Aline’s Story – A Poet’s Journey – 2

In Part One yesterday we learned about Aline Page’s early life.

PART TWO

Where did her feeling for poetry come from?

“I remember loving John Donne when we studied the Eight Metaphysical Poets for English. I was deeply affected by Wilfred Owen’s poems – which were hard-hitting, moving, very direct. We also studied Shakespeare’s sonnets.”

There seems to be something of all these elements in the poems that Aline would go on to write much later.

But when she first tried to produce her own verses, she was not encouraged.”Things came out when I had a pen and a bit of paper,” she says. “When I was 15 I remember writing something romantic about my first boyfriend. It was easier to write than to speak because I was nervous and awkward. Writing was a way of soul searching, discovering.

“It was about being utterly in love and was based on an intimate experience. I wrote it and showed it to my best friend… and she just howled with laughter. I was so shamed and embarrassed that I didn’t  show my writing to anyone. I still have my teenage poetic outpourings!”

Initially, she became an IT secretary working in the City progressing to “doing more of a PA civil service-type job”.

The lack of scope for creativity got to her. “And I took up art,” she says. “I had been talked out of doing art A-level at school. So now I started art evening classes and that was brilliant. I then got into Chelsea College of Art and finally felt free to be me.

“While doing my Fine Art degree I became involved in art therapy projects for terminally ill patients at the Marsden Hospital. I was deeply moved by how colour and art made a big difference in patient morale and potential recovery. After getting my degree I took placements in a psychiatric hospital’s art therapy department, worked for MIND and various community-based projects but couldn’t afford to attend the qualifying art therapist course. 

“I was offered a place at Goldsmiths to do a wonderful studio-based postgraduate certificate in education. At my interview they said my art portfolio reminded them of the work of Marion Milner [a renowned psychoanalyst who journaled and painted as means of self-discovery] and were keen to have me, but I was barred by the lack of a maths O-level, ironically. I had planned to be a special needs teacher.

“I started working in adult education centres in and near London, delivering art, life and still life, calligraphy and even interior design courses. I went on to teach adult numeracy and literacy and empathised with my adult students’ challenges.”

So how did Aline come to live in Pembrokeshire?

“I came to Wales in 1992. I first came here as an art student and fell in love with St Davids and the area around Solva. I just walked the coastal paths sketching and painting and felt safe, really free and adventurous.”

“When I went back to London a part of my heart was left here.”

“I was now in my thirties, in a new relationship and ready for a new challenge that would allow me to consolidate my various skills and teaching talents under one roof. An educational job came up so I took a leap of faith… out of the fat into the fire!” 

Aline needed some stability and a sphere in which to exercise her skills and found it as an art tutor and youth worker, qualifying as a youth leader. “Later, I fell pregnant and after the birth of the baby and another stressful move, became a single parent.”

Still there was no sign of a return to poetry. “Computing, word processing, jargon, invoices… They had all affected me and I had long ago lost my love for words – there was no pleasure in them.”

But around the time that her daughter was a toddler, Aline found that words started coming to her… And there was an element of “getting things off my chest”.

When she was delivering art creative workshops, words started to appear embedded within visual art pieces and bits of felt expression were written down as phrases, short sentences or verses.  She also became involved in health and wellbeing, qualifying as a reflexologist and complementary practitioner. 

Then she found she could artistically express herself through her body via contemporary dance movement projects and became a member of a community-based dance company. This was ideal because it did not require spoken word and “I really fell in love with spontaneous, creative expression again”.

With the arrival of covid she ceased her reflexology and dance practice. “But at the start of lockdown I did a creative workshop with Deb Winter. I really clicked with her fun, playful approach and her “finding your voice” workshop really freed me up to speak. Things probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

“An idea came and I’d sit down and put pen to paper and things would come out. Sometimes it felt like painting a picture with words. I’d leave it and I’d come back the next day. It was a daily routine. I would sleep on it and it would shift. Rhythm, structure… I would let it tumble out and then sort it. Sometimes when I was fine-tuning I would have to be careful not to be over-judgemental of myself.”

Since then she has produced a series of beautiful and passionate poems, many of which have appeared here on Pembrokeshire.Online. In fact, her latest one came to her as a result of this interview – and we’ll publish it shortly.

Nowadays Aline talks very confidently about her creative process. “I hand-write my poems and when they are finished I type them,” she says. “I try to use as few words as possible – to say as much as I can with the smallest number of words.”

And in that is definitely the essence of her work: every line and every word really do count. It’s a remarkable achievement for someone who once thought that she would never again show her poetry to others.