled to get my literary 'fix' without causing me anxiety, it's also helped me recover. So much so that I've become a firm advocate for the therapeutic power of poetry.

The American poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, described poetry as "life distilled." Unlike the novel, where the writer can take you wherever they chose, poetry is stripped back to its essence. It's, deliberately, simple.

Although all writers should follow the maxim, "say what you need to say in the fewest words possible," a poet HAS to adhere to this guideline.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Words are chosen with military precision.

It's about capturing a mood, a person, or a theme as concisely as you can. All writers use metaphors or similes; a poem is often built around just one. One single, powerful image.

And, with that brevity, comes immense power.

Especially when it comes to poems regarding mental health.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Mental illness is messy, and chaotic. It's contradictory, and - despite what the manuals say - infuriatingly nonsensical.

Simply describing how you feel is so often unsatisfactory, and doesn't do justice to the thoughts and emotions pin-balling around inside you. Or, as is more frequent, the absence of feelings you have.

Mental illness can heighten your emotional state, but it can also dampen, or even thoroughly neutralize it - sometimes it's not that there's too much happening in your mind, it's that there's nothing at all. An absence of anything. A void.

And, with its emphasis on economy and metaphor, poetry can capture both states brilliantly.

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

When I started re-reading poetry, I didn't actively seek out work regarding mental illness. However, it was inevitable that I gravitated towards it.

And what I found astonished me.

The list of poets I've encountered include Sylvia Plath, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Spike Milligan, and, relative newcomer, Neil Hilborn; all of whom found ways to describe depression in ways I can only dream of doing.

However, one poem stands head and shoulders above them all.

A poem that isn't, on the surface, even about mental health.

It's 'Still I Rise' by Maya Angelou.

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

Quite frankly, it's changed my life.

And it's been my emotional life-vest over the past, turbulent year. It's kept me afloat when, more than once, the waves have threatened to pull me under.

I am thankful for it in more ways I could ever possibly describe.

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

It's the poem that is interspersed throughout this article.

Even when broken up, and presented one stanza at a time, it's an astonishing piece of work.

Technically, it's a wonderfully accomplished poem. Although it has a standard, balladic 'call and response' structure, the influence of both the gospel and blues traditions add an earthiness, a vibrancy, that belies its traditional format.

A vibrancy that is given extra power both due to Angelou's own bold self-confidence, and the poem's themes.

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

It was first published in 1978, and - given Angelou's connection to Martin Luther King Jr, and the Civil Right's Movement as whole - the poem is correctly taken as being a direct commentary of the African American experience in the United States. A connection the poet never denied.

For her, the links back to slavery are profoundly still relevant. Angelou, whose own great-grandmother was born into slavery, said that enslaved African Americans "couldn't have survived slavery without having hope that it would get better."

If there is one overt theme of 'Still I Rise' it's hope - hope that, no matter how perilous survival might be, things will always get better.

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

Liberation, fulfillment, and reconciliation can be achieved, regardless of how impossible they might appear.

And, given that this has been the year of George Floyd, and Black Lives Matter, the poem's message of liberation, survival, and - most of all - hope - couldn't be any more pressing.

Yet...

I rise

The poem cuts through national, and racial, boundaries.

I am not black, nor American, and am more then aware that my 'white privilege' means that I cannot even begin to understand the specific emotional and cultural landscape that is born from slavery. Nor am I female - and 'Still I Rise' is about as gender as it is race.

However, even as a white, middle-aged, British man, the poem resonates. Because, like most great art, although specific, it's also universal.

Trying to explain the poem's lasting appeal, Angelou herself said, "You know, if you're lonely, if you feel you've been done down, it's nice to have 'Still I Rise.'"

"All my work, my life, everything is about survival. All my work is meant to say, 'You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.' In fact, the encountering may be the very experience which creates the vitality and the power to endure."

I rise

Endurance.

That what this beautiful poem is about.

It's resonated with me because 2020 has been a year in which I have not only had to rebuilt my shattered life, I've had to do it under the shadow of a global pandemic. Those "nights of terror and fear" have been quantifiably real, and tangible.

It's been a year of loneliness, and frustration. Of relapse, and recovery. Of tiny, halting baby-steps, and soul-crushing failures. Of heartbreak, and love. Of trying to come to terms with "a past that’s rooted in pain ", one that haunts me; a present that is in a continual state of flux; a future whose shape I cannot yet discern.

But...

I am determined to rise.

And I will do so with pride. With a swagger that screams "I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room", and with a "laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard." I will own this year, own my story, with the same comforting assurance Angelou owns hers.

I will rise.

Just as I believe we all will. We will all soon enter "Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear", and put this vile, exhausting, divisive year behind us.

I have hope. And that is in no small part due to Maya Angelou's magnificent, poetic call-to-arms.

A poem that has illuminated this darkest of years, and motivated me when I couldn't find that impulse within myself.

And I will always be grateful, always be thankful, for it.

I rise.

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