Joanna Jones: Shextreme Best Adventure Poem

Poetry is one of the oldest written artforms, often sang, poetry was used to recite law and history to others. Modern-day poetry is a free-flowing creative medium, enlisted by authors to communicate their words in abstract and unique ways. This year's Shextreme Best Adventure Poem award goes to a truly talented woman, Joanna Jones.

While living in La Paz, Bolivia for work and travel, Joanna immersed herself in the local culture. Breathing in the sights and sounds of the city inspired Joanna to pen her thoughts to paper, and what came of it was her award-winning poem, "Running Away from your Problems is Harder at Altitude". Joanna explains, "There is a rhythm to the city – the constant thump of music, blaring car horns, the up and down of the cable cars – which made a poem seem fitting."

Joanna is currently training to be an outdoor instructor, which is an adventure in itself. However, poetry is still a passion that is enthusiastically indulged in when the creative juices begin to flow. Named as an Emerging Writer 2018 by Literature Wales, Joanna offers some insight into writing poetry; "Put your work out there – enter competitions, apply for grants, join a writing group. Don't talk yourself out of something before you've even tried."

You can enjoy Joanna's award-winning poem titled "Running Away from your Problems is Harder at Altitude" below.

Running away from your problems is harder at altitude 

1.

Wrap up warm, they said. It’s colder than you think. Wrap up warm and get ready to fall in love, because Bolivia will nestle inside you. I don’t think I’m the loving type, but I’m ready to be coaxed in Spanish. 

2. 

I wring out my clothes with cracked, swollen hands and hang them out to bake on the terrace. Dregs of mud and coffee and blood slurp in to the plug hole; I swipe my face on my sleeve. They say if you get messy eating salteñas, you must be a bad kisser. (I wiped my leg on the table cloth.) 

3. 

I grasp at Spanish like it’s life, like it’s air, like it might soothe my parched throat with its altitude burns and its tangle of unspoken words. I can buy fruit in Spanish, I can say I love you, I can ask to get off the bus, please. But I don’t know how to say I’m sorry for your loss, sorry for your heart ache; I drown in the wash of it all. I want to ask my host father if there’s pain in his knee and I want to wish him better. The spine of a borrowed dictionary presses a line on my jaw. 

4. 

It really is colder than you think, and I didn’t wrap up warm. There’s relief in hot showers with their electric shocks, and in mugs of coca tea. But it’s not until salsa that I’m warm to my walls, to the tips of my hair and my fingers. So this is heat, I think to myself, as the room swings past in a blur. Surely I’m mistaken; it was never sublime before. 

5.

My body is my body: I rinse and repeat. Tu cuerpo es tu cuerpo, niños, your castle, your muddied trench. I pound away another day’s shame on the potholed, pimpled hills and think: will it ever be that simple? And who am I to preach? 

6.

So it’s winter, so it’s wilderness, so it’s sardine tin buses and muddled key phrases and panting hard on the hills. I stumbled here from the salted Welsh air almost by mistake but perhaps I could breathe the mountains and murmur Spanish in my sleep.