Poet Cyrus shares his story and a poem about living with ET
Poet Cyrus, who has essential tremor, shares his personal story and a poem about living with essential tremor.
I was born in 2000 and brought up in Devon with an essential tremor I have had for as long as I can remember. My tremor is hereditary, having been given it by both my mum and my father's father. My older brother also has ET, but mine has always been the most severe in the family. I started writing in notebooks as a young child, though my handwriting is ineligible even to me sometimes.
Poet Cyrus, who lives with essential tremor
Then when I was 15, my English teacher told the class to write a poem. That evening I wrote three continuous A3 pages of verse, handed it in the next day and was asked by my teacher if I would like the whole week to finish it. I gave it in without editing and have been writing almost every day since.
It took me years of practice, reading, and learning to be able to write about my ET. I often avoided writing about it, worried it would be banal. But my life, like any other, is curious, strange, diverse and beautiful. The tremor is a part of my life, a fundamental part of who I am.
Since I have won the Plymouth Poetry Prize, Foyle Young Poet of the Year, and I have been longlisted for the National Poetry Prize. A variety of websites, zines and institutions have published me. I have written librettos, exhibited art across the Atlantic and in the UK, as well as published short fiction. Additionally, I read for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Moby Dick Big Reads.
I Can’t Shake It
A poem about living with essential tremor by Cyrus Larcombe-Moore
Echoes cause palpitations,
Physical provocation,
And social agitation.
First the hands shudder, fast and loose laces, don’t quit;
My dashboard head bobbles when asked how I fit.
Then cortisone explosions, muscle spasm between the ribs.
The missed keys, missed type, misread and misspelt
An inter-muscular grip on bone, uncontrollably felt.
The incessant sequence,
fibres within fibres within fibres, ad-lib.
I was born to shake the soul.
Shake hands without a clenched fist As my fingers are never stiff.
I climb the trees and shake each limb,
and then each branch, and then each twig,
and then I look to each leaf
To see the vibrations of my mother
The vibrations of my grandfather
And tell them that rough winds
will not shake the glory out of me.
Immobile eyes look up:
Is someone so pained
they shake unexplained?
are they stained?
are you cold nervous anxious scared hungover hungry awkward unspoken
are you queer escaped uncomfortable worrying ill awful broken
is it parkinson's or you born faulty? can it be mended? is it deterioration?
is surgery invasive? private or NHS? you won’t have an intervention?
you won’t get it fixed? can you be fixed? you should get fixed.
There is something, I can’t shake it:
You stand in a circle that returns
On a globe we forget spins
Watch adaption, remaster, remake
Say come again, repeat yourself
One more time, as tracks converge
to a single point in your near future
There is a need to shift,
For what good is stillness
When still is how we live?
Are you a you a poet or do you want to share your personal story? Then get in touch.
