Pen Portrait - Phoebe Caldwell
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Phoebe was born in 1933. After her first degree, a BSc., she married and had five children. She now has ten grandchildren and two great grandchildren. She spent 45 years working around the world, developing communication with people on the autistic spectrum. She was awarded a DSc. by the University of Bristol in 2011. At the age of 76 she was given the Times Sternberg Active Life Award, recognising over 35 years of pioneering autism support. She created a system that encourages parents and caretakers of autistic people to study their body language and respond to it. She is still working on Zoom, and has written twelve books on autism and four on ageing. She is a poet by accident.
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WARTIME
It’s different now; back then just me and ma hugging the radio called wireless, plotting the ebb and flow of armies on a map came with the paper, tearing read broadsheets into four, in lieu of loo roll. Today we listen to your sirens. Katyusha rockets crease the night: as now as then, immortalised by Henry Moore stone-faced families huddle underground. Fear is a lullaby. Online war is not the same, anguish caught on camera wrings pre-owned grief, a women lends her smart phone to a prisoner to phone his mum, he weeps: our tears are second-hand. |
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