On the Level: Poems on living with multiple sclerosis, by Bryan Monte
Author: Bryan Monte. Review by Bob Ward.
What’s it really like living with a permanent disability that confines you to a wheelchair? Bryan Monte is a Quaker who lives in Amsterdam, where he formerly taught English in a university. He suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS), a condition that not only disables you but nags at you incessantly. This is a brave book, in which Monte presents a series of poems that confront head-on the problems that he faces: getting around; enduring pain flickering like flames around his legs; missing out on simple pleasures; being treated as a ‘nobody’; the petty humiliations brought by other people’s insensitivity – especially the last of these. In spare language he speaks directly, on the level, in a plea for understanding on behalf of all those who are similarly afflicted. He affords them a powerful and much-needed voice by asserting their ‘dignity in being’, as Wordsworth would have put it.
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