An Angel At My Table

During our stay in Chicago, we had access to lots of DVDs in the studio we stayed in. I was incredibly happy when I saw a copy of 'An Angel At My Table' which is the film version of Janet Frame's autobiography.

I'm a huge fan of Janet Frame. I have a real connection with her work and those of other confessional writers such as Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I love raw, honest, passionate writing and find it very inspiring to be able to write about your feelings to the world in such an open way.

If you have yet to check out any of Janet Frame's writing then her novel, 'Owls Do Cry' is a great starting place as well as her poetry.

The Suicides
It is hard for us to enter
the kind of despair they must have known
and because it is hard we must get in by breaking
the lock if necessary for we have not the key,
though for them there was no lock and the surrounding walls
were supple, receiving as waves, and they drowned
though not lovingly; it is we only
who must enter in this way.

Temptations will beset us, once we are in.
We may want to catalogue what they have stolen.
We may feel suspicion; we may even criticise the décor
of their suicidal despair, may perhaps feel
it was incongruously comfortable.

Knowing the temptations then
let us go in
deep to their despair and their skin and know
they died because words they had spoken
returned always homeless to them.
Janet Frame

D-Bird