Deciphering me - A Mother's gift to her Cloud Boy
Anna Forsyth interviews New Zealand poet, Siobhan Harvey, winner of the Kathleen Grattan award, about her latest poetry collection, Cloudboy (Otago University Press) prior to the Auckland Writers Festival.
When poet Siobhan Harvey's differently-abled son Cameron was 5, he asked her to join him atop the jungle gym at the playground to watch the clouds with him. Ignoring the other children fighting over the see-saw and swings, Cameron was content to look up at the sky and read the cyphers and pictures in the clouds. It was then that Siobhan had a revelation about her child, whom she nicknamed Cloudboy. This became the title of her upcoming poetry collection.
“I suddenly realised that all of his obsessions were connected,” says Siobhan. His obsession with Doctor Who meant he knew all of the 12 doctors and could cite any episode. “That was about wormholes and journeying into the mind or other dimensions. It was giving him validation that his constant journeying into a subject, into his own mind...that it was ok,” she says of her son's love of deciphering the heavens.
Award-winning New Zealand poet Siobhan has dedicated her latest poetry collection to Cameron. It is Siobhan's hope that when her son is an adult, he will look back at this book and see her attempt to assist him through a difficult childhood.
I don't know what the future is going to hold, but this is a gift for his future. What I'd aspire to is for this [book] to be part of a bigger shift in the thinking on the issues around how we reach children such as Cameron,” says Siobhan.
The collection, called, Cloudboy, to be released in Auckland in May through Otago University Press, with a release event at the Auckland Writers Festival.
One of the most beautiful poems in Siobhan's new collection, is entitled, 'Cloudboy Springs into Dying Light'. It tells of the joyous interaction between Cloudboy and his mother:
As Tama-nui-te-ra and Marama dance, the day turns towards heavy clouds.
Momentarily Cloudboy coaxes Cloudmother to race, skip and shadowbox with him,
just as two rabbits cavort across the land, lively, thumping
each other with hind-legs before springing into dying light.
Starting as young as aged 2, Cameron exhibited behaviours that signalled to Siobhan that he was very different. She remembers him finding interaction with other children difficult, and that he was a loner. This is something she identifies as typical of her own childhood, growing up in England.
"I was looked upon as a quiet, extremely introverted and shy, but highly intelligent. I would understand friendship on a different level and I had what would be called SAD today, or social anxiety disorder. It would just be frozen to the spot, unable to reach out to these people,” says Siobhan of the experience.
"There were no labels for this, growing up in the middle of a housing estate to extremely impoverished parents. I remember my father would go to work with shoes lined with cardboard. That whole issue of dealing with a child who might have this [different ability]. Nowadays these labels are befriending this child for good or ill and you have a duty to reach that child and to try to advocate for them,” explains Siobhan.
Cameron has received a range of diagnoses over the years, but many of his 10-year-old peers are still undiagnosed. Because children are developmental, early diagnosis can be problematic, so for a period of time all Siobhan and her partner knew was that Cameron was gifted. At aged 4, Siobhan was told Cameron was given this gifted label and the psychologist indicated that a further diagnosis was probable. When Cameron started struggling academically, the school told Siobhan that they thought maybe he was not gifted after all. Rather than being a simple process, gaining an understanding of their son's difficulties was a long journey, and one that Siobhan says is actually quite typical of those with learning, cognitive or behavioural differences.
First, there were the opinions of the educational psychologist, followed by an assessment at 7 by a pediatrician. Currently, Cameron's labels include elements of ADHD, oppositional disorder, autism spectrum disorder and hints of dyspraxia. As with any diagnosis, there is a spectrum and Cameron exhibits traits across several of these disorders. Similar to deciphering the hidden messages in clouds and wormholes, Cameron's mind is one that sometimes perplexes and confounds his teachers and at times Siobhan. Lying with him that day on the jungle gym and the many times that followed, Siobhan garnered a deeper understanding of her boy and the way his mind works. At this point, Siobhan and her partner decided to move Cameron to a different primary school, enabling him to meet other children on the autism spectrum. “What's also difficult here is that the diagnosis can be ongoing, but throughout that, you have to be very careful of the child's self-esteem and making sure that it is buoyed,” says Siobhan.
For Siobhan, it is important that Cameron has a sense of the positive aspects of his nature. That whilst his imagination and intellect might not fit in the conventional schooling model, having a gift for metaphor, for language and for investigating subjects deeply is indeed a positive and joyous experience.
Siobhan acknowledges that these are attributes of any poet and indeed the very things that have seen her forge a successful career as a writer, editor and poet. Indeed, Siobhan's work is now celebrated in New Zealand. Having appeared in and edited many well-known anthologies over the years, Siobhan is the winner of the 2013 Kathleen Grattan award, one of New Zealand's premier literary achievements for a poet.
In opening her collection with the poem 'Cumulus', Siobhan focuses on the elation of Cameron's new childhood experiences. The first three lines read:
The body is a nest alive with new song. The brain is fluent in ghost. The tongue is rich in poetry.
The first section of the collection is entitled, 'The Autistic Child Considered as a Cloud'. Each poem explores the different types of clouds and allows Siobhan to explore aspects of her son's behaviour. As the book progresses, we see how the Cloudboy and even Cloudmother metaphors play out, such as when Siobhan refers to the body as a 'hive buzzing with electricity' or the brain 'fluent in storm'. Siobhan's writing is powerful and emotive. The sense of involvement and longing for understanding resonates throughout the text. At times, it touches on some of the harrowing experiences she has had raising Cameron. 'The fingers that intrigue power-socket, toaster and flame...such turbulence...'
In this book we see not one, but two brilliant minds displayed, there to be deciphered. We see Cloudmother Siobhan as she enters the wormholes of her son's intellect and complex behaviour with bravery and a sense of curiosity. Then, we see the boy who is at the centre of it all, Cloudboy Cameron, as he creates and navigates his own unique path through life.
You can buy Cloudboy here.
