North Norfolk poet highlights HIV issues

Vince Laws has been living with HIV for several years and has written a poem for World Aids Day.

27 November 2009

A poignant poem about HIV is written, letter by letter, on rows of medicine bottles and boxes.

The dose of hard-hitting verse is by north Norfolk man Vince Laws who lives with the virus - and sees it as a blessing rather than a death sentence.

So the poet and artist is using his creative talents to highlight the issues, stigma and emotions surrounding the disease in works that will be showcased at events marking World Aids Day.

They include the poem Human, which he will perform and display on the medicine containers, and which combines insight, pathos and dark humour sparked by his HIV.

Despite being diagnosed five years ago on his birthday it is only the past year that Mr Laws, 48, from Oulton, near Aylsham, has needed medication to help his condition.

At its height it meant taking 14 tablets a day and a weekly injection for hepatitis - even before the extra treatments to deal with side effects and depression.

“I had a year of feeling so nauseous. I could not think of anything else, and could not eat. It does your head in, and I just felt like I was under a dark blanket - did not want to go out, and sat in car parks crying,” he said.

“There are 300 medicine bottles and boxes here, and that represents rough a year of treatment.”

But his poetry and art have provided an outlet for dealing with his HIV - though his work also tackles a range of other subjects.

“I want to be known as Vince Laws the artist poet not the HIV poet. I do material about nature, war and Christmas too,” he added. But he hoped some of the messages would provide hope for other sufferers.

“HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was. I know people who have been living with it for 26 years.

“And it made me decide to use my time doing exactly what I want to do, so in that sense I see it as a blessing.”

Mr Laws had a dramatic start to life - involved in a car crash at the age of one which killed his adoptive mother and only saw him discovered the next day, Christmas Day, swaddled in car rugs when the wrecked car was recovered. It too is the subject of one of his poems, Crash.

After many years as a physiotherapist in the Army and civilian life, he moved to Brighton when he “came out” as gay and became deputy editor of the G Scene magazine.

His diagnosis with HIV was a shock even though he knew the risks, but made him focus on what he wanted to do - and now sees him back in Norfolk concentrating on the art and poetry he has dabbled with through his life.

Mr Laws' art takes snippets of poetry and weaves them into thought-provoking pictures and installations.

“Part of you thinks 'I might as well kill myself' but another says 'I have so much to say',” he added

Vince Laws will perform his work at a World Aids Day charity event at the Catherine Wheel pub in St Augustine's Street, Norwich tomorrow, from 8pm.

The following day he will perform poetry at a Brighton WAD event and display Human written on the medicine bottles.

Mr Laws is also hosting a poetry dinner at the Woolpit Swan pub near Bury St Edmunds the following week on December 8 from 7.30.

Anyone interested in his work can e-mail him at vincelaws@gmail.com



Human

Human Immunodeficiency Virus, H. I. V

Human first and foremost

A maker of mistakes

The mistake I made,

Was to fall in love.

Make sure it doesn't happen to you

I is Immunodeficient -

I catch more germs than most,

Of course I prefer to think germs think me

Such an absolutely fabulous host!

V is for virus,

It contains both I and Us.

We're all human first and foremost,

And in the end, all dust.