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To celebrate World Poetry Day 2023, we are proud to share some of the incredible work and stories of our service users. Poetry offers people an outlet to help them express and manage complex emotions through creativity. This can be seen with the poetry created by our own service users who have managed to share their own stories and experiences.
Jim Khan is a poet, social justice advocate, and father of five. He is also a recovering alcoholic living with neurodevelopmental disability and personality disorder. Jim, like so many others struggling to deal with neurodiversity and addiction, spent decades in an unstable cycle of homelessness, depression and wasted opportunity.
Jim with his therapy dog Rosie
Services such as those offered by Framework have provided, by Jim’s own admission, an outreach that is more than just a sympathetic ear. According to Jim, appropriate support can give people a sense of identity and makes sure they are not struggling alone. This provides a much-needed companion and care system for those who feel without support.
As well as support from Framework, Jim found poetry and creative writing to be a stalwart sponsor during recovery, and it continues to be a therapeutic medium, by which he finds grounding and stability:
“I found poetry to be a lifeline, a float thrown from a ship to the proverbial drowning man. At a time when we seek to abandon the destructive crutches we relied upon for so long, we also seek to replace them with something less likely to kill us … poetry is my Buzz Lightyear.”
Cyclothymia & Chardonnay by Jim Khan, photograph by Marina Talmacci
This blog includes extracts from some of Jim’s work, as well as links to the full poems. Of the poems included, some are from his self-published 2020 book Cyclothymia & Chardonnay.
We watch the rain that you run from, our moments like the droplets;
heavy, falling past in wet monotony but our collective puddle, deep as it is,
keeps us together.
By the way, do you have any spare change, please?
No?
It’s alright. Bless you and have a good day.
– Extract from ‘All for one’ by Jim Khan
Read full poem here
Ignored by people, day and night,
he thanked them as they blanked his plight,
this man neglected,
still projected
peace on earth, goodwill to men.
He sat there with his begging-board,
a soul that knew the real reward
was kindness, spreading,
love, embedding
peace on earth, goodwill to men.
– Extract from ‘Longfellow’ by Jim Khan
Read full poem here
Memories of colder climes,
of darker days in older times
could never quell this warmer spell
of happy words and bolder rhymes.
– Extract from ‘Florescence’, in Cyclothymia & Chardonnay by Jim Khan
