‘And I Climbed, And I Climbed’: Stephen Lightbown explores a boy’s experiences of disability in this profoundly authentic new poetry collection

Launching now this September, And I Climbed, And I Climbed is an outstanding debut children’s collection by Bristol-based poet Stephen Lightbown. The book is written in the voice of Cosmo, a young boy whose life has been changed forever after falling out of the tree he loved to climb. It’s been an absolute privilege to work with Stephen on this book, which is wonderfully illustrated by Shih-Yu Lin. Here, Stephen shares some thoughts about how and why he came to create the character of Cosmo, and his hopes for the book going forward.  

STOP PRESS: Join us for a very special launch event on 5 October - National Poetry Day 2023 - at Waterstones in Bristol! Come and meet Stephen and hear him read from and discuss the book. Find out more here.

Stephen Lightbown: As I sit down to write this blog, the publication of my first children’s collection And I Climbed, And I Climbed is imminent. I’m thinking again about why I wanted to write the book, which tells the story - through poems - of Cosmo, an eight year-old boy who breaks his back while climbing the tree in his garden and becomes a wheelchair user. Cosmo tries to come to terms with the accident and with its impact on his life by writing poems to the tree.

What was my inspiration for writing this collection? Well, I didn’t have to look very far, given that I’m a wheelchair user after having an altercation with a tree. I was sixteen at the time and was sledging in my hometown of Darwen, Lancashire, when I hit the tree in question. I was going backwards at the time and my injuries left me a paraplegic. I was in hospital for six months and I’ve been a wheelchair user ever since. That was almost thirty years ago. These days I live in Bristol, but many times over the years since the accident I’ve gone back to see the tree, often to have a conversation with it. And many times, I’ve imagined how the tree might respond, as the tree in the book does to Cosmo.

Also, the idea of ‘epistolary’ poems, also known as letter poems, is something that I really love and is key to how I came to write about my disability and disability in general. Back in 2014 when I was starting my poetry journey, I enrolled onto a course at the City Lit in London called ‘Ways into Poetry’ with the wonderful poet Malika Booker. On the course Malika tasked us with writing a letter poem. For some reason I decided to write the poem in two parts. The first, a letter to my legs and the second, a response back from my legs to my body.

Stephen Lightbown | Photo by Tomshot Photography

The result was illuminating, shocking and liberating in equal measure! I hadn’t planned to write about my spinal cord injury, in fact it was the very last thing I wanted to do, but it unlocked something that has stayed unlocked ever since. And I was totally surprised by what I wrote. That’s the power of poetry.

I’d spent years being angry at my legs. But by giving them a voice my relationship to them changed completely. In creating Cosmo, I wanted him to have the chance to express his feelings in the same way. I knew he’d be feeling a whole range of emotions. Shock, sadness, anger, frustration and fear to name just a few. He’d also be trying to understand why this has happened to him and why his life has changed so much. He’d feel that life is unfair, that he was cursed and that there was no hope.

But slowly, with a good family around him, he’d also start to find joy again. Expressing these feelings to the people around him would be tough, and often he’d want to confront the tree. Also, in time, he’d find himself wanting to offer the tree forgiveness. After all, the tree did nothing wrong. I know that Cosmo would feel like this because that’s how I felt, though I had the benefit of being twice Cosmo’s age.

It is my hope that other children of a similar age may see something of their feelings in Cosmo’s poems, or that they might explore using poetry as a whole, not just letter poems, as a way of exploring and expressing themselves. This especially applies to children who are also wheelchair users or who have any kind of disability.

As I look back at my time growing up with a disability, I realise how few people I saw like me in the arts and media I enjoyed, whether stories or poems in books or on TV or the ‘big screen’. The few examples that I did see didn’t seem authentic. So my hope is that by drawing on my own experiences, Cosmo feels like a real person with real emotions and experiences that other children can relate to.

I‘m incredibly grateful to Troika for asking me to write this book. I wrote the first draft of the collection poems only a few months after becoming a father for the first time, and I remember those days and weeks spent writing as a sleep-deprived blur! To be honest, life is still something of a sleep-deprived blur – I guess that’s parenthood for you - but I’m immensely looking forward to going out and sharing these poems.

If you’d like to contact me about attending an event – whether a reading, a workshop, a school or library visit, please do get in touch. You’ll find me online at www.stephenlightbown.com

Discover more and buy the book at www.troikabooks.com/and-i-climbed-and-i-climbed