Helpline
In the call centre at the end of the world
everyone is wearing the rags
of the clothes they came to work in two weeks ago.
From floor ten we count fires in the distance
the smoking remains of suburbs.
Tea breaks are strictly monitored
and the internet is still there
but we are getting tired of news.
We sleep where we’re comfortable –
stairwells, carpet, canteen chairs.
Lateness for shifts is not tolerated
although at this stage few of us
have homes to go to.
Demand for the service is high.
I don’t know why I’ve stayed so long in this job
when the world in which I could spend its ample wage
has disintegrated –
politicians in hiding
supermarkets forced open on burst streets
perhaps it’s because they all tell me
that my voice could be the last one they hear
perhaps it’s because almost every worried caller
reminds me of my worried mother
or because we talk about wallflowers,
the hunger, the smell of burned paint
reminisce about summer in the park.
Her dog went out two days ago and hasn’t come back
If I’d died he could have eaten me
she says
it sounds like a regret.
This week’s poem, Helpline, appears in the inaugural issue of Strix, the new, Leeds-based journal of poetry and short fiction. Co-edited by Ian Harker and Andrew Lambeth, the latter known more familiarly on this blog as nosuchzone, Strix is handsome, streamlined and sharp-eyed like its avian namesake. Issue One is packed with contributions from fresh-thinking writers, some well-known, others just starting out. Suzannah Evans, who also contributes a strong piece of prose on a theme related to that of Helpline, is one of those whose writing was new to me, and sparked my imagination.
Helpline has an arresting start: “In the call centre at the end of the world …” The term “call centre” itself is enough to make waves in a reader’s brain: as two separated words, it becomes more of a concept, open-ended. Is the “end of the world” a place as well as a chronological point? A place where all the calls for help in the world end up? This introductory stanza steers quickly away from broader exposition to local detail, but sets out the dystopian possibilities.
Stanza two identifies the speaker as one of the call handlers, and this is the voice we hear from now on throughout the poem. It’s somewhat matter-of-fact, suggesting an informal report, diary entry or letter, possibly even a conversation with someone at a different helpline. The contents appear to be uncensored, whereas the situation evoked inside the centre is one of limited freedom.
As the call handlers are portrayed as loyal employees, determinedly, perhaps obsessively, going about their work and adjusting to its new dimension, questions are raised concerning their autonomy. While the speaker and her colleagues are allowed some respite (tea breaks, internet access) there’s clearly an unequal power structure in operation.
Readers are free to imagine further contexts. The helpline handlers could have been taken hostage and be unable to leave for reasons unconnected to the fact that “few of us / have homes to go to”. It may be that the news that they’re “getting tired of” is so bad that certain cognitive processes have shut down. Knowing their place in a hierarchy, even an illusory one, enables them to function. They seem genuinely busy. “Demand for the service is high.”
Stanza six tells us a little more about what has gone wrong outside (“politicians in hiding / supermarkets forced open on burst streets”) and, by implication, what it was like before. The call handler received an “ample wage”, and continued to do so while society “disintegrated”. The work ethic faintly visible at the heart of the poem hints that compassion and dedication are more durable than monetary reward. The images of the cowering politicians and “the supermarkets forced open on burst streets” are powerful, and indicate a popular uprising or revolution. Human values, and the importance of the human voice itself, are emphasised in the ensuing two couplets (stanzas seven and eight), perhaps the point at which the poem’s emotional core is most visible and affecting.
Helpline’s lineation is governed by speech rhythms, and punctuation is fairly minimal. The genre is narrative rather than lyric, although there are moments that afford a little glimpse into the walled garden of image and emotion we expect from lyric poetry. One of these occurs in stanza nine, where the reported conversation between call handler and caller seems to reflect the old order, its comforting demarcations, its emphasis on the richness of remembered sense experience, even as streets burn.
The last stanza adjusts the scenario back to a worsening reality. From what the caller is now saying, we must assume the onset of starvation. The idea that the pet dog might have survived by eating its owner merges horror with macabre satire. The narrator’s comment “it sounds like a regret” suggests the struggle to gain understanding across the frail connecting tissue of the phone line. Such instabilities of narrative tone are psychologically convincing, reminders of the accommodations and guesses, the bleak jokes and shared nostalgia, the scraps of news and, dare I say it, “fake news” that are part of the fabric of survival in extremis.
Evans writes that her pamphlet Confusion Species was a winner in the 2011 Poetry Business book and pamphlet competition, and in 2013 she was the winner of a Northern Writers’ award. She lives in Sheffield, where she works as a freelance poetry editor and publicist and teaches for the Open College of Arts. Her poetry has been published in magazines including the Rialto, Poetry Review and Magma. She is working on a collection of apocalyptic poetry which, she says, will hopefully be published before the world ends.
