Ward 17 Experts by Experience.
Welcome (We seek volunteers to help us develop a health related music therapy and arts project )

The Experts By Experience arts project.using creative writing,song and spoken word as a means to connect individuals across communities for the purpose of promoting health awareness and achieving healthier life styles with the added benefits of the arts
We believe that through the arts the ‘service user experience’ can be a powerful learning tool in the development of better health and social care services.

We are always seeking others to contribute poems to help create health awareness through the arts and creative writing. If interested please get in touch.

THE ONLY VOICE THAT ANSWERED

By Ronald Amanze

I wrote one email, then another,

placing my thoughts carefully between sentences

as if arranging chairs, for an honest conversation.

I wrote about fear. I wrote about uncertainty.

I spoke about a brain injury and dementia diagnosed.

The changing tide when uncertainty enters your life

without first knocking at the door.

Each email carried a small part of Ronald

a question, a memory, a request to be heard.

They travelled through the corridors of Brent Council,

past departments, directors, officers and official titles.

Yet nobody independent came to sit in the empty chair.

Nobody asked: Ronald, what happened?

Why have you raised the volume of your voice.

Are you frightened? What would help you

feel safe enough to breathe?

Instead, the only voice which appeared to answer

belonged to the person the system 

whose conduct formed part of the question.

Hypothetically speaking, what does independence mean

when the person standing inside the complaint

also appears to be standing over it?

What does fairness mean when the circumstances I experienced as the bully

seems to be presiding over the playground?

Perhaps my emails were never read as cries for help.

Perhaps they were filed under difficult weather,

while somebody else was permitted to explain

why I was standing in the rain.

I find that intriguing. Not intriguing like a puzzle

waiting politely on a table,

but intriguing like discovering

that the locked door

and the person holding the key

have the same name.

I had been spoken about.

Possibly assessed.

Perhaps discussed

inside rooms

I could not enter.

Yet nobody independent

had spoken with me.

There is a difference.

To speak about a person

is to make them a subject.

To speak with a person

is to recognise

they still possess a voice.

And I possess a voice.

Even when it trembles.

Even when anxiety

changes its rhythm.

Even when my brain

asks for more time

to understand the room.

I am still entitled

to explain what happened

from where I was standing.

I am not asking

for my words to be believed

without question.

I am asking

for someone independent

to ask the question.

Someone who does not arrive

carrying yesterday’s conclusions.

Someone who can listen

without placing my fear

on trial.

Because a complaint

cannot breathe freely

when the person complained about

appears to control the oxygen.

And justice cannot call itself fair

while the frightened person

remains unheard.

I wrote numerous emails.

I sent my voice

again and again

into the building.

Yet the only voice

which seemed to return

was the very voice

I was trying to escape.

If only somebody independent

had answered.

If only somebody

had spoken with Ronald.

If only to breathe.