From the Author: Michael Balint was a psychotherapist in the Object Relations school. His ideas about the effects of early development are moving and also were ground-breaking, building on the importance of what Freud called the pre-genital or pre-Oedipal phase. Chiefly, his concept of an early state of experience that exists before words has inspired this poem. I am attempting to write, in words, the “pre-verbal” experience described by Balint, which has an eerily familiar ring of truth to me.
Gram Joel Davies lives in Devon, where he works as a psychotherapeutic counsellor. His poetry has appeared widely in many print and online journals, including lately in The Black Light Engine Room, The Journal and Poetry Salzburg. He has two full-length collections with V. Press Poetry. Find out more at https://gramdavies.com/poetry
