Numb I am

A child awakens alone in an alien land, not the country of her birth. This is the scene of her original pain, her original trauma. Picking through fragments of memory, she retraces her steps. Addiction, sex, loneliness and hurt. Each poem is a single shard on a journey of self-realisation, from the poet’s life on an East London housing estate, to understanding the power of motherhood.As a child she is witness to domestic violence; as an adult, she becomes a victim. Addictions become her escape, only to find herself falling ever deeper into a fractured and numbed pain.Memories of her time in a mental hospital, reuniting with her mother and then losing her again, the pervert in the park, the man who jumped to his death.But there are also rare and brilliant flashes of gentleness that inspire the impulse to survive.Both brutal and tender, all told in raw honesty.

Didi Hakata was born in Turkey on 14 May 1983. Her family emigrated to the UK in the late 1980s. She has lived in London since the age of six. She bares the scars of extra stressors caused by immigration. She is a mother of three. Didem is a student of psychology. She enjoys Anatolian folk music, learning to play the Saz/Baglama and sings in this genre. She identifies as a Kurdish/British woman.