Review : Swan on the river – Dejah Beauchamp

A mother’s grieving process: 
From hell to a new bird 

Swan on the river - poems of grief and transcendence
Dejah Beauchamp
Idle Mind Press
ISBN: 978-0-9977412-0-9

by Laura Demelza Bosma

Dejah Beauchamp wrote her poetry debut Swan on the River to process the loss of her stillborn daughter Sunrise. The book counts almost one hundred pages with mainly free verse poetry and is divided in four parts: Life, Death, Resurrection and Sunrise. The cover is well designed and the book has a jazzy appearance. As a reader of this book, we get to witness from very close what such a heart wrenching experience could possibly feel like.  In some poems we are there while it happens, watching over the shoulder while the mother gives birth. These poems are physical, raw, ruthless. Illusions lose their masks and what is left is the bare truth. Some of these poems remind me of Sylvia Plath’s ‘Three women’, one of her least known books of poetry, divided in the voices of three different women speaking of their pregnancy, birth experience and after.  These mere observations without meandering are a boot in the face.

Hell is a grave /three feet long /seventeen inches wide
hell / is the green grass that grows/upon it
a blanket /I shall never untuck

What these words do is drag us to that shockingly small grave. We have to stand there and agree this is hell. The simple grass, generally something we love is described as hell as well. Why is the grass hell for the mother? I sense because it is life going on, over and above the baby, like the mother herself, for the rest of her life trapped on another level. Hell.. it is a word like a flame that burns illusions away. A blanket I shall never untuck. With these words I was dragged beneath the earth and left breathless. There is no comfort here, as there is no escape from facing death, sometimes even before any of our simple dreams and hopes are answered. In this life philosophy hell is not a place you go to after death, but a place on earth where you can get lost even without committing a sin. Hell is in the circumstance of losing a child.

Another striking fact-poem is The Secret, where Dejah surprises with a sudden near postmodern style, mentioning crimes and assaults committed on women, followed by the repeated question:
What were you wearing?
The effect of the poem is so strong, that the last phrase wherein the secret gets explained ( I’m glad you were never born into/this world of men) could possibly have been left out.

In many poems the ‘I’ in the poems, is looking for the sense of death and how to live with her loss, exploring different philosophies and religions like Greek mythology and Christianity. In the section ‘Death’,  Death shows up as a person that the mother tries to communicate with, to gain a deeper understanding.  Again, the poem that hits the most, is the one that coldly describes death’s presence.

Death In The Basement  (fragment)

I keep death in the basement
or the attic. But he’s never allowed in the living area,
especially not when we have guests

sometimes I’ll open the cellar door
and let out a hurricane scream

into the darkness

In the third part of the book, ‘Resurrection’ Dejah writes her daughter alive in a poem for each life-stage. Though the poems are beautiful and can be read as essential for the healing process of the mother, the imagination paints such a rosy picture of life with a daughter that I can’t believe them. as an outsider reading a poem as a poem without the context of the others, there seems to be a lack of urgency for the imagination to do what it does because the direct presence of death is gone. Looking at the bigger picture though I am fascinated by the open mind of the writer, her ability to explore parts of her consciousness, her honesty and openness.

Where Dejah does definitely succeed to bring her daughter to life is where her love for nature can be felt and read in simple but captivating imagery.

And the bees/ kiss flowers that riot/
and blush. The hem / of your dress / is wet / with dew
as you bend/ to kiss the roses/ the lilacs drenched/in sun.

Because this sensual writing definitely is one of Beauchamp’s qualities, I would have liked to read more of this, replacing words like the ones of the subheadings, that sometimes seem too big or general.

In The Poem In Which I Re-Write Your Birth, rosy and pitch-black finally meet to melt together in the face of poetry.

You came out limp and warm perfect and laughing / glowing with vernix and blood sea foam,
and there were people dolphins / all around us, weeping leaping joyfully -  
In the introduction the writer explains the title. The swan stands for the Paramahamsa, the supreme celestial swan, a fully realized soul that has completely immersed in God. This is where Dejah finds her daughter, in the realization that Sunrise is not dwelling with God, but is instead one with de divine. The last poem of the book, ‘New Bird’ illustrates this in easily understandable, almost song text-like phrases. This way, Swan on the river doesn’t end on the last page but instead implies a new beginning. Though some of the poems would for sure have benefited from an editorial eye for shortening, contrast and layering, Swan on the river shares a unique and love-filled grieving process and is a must-read for all the women who share the same experience, doula’s and anyone interested in exploring the extremes of feminine psychology.

You can purchase the book here

Dejah Beauchamp lives in New England. Her first book of poetry, Swan on the River, was released in September 2016. http://dejahwrites.tumblr.com/