S2 Ep2: Voice

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Act 3 - Expressing one's voice through poetry

Expressing their voice through poetry, hear from Sarah, Anna and Jamie – winners of the Yale-UCL Poetry Competition 2020. (Go to minute 20.32)

At a time when medical students are at the frontline in the fight against Coronavirus, Sarah and Anna write about their experience dealing with death and a crisis. A judge commented:

"Like Eliot’s line ‘April is the cruellest month’ - much quoted last spring - the poet has captured the horror of new life mingling with disease in the image of death ‘thawing’ and trickling through a ‘seething’ April. I was moved by the way the poet moves through many of the universal experiences of this year – the ‘naked aisles’; the sense of life having worn ‘itself soft, silent, small’; the growing political anger, whilst always describing it with freshness, swerving the already-cliches.”

Read more:

• Yale UCL Poetry Competition Winners Announced
• Yale UCL Poetry Competition 2020
• UCL Collaborative
• Judge: Dr Irène P. Mathieu
• Judge: Clare Pollard
• Poet & finalist Jamie Hale

 

CREDITS

• Opera singer by ptrflr
• Breathing sounds by splicesound
• Plane sounds by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk) 
• Growing sound by sheepfilms 
• Lightning hitting tree sound by NoiseNoir 
• Machine breathing by Rob3rt 

TRANSCRIPT

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, ucl, stories, poem, feeling, writing, voice, film, poetry, pandemic, patients, recognising, filmmaking, sounds, tree, life, create, beatboxing, research, understand

SPEAKERS
Jamie Hale, Cassidy Martin, Sarah Wong, Dieter Deswartes, Evangelos Himonides, Anna Vignoble

Cassidy Martin  00:02

Hello I'm Cassidy and welcome to the second episode of the second series of made at UCL the podcast. Three years ago, I got the opportunity to work as a field assistant in Panama and had the chance to meet and form friendships with a number of researchers. I was in awe of how committed they were sometimes even risking life and limb to obtain the data they needed in areas of immense importance. But I also felt frustrated that much of their research was invisible to those outside of academia. I've had a passion for telling research stories ever since. Now, more than ever, the world is facing problems that need to be urgently addressed by research. And I'm here to share with you how the faculty and staff at UCL are working tirelessly to produce community oriented groundbreaking research to help make a real difference. This month's theme is voice and in this episode, we're finding out how people are regaining their voice after their voice boxes are removed. How a group of LGBTQ plus refugees in Brazil are using film to tell their stories, and how health students and advocates are sharing the impact of their work through poetry.Let's get started.

01:28

Dieter Deswartes  01:32

How would I describe my voice?

Jamie Hale  01:34

I think my voice is an expression of resistance against being silenced.

Anna Vignoble  01:38

My voice is an extension of myself,

Sarah Wong  01:40

I think I've never really liked the sound of my voice or

Dieter Deswartes  01:44

kind of desire for telling stories that defines

Sarah Wong  01:49

I feel like my voice is quite gentle. I feel like it doesn't come on attention.

Evangelos Himonides  01:55

It's never too late to stop taking our own voice for granted.

Cassidy Martin  02:00

This month's episode is all about voice and how using your voice can be a powerful tool. Our guests come from three diverse research areas, but in all cases, they're using their chosen subject to raise awareness and advocate for change. Our first guest is a professor from UCLA Iowa Department. He has a background in computer science education and psycho acoustics. He record songs can play the guitar and even make you one. And he is the first ever to hold a lectureship at University of London and music and technology. Can you introduce yourself for us?

Evangelos Himonides  02:42

My name is Angela Hema kneaders.

Cassidy Martin  02:44

Alongside his research, he works with a UK based charity shadow cancer.

Evangelos Himonides  02:50

It was founded by my friend and colleague Dr. Thomas More's who is a physician specialising in ear, nose and throat and is, from what I understand Still, the world's only charity that supports low injector means people that have undergone laryngectomy through music and other artistic activity.

Cassidy Martin  03:13

hilarion jack, to me is a surgical procedure used to treat advanced throat cancer, it involves the

Evangelos Himonides  03:19

complete removal of your voicebox the whole laryngeal assembly, and it's a huge operation a huge undertaking.

Cassidy Martin  03:28

laryngectomy is have a huge impact on people's bodies. And patients have to go through a lot of rehabilitation to regain fundamental abilities and overcome the surgery side effects.

Evangelos Himonides  03:39

We're talking about a major intervention with huge repercussions and many side effects for the loss of smell, the loss of the voice as we know it, which is the product of the vibration of the vocal folds that lie within the laryngeal assembly. So we don't have those anymore, the need to start developing new ways of foundation. But there is also some hidden side effects. And one of those is of course, the ability to lift things. Some people might find that it sounds a bit bizarre, but actually one of the amazingly important roles of the vocal folds one day of closing, to allow them for us to have to actually apply pressure so that we can lift things so they have to identify with years and years of copious training in order to be able to do very basic things that we take for granted like just lifting something as heavy as a book or even lifting themselves to go up a step on a staircase.

Cassidy Martin  04:38

Together. evangelos and Thomas have worked on a wide variety of projects that have helped support recovering laryngectomy patients from developing a new chocolate bar to hosting a jazz performance. I spoke to him about one of his projects that one in experimentation at the UCL public engagement awards 2020 because It is perhaps the most unconventional

05:05

I this is my radio. I'm a beatboxer free times UK Team Champion, I will be working on some beatbox techniques to make your practising more fun.

Cassidy Martin  05:13

That was my radio and award winning beat boxer and teacher who along with evangelos, and Thomas taught laryngectomy patients how to beatbox.

05:22

Now I want to do some quote and response,

05:24

I'll go first, I'm gonna do this shorter.

Evangelos Himonides  05:31

So what we did was to structure a series of workshops first with the low injector maze and vocal coaches, and Thomas and myself in rehearsing basic beatboxing techniques.

Cassidy Martin  05:44

Evangelos and Thomas didn't choose beatboxing at random.

Evangelos Himonides  05:48

We chose beatboxing for for many different reasons. And one of those was that beatboxing as an art form is actually based and celebrates the originality of a sound. So it doesn't have any kind of preconceptions about what is acceptable and what is not, which is a very big part of certain genres of music, if you think about it, okay, you cannot just appear in the Royal Opera House and start making noises. I mean, in most cases, you are expected to conform to a particular style would be boxing, it's pretty much part of his core ethos to do exactly the opposite. In terms of the core ethos of the genre itself, we were quite intrigued about it. And we thought that this would be a very nice addition to making our participants feel comfortable.

Cassidy Martin  06:38

evangelists and Thomas were right. But as it turns out, beatboxing was an even better tool for recovery than they could have predicted,

Evangelos Himonides  06:46

was doing it. And now having done it, we discovered other things that we didn't necessarily predict that we were extremely positive about. And one of those things was that because of the inherent need for a big boxing performance to be very strictly aligned with a very specific rhythmic pattern, we discovered that this innate need to essentially obey rhythm was having very positive and beneficial effects to our laryngectomy is because it was actually helping them develop the breathing and the support structures further without feeling that they were working towards that.

Cassidy Martin  07:33

So beatboxing turned out to be an effective tool in laryngectomy rehabilitation, but it also served another really important purpose for patients.

Evangelos Himonides  07:41

I don't remember the Act, the exact statistics and these vary across different countries and the way that these are acquired, but it's way above 80%. From what I remember that the condition is going in tandem with the feeling of social exclusion and social isolation and depression in many cases, so most loan director means will also be treated for depression.

Cassidy Martin  08:05

To help combat these feelings of exclusion and isolation, the team invited children from local schools to perform at the laryngectomy patients and put on a beatboxing performance a new one

Evangelos Himonides  08:19

part of life enjoy. There was another angle, and that ended up being a very important angle, which was understanding the people behind the condition, interacting with them, making the condition accessible, demystifying and kind of distancing people from looking at loans, ectomy is just as sick people with strange voices, okay, that turn heads every time they open their mouths in order to communicate, and try to help our audience understand that these are human beings that lost the most important tool that we have in order to interact with other people, their voice, and they just have a new voice now. And this is as legitimate and as usable and as accessible, and as bigger part of their identities as anything else. And what could be more beautiful than not just randomly interact with them, but also make music with them and perform with them without feeling intimidated or without feeling threatened about it. And by understanding that it sounds different. It sounded different to me, but this is now someone's voice and this is how it sounds like and although it doesn't sound as what one would perceive as the norm. It's still a musical instrument and people can have fun utilising it

Cassidy Martin  10:26

Instead of just focusing on treating one aspect of a patient evangelos and his team took a more holistic approach by recognising the array of struggles that patients who have had their injected me face the issue of motivation during the difficult rehabilitation required after surgery, the mental health issues that often accompany it. And the stigma that comes with having a voice that sounds different. By recognising all these facets and working with a multidisciplinary team, they were able to create something that was uplifting, truly unique and reached beyond the patient's by including the public, and showcasing what's truly possible. You can watch videos and learn more about this research and other projects involving shot at cancer by visiting shot@cancer.org. For our second story this week, I spoke to Dieter dis forte, a documentary filmmaker and UCL lecturer who has been working with LGBTQ plus refugees in Brazil to capture their stories through film and bring much needed attention to an often overlooked group of people. Here is part of our conversation about his recent film, as Jason tear. Can you tell us what the film is about?

Dieter Deswartes  11:54

So houses in theatres the story of three LGBT refugees from Venezuela, now living in Manaus, at a small shelter called Casa Miga, Casa Miga is the only LGBTQ plus refugee shelter in Latin America at the moment. And I was very much drawn towards this location to sort of like, create a collaborative film. And it follows them in their day to day life. And as we get to know them, we also get to understand a little bit more debt journey from coming to Venezuela to being where they are now, reflecting upon their future as well.

Cassidy Martin  12:32

I got to see the film, it was quite enlightening. And it sparked this interest in me and I did like a lot of research afterwards, there was things that like I understood a little bit, but I but I hadn't understood the extent of it. Yeah, I definitely made a difference to me. And I'm sure it does do a lot of people that watch the film, do you have any favourite moments in the film that you can recall,

Dieter Deswartes  12:55

I will always remember a scene in the film where sahadi was one of our main characters. Kind of like does the makeup of Elisa who was one of the other women who were living at the shelter when I was there. And they kind of like just have this open conversation around like being trans. But it's it's very intimate and feels very powerful in a way they just kind of like open up to each other in that moment about their experience of having to do sex work, to survive, to try and live to, to not get any respect from parents or family. And I think it's just such a powerful moment in just such a simple act that they would like to stare kind of like, Yeah, kind of helping each other out. I just thought it was really powerful moment.

Cassidy Martin  13:41

You'd like to use documentary filmmaking as a tool to support communities that face stigma. Can you talk to us about why you think documentary filmmaking in particular works? Well, for that, I

Dieter Deswartes  13:52

think one of my first documentary films I made the very first one, I made a film about me and my father and grandfather travelling back to like a small town in France, where my grandfather was from, but nobody knew who his father was mother got pregnant, very young, nobody knew. And I had this idea that we're going to try and find out. But the film turned out to be a lot about the relationship between me and my dad and also talking to him about my sexuality. That camera kind of gave me this power to ask these questions that otherwise I would never been able to ask him. So I kind of immediately felt the potential of filmmaking to dress certain things or to tell a story or to ask people questions. And since I've also been teaching at UCL now for a few years, I often realise like how often my students look into themselves for stories and how powerful that can be for them for discovering themselves or understanding themselves. These kind of experiences and often working with more like vulnerable groups I I started thinking about, well, why can't we actually use filmmaking as a tool to support people or find ways that we can actually help them Through this mean of like telling their stories, but also see it as a way of them kind of discovering themselves or like accepting themselves a bit more.

Cassidy Martin  15:08

Yeah, I mean, I, I relate a lot to what you were saying, I, I'm by and I grew up like from Texas where it's very conservative and my parents would sometimes say things to like mitigate the fact that like, after they knew even after I had a girlfriend and stuff, they would just, you know, say things they would call her my roommate, they would do all these kinds of things. And that can bring shame. And I think what's so cool about like, documentary film and documentary radio is that ability to talk to people and get to know them and hear their stories and and yeah, use that to share. And you actually have like, you really have like a unique way of doing that you have a way of trying to mitigate some of the ethical issues that come up with documentary filmmaking. Could you talk about what some of those ethical issues are and your approach to filmmaking?

Dieter Deswartes  16:00

I think with media, it's, it's a force for good and for bad, if you like, good stories influenced us in so many ways, but done wrongly, I think it can also do a lot of harm. And there's, of course, a lot of like stories out there that don't necessarily reflect the truth or the reality of people's experiences. So, yeah, it's also kind of really important. And what we do is that trying to work in such a way that we can reflect as closely as possible, the reality of the truth of people,

Cassidy Martin  16:28

how do you make your films to help ensure that you are reflecting the truth?

Dieter Deswartes  16:34

So what, what we do in like, you know, our projects, is that we start off by delivering a series of workshops that are designed to sort of like, skill people up in like, you know, camera skills, sounds, equipment skills, but also I there to make people feel more comfortable with each other. And also allow them bit by bit to kind of like, start sharing some of their stories. When we start off, it's never any kind of obligation for anybody to do anything. It kind of assumed the role that you want, you want to be in front of the camera. That's right, you want to be behind a camera, that's a right, do you want to answer this question, that's fine. But kind of make sure that we have we create a safe space where people can practice something, and also get to know each other. Other small things we do to build trust, and it's very simple. But we, we plan in a lunch break, always in the middle of our workshops, which is a moment where people just sit and eat and like talk about like some of their issues or what they've been through. This really helps in getting to know each other. And that is so important as well, to kind of like start forming connections.

Cassidy Martin  17:46

And y'all fixed I remember you talking about fixing food for each other and stuff as well, like they fixed fruit food for you, which is another kind of bonding thing.

Dieter Deswartes  17:55

Yeah, exactly. I mean, they would often, you know, in the morning, like immediately, like served me in our EPA, or something else that would have to eat it. And that same time, I would do the same thing for them as well, you know, I bring him something that we can all eat together. And I think through food again, like you really make these connections and through eating together. I did also make sure though, because it you know, one of the things is that the house provided food for them. So I also made sure to kind of like just live in a similar way as everyone was doing. That was kind of important as well.

Cassidy Martin  18:22

So when the workshops are over, how does the film get made?

Dieter Deswartes  18:26

You know, we shoot a film, like over a series of six, seven days then follows a process of editing. And when I have like a first draft or a few scenes finished, I would kind of go back to them and show to them the scenes of that draft, and kind of get their feedback. And you know, often by this time, there's quite a lot of trust between us already. So I've never really had it that people were like, no hate it. I always tried my best to kind of create a film that thing would like suit the people that I work with in terms of style, which I think is also important in houses and to Lewis like hated his close ups. And no, it's a silly thing. Like maybe I would hate my close ups maybe as well. And, you know, although you think it's a shame at that point, but you take them out because that's part of the collaboration. You know, you want to respect people's choices and integrity. And ethically, I feel like there's more consideration towards the people. Although I know that as an editor, you have a lot of control over how you put together the story. I still feel like I never do without any of their like kind of final consent and sign off throughout the process as well, which I think is important.

Cassidy Martin  19:36

We all have internalised stigmas at some point in our lives, and it's okay that we have had those feelings as long as we can recognise them and learn from it. By working collaboratively, forming personal relationships and creating a comfortable and trusting environment for people to share their personal stories. Dieter has found a way to empower those facing social stigma and has helped viewers to let go of their own biases. If you'd like to watch us decent air, you can see it for free at Yarrow films.co.uk. And so from beatboxing to collaborative documentary filmmaking, we come to our third form of voice this week. poetry.

Sarah Wong  20:42

Housecleaning was a poem about loss.  <Can I speak plainly of loss, the casting out the breathing in> and support and by experience of quite significant loss I had when I moved away from home in Singapore to London <silent withdrawal from life it brings> that it's hard, it's really hard to describe because first you can be so personal and so really difficult to go into details without people understanding some of the wider context of your life and your history and your culture where you're from  and in some ways, as grateful as I am for it, I think there was a part of me that felt quite disconnected from back home and people I knew as a result of it  <this sentimental sort and that was the kind of thing you did for the memories> asking you was really just me recognising that the the last exists, even though it was sort of an invisible silence type of loss. But also the process of writing the poem helped me to think more about why the loss had to happen, and how it had to make way for new things. <shadow returns to come in> A lot of it was to do with this feeling that I had left so much behind and so much familiarity and certainty, and safety I think. Coming to London was a real shock for me. <ticket stubs, and birthday cards in a box, you never thought you'd throw out>

Cassidy Martin  22:14

The Yale UCL poetry competition is an annual competition for Yale and UCL students of medicine and allied disciplines. House cleaning, the poem you just heard an extract from was written and performed by one of the competition winners, Sara Wong, who is a final year medical student and has, like many of UCL Medical students become a key worker during the pandemic. For this year's contest, participants were prompted with a question, what's your response to the covid 19 crisis, another winner, Anna Vignoble on her experience as a physician assistant soon to create her poem after closing the cadaver.

Anna Vignoble  22:57

After closing the cadaver, I come home to admire the contours of a chest rising and falling asleep, the shock of warm skin as I crawled to him sinking into the sweetness and guilt of being alive. So I wrote that poem after having finished my cadaver lab, and I was in this weird state of feeling like I had just spent time among the dead or very close to death, and then I had just come back to the realm of the living, and it's a very uncanny feeling. And I just felt so much joy in being alive and almost a sense of relief to have left that behind that that death. But I also at the same time, felt this immense sense of guilt, because in order for me to have recognised this joy and to be experiencing and savouring this moment of life, others had to have that stripped away, and I had to leave them behind. And I and it's a very difficult I think, feeling to make sense of and to experience and, and just kind of confront the cruelty of life and that it's so beautiful and also so brief. And that's kind of where my mind was when I was writing that poem.

Cassidy Martin  24:12

to reflect on the context of the pandemic and the wider conversations that has necessitated about public health and structural inequality. The competition, organisers created a second category for poems on a medical or public health theme that was open to all Yale and UCL students. This category was won by Sarah with her poem, if not now, when, a poetic diary written across the month of February March, April, May and June they captures the frustrations and despair of lockdown as well as the anger and action that the pandemic has inspired.

Sarah Wong  24:52

<March - it is not uncommon to fall in love,   amidst rows of shelves stocked to the   brim with desire – but caught between   naked aisles, we find our need exposed,   and in shame, we forget to be kind>

Cassidy Martin  25:12

The final winner of the contest was Jamie Hale, a master's student in philosophy, politics and economics of health. They are a poet, playwright and actor and expert and disability and health and social care policy. Their poem is called fibrotic.

Jamie Hale  25:31

It's a poem I wrote a number of years ago, and was very fond of, but hadn't quite worked out what I was going to do with it. fibrosis. Now, the thickening and scarring of connective tissue. Usually after when I wrote it, I was really interested in the natural body and the unnatural body. It's structured in a very tight column with the text justified as an unnatural representation of a tree. If you graft orange buds onto a lemon tree, they grow together, a salad tree of sharpness and sugar, or the bud dies. And I wanted to think about what it means to have a body that is both natural and unnatural. Maybe while I slept, a tree was grafted on to me, I had a serious wound that was open for about 14 months, somebody who like in splits a tree hollow, like a cave. But it still grows and paralleling that to nature and to trees and lightning, I managed to find a physicality that made me a lot more comfortable with the experience of my body. And at the same time, I was starting to use assistance with my breathing at night. And I thought about how the role of a tree in the environment is to store carbon dioxide and the tree function in his lungs by doing that, and the fact that my lungs will so storing carbon dioxide increasingly, I just dreamed up with a tree. But I stole carbon dioxide at night. Or I did the machine breeds for me now. So those kind of images came together as a disparate set of concepts about how I was interacting with the world newly, and I bought it together into the pilot.

Cassidy Martin  27:26

I spoke to Anna and Jamie about their writing process and how poetry can be a way of processing the world around us.

Anna Vignoble  27:33

I think everything that happens in my life, even the mundane things influenced my writing, but certainly the pandemic has, I think all of us now have this underlying amount of anxiety. And even if it's not on the forefront of our mind, it's it's there with us. And so it's funny, sometimes I'll find myself stewing about some other idea I want to write down and then all of a sudden, oddly enough on the page, something about the pandemic appears. And it seems like out of nowhere, but I think in reality, it's just because it's, it's always there and always present, as well as a way of communicating our experience.

Jamie Hale  28:13

I think for me, the writing I do that is therapeutic and is often very personal and will never see the light of day. And then there's writing that is primarily communicative. And even if it serves a therapeutic process, it's writing that I've developed deliberately and carefully is communication, and where the therapeutic element is the background rather than the foreground. So as communicative work, I'm almost interpreting it as a persuasive piece. How do I create in this in conveying this, the emotion, the experience, the desire that I want people to understand what they read it,

Anna Vignoble  28:54

I was painfully shy child, I started writing because I found a way to connect and communicate with the world without actually having to have social interactions. And I actually remember my earliest writing, it wasn't poetry, but it was like little stories. And I would use names that rhymed with my siblings names too, you know, as code to get out my frustrations. But I think it's always been kind of a way for me to work out my emotions and my feelings and my observations about the world.

Cassidy Martin  29:25

And, above all, a gift to ourselves.

Jamie Hale  29:29

I take that as a kind of gift of self respect to myself that I say Actually, you know what, you can do this and you deserve to be taken seriously. But you will only be taken seriously if you are able to take yourself seriously. So make this time as a gift to yourself to say that you're worthy of the time is spent creating.

Cassidy Martin  29:53

If listening to this podcast has inspired you to express your voice through poetry are competent. winters had this to say about writing and about entering the Yale UCL poetry competition.

Anna Vignoble  30:06

I would say something I wish I had told myself when I was younger when I was writing was just be honest. Don't worry about what is going to sound the best and be impressive. If your writing or your art is honest and is your truth, then it's going to be beautiful, and it will be worth it.

Jamie Hale  30:24

And I think look for that pivotal moment in which something changes and then put that at the heart of your work. What I love most about Anna's poem was, how my new chip was and how perfectly balanced on that one point of observation and change. Trust yourself to look at the details and the fineness don't feel like you have to tell the entire story for everyone to understand. Because actually sometimes the most perfect things that the smallest

Sarah Wong  30:54

things definitely something that competition against the competition really gave me was to have this poetic sense I always felt I had and moving forward, I think it's given me a bit more motivation to know that these simple forms and simple phrases have the ability to connect with people and that they're worth writing. I think that was something that I really took away from this.

Cassidy Martin  31:22

Sarah, Anna and Jamie were able to take their personal experiences, reflect on them, and create honest and profound pieces of writing that reflect the struggles and health today. Just as viewing old paintings in a museum gives you a glimpse into certain aspects of life at that time, so too Can this poetry give future generations insight into this moment in time. If you would like to read all of the winning poems in full, you can do so on the UCL website. If you're interested in purchasing Jamie's new collection of poems shield, it's available online at Ferb poetry press.com. The Yale UCL poetry competition is an annual competition, and we'll be open for entries later again this year. This month, we explore the theme of voice and relation to sound production, a chosen form of expression and bringing attention to issues of importance. These stories showed how art research and storytelling can be a powerful combination. evangelos his research had laryngectomy patients work with local youth and they got to share with their communities some of their experiences and their new voices capabilities deters unique methodology for filmmaking gave LGBTQ plus refugees in Brazil, a platform and the autonomy to tell their story in their own way. And Sarah, Anna and Jamie were able to utilise their writing skills, backgrounds and health and personal experiences to give us a glimpse into the world of health during the pandemic. Now is the time to ask ourselves, what skills do I have? And how can I utilise those skills to make my voice heard. This episode was presented by me Cassidy Martin and produced by Cerys Bradley. At featured music from the blue dot sessions sounds from freesound.org and additional materials provided by our guests. Special thanks to Evangelos, Sarah, Anna, Jamie and Dieter for sharing their time and experience. This podcast is brought to you by UCL Minds bringing together UCL knowledge, insights and expertise through events, digital content and activities that are open to everyone. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed interviewing our guests this month. Thanks again for stopping by. Take care and speak out.

​Transcribed by https://otter.ai