Behind the Quiet

When I wrote The Quiet, I was fresh out of the Christmas holidays. I'd been lucky enough to spend time with my family, at home. It was a welcome break from university, and all of the commitments that came with it. However, being back at university was a bittersweet feeling. I had left and didn't know when I would return.

I felt incredibly nostalgic in the first few weeks of January. So, I decided to channel that nostalgia into something productive. The Quiet is about endurance, yes, but a different type of endurance than the typical triathlon or breakup. It is about enduring the people you spend your whole life with. Those of us with a tightly knit family know how it feels when each holiday rolls around - Christmas, Easter, and birthdays. The chaos that envelops the house is almost tangible. The stress of parents organising dinner, cousins arguing for a later bedtime, and aunties and uncles that you barely remember - they are always there.

So I think that I wrote that poem in a very informal manner. I had wanted to get the emotion and the feeling across, rather than focus on technical work. In hindsight, I would love to rewrite another version or use a similar concept, while focusing more on the language and structure of the poem. However, overall, I just wanted to acknowledge how, despite the chaos and the arguments that are sure to break out when we pull together a group of people who only see each other three or four times a year, those of us who are blessed with family should cherish it. I have been taught that family is one of the most important things in life, and something that will always be there, no matter what.