social justice, silliness, and self

dear ali,

enthusiastic embracer of the everyday…and the ellipses. container of contradiction. lover of letters. (ambassador of alliteration? too much? very you!). anyway…back to lover of letters, which is where I meant to segue into my point – an accidental nod to your apparent love of the aside…brackets (parentheses) – em dashes – unnecessary, perhaps, punctuation to pivot to the persistent pings and pongs of what you once called your jukebox mind.

you were, as i said, a lover of letters, and so it seemed somewhat fitting to honour you – your life, your writing, your absolute you-ness, in a letter. a second-person reflection on a person who – perhaps too often – second-personed herself (oh yeah…you were also an avid noun-verber).

i, like so many of us, came to know you long after your death and, again like so many of us, was deeply moved. moved to read. moved to feel – to linger in the liminal spaces that weave their way so clearly – yet also somehow imperceptibly – through your words (ungrasping of the linear / lost in the liminal). there is a brutal, subtle honesty in the way you use poetry to untangle and make sense of the moments that invited some sort of response in you (if not make sense, then at least make clear the contradictions). your stream of consciousness poem – henceforth and so on and look over there – is, perhaps, the one that hits hardest for me. it gives a sense of the very you-ness of you:

… and I find myself

wavering

wondering

threads weaving

wandering

shifting to self

self-sabotage

self-celebration

self-salience

self-soothing

self-sorrow

drastically judging

self-

-worth

i find myself wondering

why am I like this

ungrasping of the linear

lost in the liminal…

            (from henceforth and so on look over there, 2026)

…”somehow imperceptibly” – writing this popped my thinking on a tangent (just like you in henceforth) – a relevant tangent, i suppose, as it took me to excavation – your deeply personal reflection that your ADHD diagnosis (at age 47) invited…you take us on a little jaunt through your life – revisiting some decisions (and some not-decisions) – and you find yourself considering them through a new lens…noticing that ‘she’ left ‘imperceptibly’ (there’s the tangent springboard)…a quietening here / a withdrawal there…until the resentment [that] rivalled the raucous and ridiculous became the dominant story of your life.

excavation reads as a love-letter to yourself – a recognition of the complicated and the confusion. a recognition of the power structures that reinforced these narratives and made them easy to believe and difficult to notice. a recognition of the importance of gentleness, openness, silliness and community – the kinds of community that exist (as far as possible) outside the oppressive power structures that influence so much (patriarchy, capitalism, racism…oh my!) Oh yes…the social worker was strong in. you. somehow – so often – finding a way to weave some advocacy for broader social justice into even your most intimate and personal pieces (and, of course, not forgetting your love of the reflective essay – like this…or this…or this).

the untangling of the impacts ADHD had on you – your self…your understanding of self – is a recurring theme in much of your early published work – and alongside that, we learn of how rejection sensitive dysphoria had you fearing – avoiding even – being rejected or misunderstood. how this brought the contradiction you write about in excavation (too much here / not enough there) and a work in slow progress (not enoughness / too muchness) – something all too familiar for the neurodivergent woman (and maybe women in general). yet, when misunderstanding came to you in a public forum, you handled it with grace and kindness.

when evening moments was selected as one of the winners in an online writing competition (write an elegy that mourns [something] that’s been lost…), one critic disputed that your poem was “not elegy” [sic] and was, instead, “disjointed bitterness and not true greif [sic], nostalgia or reflection”.

to this, you were most upset about your critic’s attempt to gatekeep grief – and then amused when, in a later comment, it appeared as if your critic did not recognise metaphor: “the first one doesn’t go through the five [stages of grief] anyways, being upset at the cracks in the road doesn’t cover that.” for those playing at home, here’s one of the things you wrote in response:

Look you don’t have to like anyone’s writing or poetry. You can contest that something is or is not a “pure” elegy (modern takes, twists, interpretations…you know…art…notwithstanding). You don’t have to like the structure, the pace, the flow - that’s one of the wonderful things about art and writing - it’s subjective. It might make you feel the world or feel nothing. And while I agree with some of the other comments about the disrespect you’ve allowed to overtake your disappointment, my main point of umbrage is the audacity to dictate or decide what “true” grief is. (Spoiler alert: grief is highly personal (just like art) and therefore all grief is true grief). What underlies my poem is disenfranchised grief & compounded loss. What underlies another’s might be the grief of things left unsaid, undone, regretted. Or perhaps the more “traditional” grief of the death of a loved one. I’m sad you’re disappointed, but much like in parenting, when your babies are out in the world, you lose a little control and influence.

ali

it seemed that all being misunderstood led to was mild irritation, and slightly-less-mild amusement – and the “real” upset was with the misunderstanding, and fixed idea of the linearity and homogeneity of complex human emotions.

you wrote letters to the young people you worked with. you wrote a birthday letter to harper. you wrote what was once called

...a masterclass in how powerful second person can be when used properly.

paul stewart, on "When your wounds are still gaping after time, stop looking beyond the surface"

(ironically - or not, considering your love of contradiction - Paul was responding to a piece where you grappled with a strong sense of insignificance).

i thought about writing a "poem in the style of ali" but feared it might come across as insincere parody. so instead i'll leave you with this - ali's three-word haiku. a three-word capturing of ali's social justice heart.

you wrote. you were. and thanks to your words, you continue to be.

warmly, and with love,

...

___________________________________________________

*ali was a poet, letter writer, social worker, counsellor and relentless pursuer of hope, community, connection and care. you can read her work here.