Premature Birth
The excellent Bonnie's Crew website has just published one of my poems 'Premature Birth'.
Without going into personal details too much over Kate (who set up this project)'s personal background but Bonnie’s Crew was created after problems through the birth of Kate’s youngest child and the hard work Leeds Congenital Hearts put it for her. Paraphrasing the site, the unit is funded by the Children’s Heart Surgery Fund for the invaluable work they do, and it doesn’t bear thinking about that the government nearly closed this unit down. Whether someone’s heart defect is big or small, whether the person is big or small, they do everything they can to save a life.
This experience Kate advises made her want to give back to the unit, to the nurses, the doctors and everyone who keeps the place going which resulted in the creation of this site (and an accompanying anthology will follow, with 100% of the proceeds going to the CHSF Keeping the Beat campaign) to showcase poems of hope, hearts, hospitals, children, survival, love, faith – however those things manifest in the work people send – and hopefully raise some money for the CHSF / Leeds Congenital Hearts.
Speaking from my side, Premature Birth covers the difficult birth my nephew went through years back, and is now a lovely young man of just turned 10 and looks like me I’ve heard more than a few people say like me at that age several times now and made me reflect on my own birth back in 1972 and the problems my mother also had with me. Without the care I received and Jack also received, it is open to debate whether either of us would have survived.
I struggle with money myself at the best of times but the poem needed to be wrote for this excellent cause and I hope you like it and also choose to donate something to their Just Giving Page which can be found here
