Donna Ashworth

Yeah, just wait until... You're meant to suffer.

It's very silly, but no, that is a beautiful poem.

Very well used.

And I love it myself.

But I try, if I can, to go into the grief or the element of grief that I'm writing about, but also to come back out at the end with some hope.

I don't want to just write poems where we sit in the grief because it's a bit like if you go over to a friend who's struggling in life, you are there to see a flicker in their eyes, aren't you?

And if you can make them laugh, if you can make them smile, or even if you can just comfort them, you've done your bit, you can sort of leave going, OK, I've helped in a way or I've just sat with them.

So that's what the poems are trying to do.

They're trying to understand somebody's grief and hear it and not wash over it.

You have to be in it and you have to be truthful about it.

But also, how do I get out of this today so that I can see the love and not just the grief?

I can see the hope and not just the loss.

I can get the comfort to put one foot in front of the other because again, we're not taught how to carry on.

You don't move on, but you have to move with.

Life is different now.

You are a different person after someone leaves.

And that doesn't mean to say that that is a worse section of your life.

It just means that you have grief with you.

And learning to manage that is vital.

So I'm delighted that the conversation about grief has opened up more and it's my favourite thing to write about because I'm such a joy.