Learn About Writer Stephen Kingsnorth and a poem (based off Quick 10 Questions)

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including Fevers of the Mind.  He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com

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Stephen Kingsnorth
https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/

I started poetry writing after I began suffering from Parkinson’s Disease.  Although I studied English Literature at university over 50 years ago, and always had an interest in words and language, Parkinson’s soon meant I spent hours without much physical activity, but a very active mind.  Lack of concentration meant book reading was fruitless.  Interestingly it has emerged that various PD sufferers have found a surge in their creativity in the arts - perhaps some PhD researcher will take up that challenge as to why that might be!  I am a member of “Poets with Parkinson’s”, and “Dance with Parkinson’s”, a regular Zoom session with English National Ballet.

One particular love that has developed has been ekphrastic poetry (of which I had never heard); writing verse in response to an image - picture, photo, sculpture etc.  Writing has also enabled an old man to reflect on 70 years of relationships, work as a Methodist minister, and travel memories - both joyful and challenging.  Though born and bred in southeast London, with unhappy memories of discouragement and lack of confidence at Grammar School there, my teenage years in Devon were in contrast.  For I was encouraged at school, particularly in drama, scouting and studies in English, thereafter being involved briefly with the National Youth Theatre, followed by 5 years in Cambridge reading first English and then Religious Studies and including travel in India and America - all a storehouse of experience.

Like so many others, I have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 3 times (though only once for an ekphrastic piece! - ‘Wailing Wall’).  Poetry writing dominates long days - one symptom of PD can be insomnia, so I’m rarely asleep before 2-3am.  The poem which means much to me was written in response to the 9/11 event of one particular man falling from the Twin Towers (which I had seen in New York in 1976) but which officialdom seemed not to want to acknowledge:

The Falling Man

When there’s no choice,
but die or die,
but only space
for how to die,
by flame or fly,
by burning slow, or diving death,
a lonely place, not if or why,
but stay in pain,
or quicker fall -
what is the choice when none at all?
To celebrate as heroes, should,
but brush away the harshest day -
that falling man had had his day -
remain in hell, or fly away.
You look away?
It’s for the man, not you I say:
the unknown soldier
in the air
as life laid down,
the falling man.