Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

We are urged to listen to everything, to take note of all the words said and to take the appropriate action required to make sure all is understood, that there can be no ambiguity in the conversation, we then smile, pleased with ourselves that the dialogue has been completed and we can go and implement the ideas thrashed out.

Where there is discussion, there is also silence, but for the most part we don’t pay too much heed to the words unspoken, the pauses in which the exchange may have stumbled or become broken, snatched from the ether, the moment in which you should hear the silent scream become clear, Please Hear What I Am Not Saying.

This seven word sentence is as important as any in the English language, it is the unspoken cry for help, the trigger which holds the tongue hostage and in which comes frighteningly hot on the heels of the words, I’m fine; a person may talk for hours but it is in the realm of the mute and undeclared that the world turns in on itself.

It is a world that has been collated, compiled, collected and edited by Isabelle Kenyon in aid of the charity Mind. A collection of poets to whom their experience with depression, mental solitude, the unquiet chattering of the thoughts led them to writing, challenging themselves to describe just how what they want to say never feels the right thing to do; to open up to someone about depression, to try and explain what often has no expression other what it does to the individual, the fight that consumes them, is quite often never uttered.

Please Hear What I Am Not Saying takes the sense of anxiety, the fear, the feeling of self hatred and punishment and delivers it in the best way possible, for if you cannot hear what someone is trying to tell you about how they are suffering underneath, then at least you can read their words and hold them close, you can learn to read what is written between the words.

In poems such as Neil Elder’s Invisible, Angela Topping’s Loneliness, Jinny Fisher’s Ana’s Therapy, Andrew Barnes’ Black Rot, Peter Adair’s Demolition, Alison Down’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Stephen Watt’s Mark and the Maltese poet Miriam Calleja’s chilling I Once Loved Something Dark, is written should be discussed, there is nothing in this world it seems that cannot be aired and have a view, compassion and consideration attached.

Please Hear What I Am Not Saying is the passion in the voices, those that struggle in the dark and those that hear the whisper of being in a different place occupied seemingly by the rest of humanity; little realising that we are all, deep down inside, asking to be heard in between the words we are not saying.

A beautifully compiled book of poetry by Isabelle Kenyon, one in which to reach out and understand that what makes other’s tick is also the same as what goes through your own mind.

Ian D. Hall