Review

Books

Culture

Joy

Poetry

22 March 2024

5 min read

Theresa Lola's poetical hope

The death-haunted yet lyrical, joyful and moving poet for a new generation.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A poet stands and speaks, raising an arm.

Theresa Lola performs at Kings Place.

Cosmic Shambles Network.

There are poems such as T.S. Eliot's ‘Journey of the Magi’ and U.A. Fanthorpe's ‘BC – AD’ which have become staples of Christmas Carol services. Last Christmas, for the first time, I used Theresa Lola's ‘Look at the Revival’ as the poem in our Carol Service that explored the experience of the Magi in seeking and finding Jesus.

‘Look at the Revival’ was commissioned by National Gallery in 2020 in response to ‘The Adoration of Kings’ painting by Jan Gossaert. The poem is written in the voice of Balthazar, the Black King in the painting, and explores the painting’s themes of rupture, transformation and renewal. It ends with this reflection:

My job often feels like a hefty stone

But today I am powered by a fierce awe.

I say to the stunned people let us look deeply

to know this hope deeply.

British Nigerian poet and former Young People’s Laureate for London, Lola is the British equivalent of Amanda Gorman, whose poem ‘The Hill We Climb’ made such an impact at US President Joe Biden's inauguration. Lola said after that event that “To have poetry make national headlines … was just so exciting” and to have Gorman’s poem articulate everyone’s feelings “was just the perfect example of what poetry can do”.

There is a real art to writing poetry for public occasions where depth and immediacy need to intertwine. It is an art that Lola herself has mastered, as was demonstrated when she was commissioned by the Mayor of London’s Office to write and read a poem - ‘For Those Who Listen When Courage Calls’ - at the unveiling of Millicent Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square.

Lola was joint-winner in 2018 of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize and was featured in the 2019 ‘Forces for Change’ issue of British Vogue as a next generation talent. Other commissions for her work, which explores themes of self-discovery, transformation, cultural heritage, and belonging, have included Selfridges, Rimowa, Royal Festival Hall, and Audible. She is currently leading the Volunteer Interpreter Programme at Dulwich Picture Gallery where, in a programme inspired by their Soulscapes exhibition, she is exploring how poetry can be used to interpret their collection.

“This poet speaks boldly of prayer as a call to arms for family, for love, for a survival, which as she concludes in the final poem, ‘Psalm 151’, ‘I prayed my fists into’”

S. Niroshini

Her debut poetry collection ‘In Search of Equilibrium’, which was hailed as “powerful and rigorous”, is an extraordinary, and exacting study of death and grieving. The reviews of this collection have much to say about the well springs of her work.

In this collection, as S. Niroshini writes, she “deftly deploys form, texture, and shape to interrogate the meaning of death and the suffering of family” with poems “variously presented as computer coding, live reportage, prayers, algorithms, Wikipedia entries and hip-hop lyrics”. While its subject matter is, as Carmina Masoliver notes, “essentially natural – life and death”, the poems themselves are often experimental and “bring in cultural elements … as well as religious allusions”. Charlie Hill explains that “This superb debut collection revolves around the death of the poet’s grandfather, whose Alzheimer’s resulted in a ‘four-year funeral’”. Laurie Smith suggests “It is rare for a debut collection by a young poet to be so death-haunted, but it is death-haunted in the same sense as [Sylvia] Plath’s ‘Ariel’ and [Anne] Sexton’s ‘To Bedlam and Part Way Back’.” He writes that “The comparison isn’t fanciful” as “Lola’s writing has a similar vividness and strength”.

Masoliver notes that “The collection is book-ended with Lola’s own prayer and psalm”. “From the first,” she suggests, “there is an expression of doubt about the poet’s faith, though holding onto it ‘even when I fear God might be a thin shadow’”. Yet, “By the time we get to the final poem, there is a loss of innocence to the reality of the world around us, but a certain strength that comes with ‘fighting darkness’”. Niroshini states that “This poet speaks boldly of prayer as a call to arms for family, for love, for a survival, which as she concludes in the final poem, ‘Psalm 151’, ‘I prayed my fists into’”.

Lola has said that “The writing of the collection was emotionally challenging as the poems touch on sensitive topics about death, faith, family and mental health.” For her, “writing poetry has been a ‘therapeutic tool’, a ‘healthy listening ear’ and a way to express her struggles, be they anxiety or … grief”. Nevertheless, she also says: “My poems always suggest and show hope no matter how gritty the subject is! I do write poems that are centred around my faith, and that hope in my faith is Jesus”.

Many reviewers note Lola’s ability to write lines, such as ‘sweeping me off my bones’, “that stop you dead”. Hannah Williams was particularly moved by lines from ‘Blessed Are the Mothers of a Dead Child’:

Blessed are the mothers of a dead child

for they manage to recover

after eating the fruit that grows

from planting your child’s casket in the ground.

Hill cites the final lines of the same poem:

My grandmother tries to celebrate the brief beauty of his breath.

She says what use is sweeping grief under the carpet

when you can blend it to find the drop of sanity that will flow from it.

to suggest that it is here that the equilibrium sought in the collection’s title is to be found.

The Sunday Times Style Magazine has described Lola as being among “the ranks of an exciting new wave of young female bards who are widening the appeal of poetry for a new generation”. As a result, the imminent prospect of a second collection from her is a particularly exciting prospect. Look out later in the year, then, for ‘Ceremony for the Nameless’ which is described as exploring the act of naming and its role in shaping our identities, our aspirations, what we carry and how we belong. In lyrical, joyful and moving poems, Lola will explore the ways our journey through life might require us to cast off old expectations – both others’ and our own – just as at other times it can bring us back, strangely and unexpectedly, to where we first began.

This returns us to Balthazar and his journey of discovery. So, as he states: “let us look deeply / to know this hope deeply.”

Article

Care

Culture

Mental Health

Trauma

10 November 2025

5 min read

Stillness is not always peace: how wellness and illness intertwine in silence

Stillness invites clinical insight—and a deeper kind of presence

Helen Cowan

Helen is a registered nurse and freelance writer, writing for audiences ranging from the general public to practitioners and scientists.

Celine Dion, stiff-person syndrome sufferer.

Celine Dion.

The Global Wellness Institute defines wellness as the active pursuit of activities, choices and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health. It includes rest and rejuvenation, through mindfulness, meditation and sleep. As a care home nurse, I am intrigued by the subject of stillness – for patient and nurse - in the pursuit of wellness, and as a sign of illness.

There’s a lot of stillness in illness - from the dense paralysis that can follow stroke or spinal cord injury, to the subtle weakness or stiffness in an arm that might signal the onset of motor neurone disease. Over half of people with Parkinson’s experience ‘freezing’, feeling as if their feet are momentarily glued to the ground. Freezing is also a feature of stiff-person syndrome – the auto-immune neurological condition powerfully documented by Celine Dion in her film I Am. In so-called stone-man syndrome, muscle tissue is replaced by bone, an immobile ‘second skeleton’.

The stillest still is seen in death itself. I’ve stood still with spouses and sons as their loved ones breathe their last. Alone, I’ve watched the hush between heartbeats until there exists only stillness beside sorrow. It’s a stillness like no other, when breath becomes still air, and the only movement is through a window opened to let air in, and souls out, in time-honoured nursing tradition.

In memory of babies born still, a public education and awareness campaign has been launched in the US. “Stillness is an illness” calls for families and healthcare providers to take seriously altered foetal movement in pregnancy, which is reported by 50 per cent of mothers who experience stillbirth. Stillbirth is a tragedy insufficiently addressed in global agendas, policies, and funded programmes, according to the World Health Organization. Mothers in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia are at highest risk, with nearly 1.5 million stillbirths in these regions in 2021.

Sometimes stillness manifests in more muted ways. When dementia robs the recall of person, place and time, residents no longer lift their head in response to their name, nor appear at their chosen place at the breakfast table in the morning. Television presenter Fiona Phillips describes the late stages of dementia for her mother, when she “spent whole chunks of time just sitting and staring ahead, only able to give out a series of sounds.” In care home nursing, I have brought stillness to an agitated mind. Therapeutic touch has relieved tension; creative activities have reduced restless pacing up and down. Music, movement, and medication can also calm a troubled mind.

In the further pursuit of patient wellness, the nurse may need to be still. The “CAREFUL” observation tool has been developed in nursing homes, in which the nurse sits still and discreetly watches a resident for a period of time, assessing their activities and interactions, working out what brings wellbeing, or ill-being, for that individual; residents in this case being our best teachers. Other times in dementia care, the nurse is still as they patiently wait for a resident to explore, enquiring into self-made mysteries solvable only by themselves, examining everything from door handles to another resident’s buttons; or to slowly finish a meal, their swallow also affected by the disease.

Punctuating any frantic nursing shift are other moments of necessary stillness as the nurse performs intricate procedures, carefully inserting catheters, delicately taking blood from fragile veins, or applying prolonged pressure to stem bleeding caused by a catheter during cardiac stenting. In the operating theatre, the scrub nurse stands still awaiting a surgeon’s call; the “honor walk” or walk of respect is a ceremonial procession in which healthcare staff line the corridor, in silent tribute, as a brain-dead patient is taken to theatre for organ donation.

There’s a different stillness sought in nursing, and elsewhere, which runs very deep. Described by missionary and author Elisabeth Elliot as a “perfect stillness…a great gift”, it is, in her words, “not superficial, a mere absence of fidgeting or talking. It is a deliberate and quiet attentiveness—receptive, alert, ready”. It’s an expectant stillness in which we “put ourselves firmly and determinedly in God’s presence, saying ‘I’m here, Lord. I’m listening’.” Writing for the Christian Medical Fellowship, nurse Sherin describes such a seeking during a stressful shift. “Overwhelmed, I stepped away to find a quiet place. I ended up in a washroom. It wasn’t ideal, but there I cried out to God, asking for courage, peace, patience, and above all, love for that patient.” And her prayer was answered. “That, to me, was the quiet, powerful presence of Christ,” she writes.

Her role model was Jesus himself who often stepped away to be still, to seek spiritual sustenance. Just before he fed the five thousand, Jesus said to his tired and hungry disciples, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” When grieving the execution of John the Baptist, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place; and in the hours before his arrest, Jesus withdrew about a stone’s throw from his disciples, knelt down and prayed. An angel from heaven appeared to him, and strengthened him. We too are invited, in the book of Psalms, to “Be still and know God” when hard pressed and weary. Here, the words “be still” derive from the Hebrew rapha which means “to be weak, to let go, to release”, or simply to surrender. It’s a theme repeated in many of the great Christian hymns, hinting at an expectant, sustaining stillness, invoking God’s promise of His presence in that stillness. Little-known hymnwriter Katharina von Schlegel, writing in the eighteenth century, captures it perfectly.

Be still, my soul! the Lord is on your side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to your God to order and provide;
In ev'ry change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul! your best, your heav’nly friend
Thru' thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

I’ve sought this stillness, and it’s brought me wellness. It’s the reason why, despite some difficult days, I am a nurse. Still.

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