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Two Poems: Notes from the Ward
In her new collection Notes from the Ward (Gordon Hill Press), poet Steffi Tad-y delves into the raw realities of bipolar disorder and psychotic break shaped by lived experience and sharpened by a poet’s eye. These poems cut through the medicalized and sensationalized narratives that too often surround mental health, revealing a voice that is both intimate and unflinching.
Read two poems from the book, below.
Two Poems from Notes from the Ward by Steffi Tad-y
Notes from the Ward #5
When I woke midafternoon
from the hospital bed
remembering families
I am no longer part of
I ran to the hallway
to our strip, our block
our neighbourhood
as T call us
by the only window
where we could see
the city outside.
We sat in a circle
passing time
in our paisley gowns
& blue chairs
like ladies out in the field
or the church,
witnesses to one another’s
unsaid pressures,
painting each other’s nails.
I Hid in the Possibility of an Aurora Borealis Sky
“You have a gift for dark things.”
no comeback for this in years
by the Spanish Banks on the lookout
for a sliver of the North my heart
a fish that slips from my hands
& bellyflops into the ocean at night time
where it loves being a muscle
pressed so close to the core
of the earth it shines
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Steffi Tad-y is a disabled artist and writer from Manila. She is also the author of From the Shoreline and Notes from the Ward published by Gordon Hill Press. Receiving support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council, Steffi’s poems often reflect on kinship, diasporic geographies, and formations of the mind. She lives in Toronto.
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