Image courtesy: Ceyda Ciftci, Unsplash

Hello all,

Sanaa here (aka adashofsunny)

Today, we are running LIVE for the first one hour of the bar or so. If you wish to join in to read out your poem, just link up, and you will be called upon to do so in respective order. Here is the link below:

https://meet.google.com/mpv-qsou-tdz

A few words of advice:

We are using Google Meet, which means that you should be able to click on the link and run it in the browser, but if that doesn’t work download the app and run it on your Smartphone or Tablet.

I recommend that you use a headset for the best experience, and please mute your microphone when you are not talking.

January at times seems so desolate doesn’t it? Annie Freud’s work offers an irresistible joie de vivre, something that can be very difficult to maintain in lock down. Whilst this poem describes a dream many of us may have had, it now takes on a new significance.

The Room that isn’t there

Sometimes I dream I’m in a room that isn’t there.
The many years I’ve lived here and not noticed it before –

an unexpected boon! Such blessed emptiness!
It’s going to change my life. What shall I use it for?

And grey the morning comes; I wake. The rooms are
as they were, each one with its function and its mess.

And all this time, it dwells behind the door, a simulacrum
of my mind, my womb, my unlived life, my life to come . . .

or could it be life’s end that brings me here, treading
its naked boards, sitting at a table on a wooden chair,

and rushing to the window to take in the view,
the trees outside, the Spring, the blossom on the grass.

Taken from The Remains by Annie Freud.

Isn’t she wonderful? Do let me know what your reading preferences are during the month of January in the comment section below. For now, let’s link up one poem!

I look forward to welcoming you on Google Meet.