Not so secret mother’s business

“I had no idea I was writing a book. It was the furthest thing from my mind. I started writing to understand my experience,” says Jessica Chapnik Kahn, author of MADRE, a poetry collection about motherhood.

“I was quite shocked by how your life moves from witnessing your own life to suddenly witnessing someone else's. The poems were my way of witnessing myself through the biggest thing I'd ever been through.”

In 2016, after the birth of her first child Lev, Chapnik Kahn began jotting down lines of poetry on napkins, receipts, and discarded wrapping paper, often in the middle of the night whilst nursing, or during everyday activities like walking to the park.

“Another thing I didn't expect was how much silence there is with a newborn,” says Chapnik Kahn. “I'd never felt so close to someone in such deep silence all the time. I had to express what was happening in that silence.”

Chapnik Kahn also began drawing images of her son, (these feature in the book) with her non-dominant hand, a technique that was new to her, a revelation. “I had never drawn before because I had never needed to draw. I felt my left hand had no judgement. I was trying to understand his face, which was just an absolute mystery to me, a jigsaw puzzle I could never seem to put together.”

During this time, a friend of Chapnik Kahn’s who was also a new mother, read many of the hundreds of poems and decided to publish them. “I had not thought of these little works outside of my own private bubble of transformation. Motherhood felt like disappearing. I was shocked that pure devotion could disintegrate a person.

“So the fact that they resonated for her was really unexpected,” says Chapnik Kahn. “I realised, this is not just me. This is universal. I hadn’t yet come to that understanding because motherhood felt like such secret business.”

Sharing the poems felt both joyful and extremely important for Chapnik Kahn. “This particular work was so pure in its questioning. The experience of writing it felt so sacred because it was so much bigger than me.”

MADRE was published to wide acclaim in 2019 with many readers responding that the book had clearly mirrored back to them their own profound experiences of motherhood, an experience that is often not spoken. Fast forward to 2024 and Chapnik Kahn’s little book of poetry was about to have a rebirth.

When Sydney composer Anna Hirst Friedman received a copy of MADRE, she had just returned to composing after a 20-year break. “It was perfect timing. Motherhood was something we had experienced simultaneously,, having had our children close together, and as I read through her poems, the music was jumping out at me.” says Hirst Friedman. “

The depth of meaning and relationship stood out. I had an urge to compose.” As she progressed through each poem, Hirst Friedman says she could hear the poetic opera unfold.

Chapnik Kahn was pleased that Hirst Friedman was inspired to put her poems to music but didn’t have any expectations about the outcome.

“Then one day I got this text: ‘Do you want to come to a rehearsal? I'm recording a six-piece vocal ensemble singing your poems.’ I was shocked. I had no idea what to expect. I showed up to this rehearsal and I was completely stunned by what she'd done and what was happening in that room.”

To date, Hirst Friedman has composed the first seven poems as one work and composed two additional works from poem 60, Love Quashes the Flesh and poem 75, A Burning Bush. “These works have been life-changing,” says Hirst Friedman.

For Chapnik Kahn, a musician and singer herself, the experience of having her own words put to music by someone else and then sung back to her was both strange and amazing. “I heard them in a completely different way. I heard something so sublime. I felt like Anna took them to the altar where they had always belonged. They are psalms of devotion, of service, and she took them there, and I just felt so humbled before the altar of that music.”

PERFORMANCE OF MADRE

On May 8, at Poetica Petit in Sydney, MADRE will have its debut performance by a six-piece vocal ensemble. Jessica Chapnik Chapnik Kahn and Anna Hirst Friedman will also be in conversation with Poetica’s Miriam Hechtman about motherhood, poetry and music. There will also be a poetry open mic section on the theme of motherhood.

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