Although award-winning poet Sally Read generally does not like doing commissions, as a former psychiatric nurse she thought she could write with ease about social care. But she admits: "When I found out I was going into a children's hospice, I was absolutely horrified. I was unprepared to deal with sick children and screaming parents."
Read is one of a quartet of poets who each spent the day at a hospice or care home, then translated their experiences into a poem dedicated to the role of British carers. The poems accompany images of carers as part of a booklet entitled People Who Care, which will be distributed free to 7,000 carers in recognition of their efforts.
Read visited Rainbows Children's hospice in Loughborough, Leicestershire. In an extract from her poem, Ocean Drum, she writes: "White roar, gritty peter to silence. The woman's not your mother. . . but she's learnt to read you from the angles of your head, smiles that seem like the flutter of a divining-rod miles above water."
Although her aim was to celebrate the carers' role, Read also had to face the realities of a hospice when she was taken to the Quiet Room. "It was most touching to see where the children are laid out," she says. "It looked like a child's bedroom. I was in tears. The poems I write are often about loss and pain. For me, as a parent, you don't like to deal with these things."
Premium rates and risk management are far from lyrical, so it is surprising to find that Gloucester-based insurance company Ecclesiastical commissioned and published the poetry. People Who Care came about after the company commissioned a national survey on carers earlier this year. Group chief executive Michael Tripp says the findings showed that most people in the UK believe carers are "chronically undervalued".
Ecclesiastical's PR manager, Chris Pitt, says: "Carers have to deal with powerful emotions every day. Poetry captures the intense challenges and rewards they face. It also helps us to understand a bit more about what they do."
One of the other poets, Clare Pollard, visited Leckhampton Court, a Sue Ryder Care hospice in Gloucestershire. The hospice's palliative care services manager, Lorraine Dixon, says: "In spending time with Clare, the staff have inspired a poem that will be something we can use to perhaps link with groups of the general public who wouldn't have otherwise heard of our services. Her poem is a good reflection of the impression she had of Leckhampton Court and really describes the high quality of care the staff provide here."