‘Lyrical Bite’ with Fatima Al Matar

James Black

New Walk Museum - Gallery 6

July 30^th 2010

Fatima Al Matar was the first of the special guest poets to perform at The Lyric Lounge. Fatima was born in Kuwait. In 2005 she moved to the UK and currently lives in Coventry with her four year old daughter Jori.

During The Lyrical Bite event Fatima read from her published work entitled The Heart and the Subsidiary which is divided into four chapters; MotherDaughter, Inspired, Abused and After Love. The poems Fatima chose to share with us Leicester’s Lyric Lounge deal with the author’s attempt to define and understand her personal identity, overcome past suffering and illustrate the complexity of love.   

Fatima began by reading from the MotherDaughter section of her book with a poem called Until You Have Child. The poem centred on the idea of how much a woman’s perception of love and of themselves will change once they become a parent. The idea that motherhood is a life enriching experience, offering spiritual renewal and a kind of rebirth is present in lines such as ‘You see the healthier, clearer and purer part of your soul’ and you ‘watch in wonder how there is a better version of yourself.’ However, the awakening to love’s ‘endless hues’ opens up the ‘eternal state of worry it brings.’ The mood of the writing changes with the fear for a sick child and the plea “God, please spare her” echoing ‘through sleepless nights.’ The poem ends with the author having attained a full realisation of both the joy and torment of love stating, “Don’t say I love you” until you have a child.’

Redundant focused on the Fatima’s own tempestuous relationship with her mother. The poem began with Fatima recalling how she bitterly told her mother that she had failed as a parent being ‘lacking and inefficient’. When the attention turns to Fatima’s own role as mother she realises how difficult parenthood can be and learns how a child cannot be safeguarded from the dangers and suffering of the world. Recalling the occasion of her daughter’s first vaccination, ‘I felt the cruel prick/As the needle invaded your baby skin’ and her child letting go of her hand ‘in haste’ running ‘recklessly’ across the road keen to join her friends. In these moments she also feels, like her mother before, ‘redundant’ and unable to compensate for her own ‘inefficiencies’. 

Winter Morning continued the theme of trying to protect a child the pain and cruelty of the world recalling a happy incident of a mother pulling a woolly jumper over her child’s head on bitterly cold day. The final reading from the first chapter I Never Thanked You wasa meditation on how parents often focus on the difficulties of being a bringing up a child but often forget about the joy being a parent can bring.

The second chapter Inspired whichdeals with the people and emotions that have had major influence upon Fatima’s life. Benign, dedicated to Fatima’s aunt Aisha who died of cancer in 2004, observes how we often take life for granted until we are threatened with death, ‘You were astounded at/how the lack of time/ suddenly breathed enchantment into everything.’ Whilst You Let Us focused on the uses and abuses of love and sought to delve behind the clichés which surround the subject. The poem identifies our mercurial nature towards love and the trite phrases we often apply to it, ‘We say/you are the bud of all happiness/ then we say you are the root of all misery.’ Love is always is willing to give freely and openly we are the selfish misusers of this precious gift, ‘We ignorantly place you/we insert you/where you don’t belong/to justify our lowly human ways.’

The selfish mistreatment of love fittingly led onto readings from the third chapter Abused. In the powerful Black Widow an ‘estranged wife’ sits watching her daughter at play and remembers the abuse she has suffered being thrown out of her home at night ‘wearing very little.’ The woman contemplates leaving her abuser as she sits and thinks. The repeated image of a playground gate swinging open and shut represents a way of escape from the abusive relationship. A link is made between woman and the ‘repeatedly made homeless’ spider whose web is destroyed when the gate opens and closes but nevertheless persistently begins spinning once more.

Stains began with a much lighter tone, and for the first time gave rise to laughter from the audience, with the story of a vengeful lover giving her ex-partner’s ‘Gucci shoes to charity’ and cleaning the oven with his ‘Armani shirts’. The tone changed with the indelible coffee stain on the carpet which still remains after a violent incident, ‘you/Slapped/ the coffee mug from my hand/in rage and anger/some stains are/ permanent.’

The final two poetry readings came from the final chapter After Love. The loss of personal identity in a smothering relationship was the subject matter of Pebble wherethe narrator’s ‘rough edges’ are smoothed out by the smothering control of another.  With this loss of individuality comes a death of sorts as the narrator is ‘drowned’ in the domineering control of their lover. 

Finally The Heart and the Subsidiary explored how difficult it can be to interpret a person’s true feelings from what they say or how they behave. A tongue is seen as ‘one of the worst interprets ever’ lips are a ‘good but confusing agent, ‘and bodies ‘are not to be trusted…’ All attempts at communication by the body add up to one final message ‘I love you, but I can’t.’

Although softly-spoken Fatima imparted each such clarity of expression and feeling that she grabbed the audience’s attention and held it throughout her reading. Her writing comes from a very definite female perspective and speaks of her inspiration, past relationships and role as a mother. Each poem contains hauntingly beautiful language and a dignified humanity at its core.    

The Heart and the Subsidiary is published by AuthorHouse.