Belfast – what a blast

Like a lot of Londoners of my era, all I knew of Northern Ireland was from the relentless news of the Troubles throughout my youth. Luckily I’d met people from there over the years who’d also shaped my imaginings. It was the good influence of one of them, the painter Patricia Doherty, that made me extra curious to go and visit the city that had produced my funny and talented friend. So it was great to be invited to read and run a workshop as one of several poets at the book festival this June.

I arrived the day before I was due to read, and was taken aback to find that the hotel room I’d been booked into was painted dark grey. Comfy & all, but like, almost black.

Needed colour dabs to save me from decline

I walked into town & bought myself peonies and a scroll of Chinese paper and when I got back made the first of two backdrops, ostensibly for the reading, as I like to have something painted in a room, but also to vanquish the gloom. I was glad to find an amazing bookshop run for Self Help Africa and relieve them of some old volumes that got pressed into action at my workshop as well as in my emergency backdrops.

Emergency backdrop nervously begun in hotel room

The first event I went to was that night, about Belfast poet, the late Padraic Fiacc. Poets Tara McEvoy and Joelle Taylor were there to read some of his work and lead a discussion of it – following a screening of a grainy and great 1970s German documentary about him, unearthed by the festivals intrepid poetry curator Natasha Cuddington. It was a revelation to hear him and his powerful writing of conflict, inner and outer. Many people in the audience had known him and were engaged with his work. He’d read and anthologised poetry across the sectarian divide, and often feared for his life in doing so, but made it to 94 in the end.

some of the works we read from

The next day Christodoulos Makris arrived and we got talking about our shared reading which was to be hosted by Natasha that night. I attended Christodoulos’ workshop in the afternoon, where we constructed poems from that days newspaper, before rushing back and making another emergency backdrop, & changing into my poetry dress for the evening.

I incorporated words from my ‘newspaper poem’ written in Christodoulos’ workshop on backdrop no. 2

Both Christodoulos and myself invited the audience to read poems with us at points during the evening, which was fun. We talked about instinct and spontaneity and some of the poetry projects we have been working on. I read some fortunes from INDEX as well as other poems and Christodoulos read from his book this is no longer entertainment (a total must-read) as well as his collaboration with the brilliant Kimberley Campanello – an online work called sorry that you were not moved.

We spoke of poet Tom Jenks of course, bold publisher of poetry objects by Christodoulos, Kimberley and myself amongst many others, with his press zimZalla. It was so enlivening to be live with a live audience.

After we’d recovered with a large dinner at The Woodworkers – I wandered back to the hotel and was spared immediate re entombment in the charcoal interior by friendly shouts from the pavement.

Joelle Taylor & Cathy Rentzenbrink – lighting up the Belfast night – the perks of a book festival- great writers & readers.

Joelle Taylor and Cathy Rentzenbrink – both amazing people, writers and festival headliners, were having a chat at the outdoor tables in the balmy Belfast night & invited me to join them. I read their cards from INDEX (‘spookily accurate!’ said Joelle) and we had a wonderful conversation.

There were still ace chats to come. Gail McConnell & Julie Morrissy read at a hybrid event the next night, Gail in person – Julie by zoom from the USA. Natasha again asking the questions.

Poet Gail McConnell reading in Belfast June 2022, ink pen in notebook.

Gail’s book: The Sun is Open is a moving, questioning, elegiac work – using archive material from her father’s life. It’s incredible, and currently a fiver in the Penned in the Margins July sale!

I don’t know Julie’s work yet, it sounds powerful, connecting the threads of close family with political histories via feminism. I liked drawing both of them in my notebook.

Poet Julie Morrissy on zoom, drawn with my ink pen – June 2022

Back at the Woodworkers there was more illuminating chat, I sensed a very alive poetry community in Belfast, the layering of centuries of Irish and English, not just as languages. It was refreshing to be far from home and find people arguing, laughing and sharing poetry as a home.

A bunch of excellent women turned up to my own workshop session. I tipped my cornucopia of scraps onto the table – and the room hummed with industry, as book manufacture took hold of those who love to rummage, snip & glue.

Made by Hannah Wilks

By a wonderful poet called Paula

by Natasha Cuddington in a ballet and battenberg palette

Rama & Sita find themselves in a new book made by a participant called Ruth ‘I’m never going to an ordinary poetry workshop again!’ she said.

The collage game in Belfast is strong, and I’m glad to say I found a willing recipient of my scrap bag – which saved me lugging it to my next destination.

I hope to see what gets made next as the scraps are given their next meanings – I left this in the hotel bar & Liza picked it up…

Poet Bebe Ashley had a residency at the festival, with a 3D printer, with which she was recycling plastic food packaging into braille poetry. Here she is with her poem Tom Daley dives for David Hockney and David Hockney paints Tom Daley.

Bebe Ashley with a poem 3D printed in braille.

I had a go at translating it just from its spacing and the colours used. If you’d like to try this – look carefully at the picture and try to read what you see! Bebe kindly let me take two of her little chips of braille – they spell the words alive and heartbeat and I keep them in my wallet.

Coded amulets for my travels, slid into my Mongolian wallet

In between readings and chats I walked in the city. Two favourite discoveries were the Botanic Gardens – very nearby, free and stunning, and independent bookshop No Alibis, where David the bookseller told me about his late friend, choreographer and dancer Helen Lewis, an extraordinary woman who survived Terezín and Auschwitz to pioneer modern dance in Belfast. She taught dance for years at the Crescent Arts Centre where the book festival was taking place. I was glad to read her memoir, A Time to Speak , a beautifully written book and more fuel for my Terezín project.

In the hothouse at Belfast Botanic Garden

The Crescent Arts Centre. Home to Belfast Book Festival as well as a thriving arts and education programme for the city. Squint & see the plaque honouring Helen Lewis between door & window on the left.

Thanks as ever for reading my blog. Thanks to Sophie Hayles, Natasha Cuddington and the whole team at Belfast Book Festival for their warm welcome and their tireless and good natured running of the many incredible events.

A friendly stranger took this snap
of me in my poetry dress as I was walking past – so I made them air drop it to me!

Zoom Collage Industry

My usual methods of teaching are often materials based. I give people assorted random bits of writing to bounce off, and I tip up huge bags of assorted hoarded scraps, and ask them to choose colours, respond and make things. ‘Use your greedy eyes!’ is one of my favourite invitations at the outset.

Some of my collage scrap bags, snapped from above

I love to watch the action. There’s collective energy in the room and it crackles over all our tables as we search for the right thing, to make a thing we don’t even know about yet.

From a circus art workshop last summer at the V & A Museum

I wander around, as the hum of concentration settles over students/artists. Arms stretch up into space to tear escape hatches from red paper, cautious scissors snip new shapes from crumpled old gossip, eyes are lowered as poems are read and read again, pencils are sharpened to their holiest purpose: underlining.

One of the classes from before times at the Royal Drawing Schools studios in Shoreditch.

The last two Tuesdays however, I had to get 22 students through a day of collage and poetry where we were just an assortment of disembodied heads, and where each person had been asked to muster their own scraps.

This was a short course in which myself and fellow painter Rosie Vohra, taught two days each, called Drawing, Poetry and Collage, at a virtual version of The Royal Drawing School.

For a totally 2020 sentence, what about: ‘Sophie, my broadband went, could you assign me a new breakout room?’ (My tight lipped answer – straight from the 80s: ‘hmm, I’ll see what I can do’)

Yes, a new language to learn, and alien teaching devices: being made ‘the host’, creating breakout rooms for tutorials, uploading resources to Padlet, checking the chat column for questions, screen sharing, speaker view, muting myself at lunch!

Physical consideration & collaboration: Children in Hull, during our National Poetry Day mini residency there in 2017.

I liked that we could make every aspect of the course into a virtual collage. The resources & reading lists which went on the Padlet page could be put on by Rosie and I, in a free formation of video attachments and web links and other handy references, built up according to whim as well as theme. Just the teaching itself: a base support of exercises suggested by Rosie, followed by additional thought-shapes from me, layered with ideas manifested by the students, more input from Rosie, the world, me…

The students could upload their work onto an adjacent gallery page, and share the interesting techniques they were discovering, separate and far flung across this collaged world. Also on the plus side, we had a wonderfully wide reach, with students in Ireland, South Africa, France and Germany, as well as all over the UK. All of us were stuck indoors somewhere, and glued, with the PVA of learning, to our screens.

What pleased me in the end, was that concentration and the desire to make analogue creative experiments – did manage to transcend the dreary flatness of the screen, and that between us, there was a very real, if temporary, community built, just by sharing poetry, ideas, work.

One morning between my Tuesdays I walked over to Clapham with my daughter & went to get a takeaway coffee in my mask. ‘You’re my teacher!’ said the barista. ‘Really?!’ I said, ‘but look at you. You’re so… so… three dimensional! Arms legs, everything!’ – ‘you too!’ she rejoindered. Had being online excessively dulled my imagination or fostered it?

Teachers in Hull practice writing & collage exercises ahead of National Poetry Day 2017

Either way, it’s a different way of looking and engaging, and hopefully learning like this will enrich the process, for when we come back to the physical, as well as imaginary, spaces we use and create by making and teaching art.

 

Residencies Round Up: Happening Hull

 

A Pilot Poetry project in Four Hull Schools: May 2017

This year, 2017, National Poetry Day will be launched from Hull, in honour of its status as city of culture. Hull, with its proud abolitionist history, via celebrated son William Wilberforce, is also behind this years NPD theme: Freedom.

I was invited by Susannah Herbert of National Poetry Day, to assemble a team of poets, and work with NPD manager Andrea Reece, to roll out a four day poetry extravaganza in Hull for primary children, ahead of the day itself in late September.

The idea being that the children of Hull could lead the way in showing how freeing it might be to work with poets, and find poetry of their own to explore and document their ideas and feelings, and the world around them. We prioritised getting a wide cross section of voices and styles so that the students would discover that there are all kinds of poets, and many different ways to work creatively with language.

Schools and children up and down the land could then follow suit, and be inspired and empowered by the poetic imagination revealed in Hull!

Ian Reed and Roisha Wardlaw of the Hull 2017 No Limits education programme helped us set this up and with their support we rolled into town.

making collage books at the CPD day

In April we made a trip to meet and work with teachers from the schools that had elected to take part. Andrea and I spent a great day with them where they found themselves unselfconsciously writing poems, playing a game of poetry lucky dip, practicing choosing and reading newly discovered poets work aloud to each other, and arranging image and text together in their own spontaneously evolving artists’ books.

Before the teachers workshops we had a day to look around Hull, meet some young artists and poets from an organisation called Ground and also go to a book launch at the university where we met tutors and students of creative writing, and heard two poets read, one of whom, Sarah Stutt, seemed like a good fit for our schools programme, so we invited her to join us.

Two weeks later Andrea and I returned with our crack team of poets, Kate Fox, Chris McCabe, Shazea Quraishi and Joseph Coelho, and my flag like timetable to unfurl each morning beside the kippers of the friendly Victorian Kingston Theatre Hotel.

Some of the teachers/schools had proposed themes for our workshops as well as the overarching theme of freedom, and all had made plans as to how to best deploy each poet to the right year groups and classrooms. It was interesting to note which workshops were most effective, and not surprisingly, there’s a lot to be said for spending a whole morning or a day with pupils on reading and making poems, rather than zipping through at speed. Assemblies were a good way to gather everyone in school under the poetry umbrella, we all did whole school assemblies which were an important part of the week, and allowed for introductions… below I’ll just give a few examples of workshops that I was part of.

At Alderman Cogan School, year 5 were looking at the Vikings and Anglo Saxons, and I joined Chris McCabe who had devised an inspired class on sound poetry, playing the children recordings of Old English, Dada poetry, and Edwin Morgan reading his Loch Ness Monster’s Song. (‘Yes, you are definitely allowed to laugh!’) Everyone had a great inventive time making up a script for Beowulf and Grendel in contrasting modern English and monster sound poetry… this scroll was made by a girl called Georgie after school, she came and showed me the following day, what a star.

Another brilliant child made a whole sound poem book, also in his own time, and not only came to show me, but read from it with real flair at the childrens public poetry performance held in Hulls Jubilee Hall on the Friday.

It felt like poetry luxury for me to work for three whole hours with one class at Saint Mary Queen of Martyrs. Year 5 wrote Oulipian anagram poems and made their own books. First we looked at all the words we could get from SAINT MARY QUEEN OF MARTYRS, and pooled our findings on the whiteboard. The students discovered rafts, serenity, men, mountains, nutters, mum, sun, rain, tents, roses, a sister… and much more.

I then taught them how to make a little foldy book from an A4 piece of paper, and we each made one, using precise folding and crisp, black paper. Black pages are hard to write on, so we had to use collage papers and light coloured pencils to make our words appear. I was blown away by the concentration, the sheer enjoyment of the challenge, the use of colour and language, and also the enthusiasm of the teacher, Mr Herman, who expected wonderful work from his class, and got it!

This double page spread seemed to offer profound insight on the domestic scene! It definitely struck a chord with me.

My Wednesday was insanely busy running six sessions with foundation stage at AC school; a high spot was the spontaneous creation of a commemorative frieze poem with a Reception class to celebrate the bike/scooter ride they’d just completed before my appearance.

When I asked them to tell me how proud they were, how sweaty they got, how tired – they came up with original similes that were pure poetry. I wrote 15 of these out in my swirly ink calligraphy on long strips of paper, and ran these underneath wider strips, on which I’d asked the children to draw self portraits on the vehicles they’d ridden.

Examples of what the children told me: “as sweaty as the sun,” “as tired as a tired horse,” “as proud as a bee that had stung 109 people and then died,” and a wonderful image from a boy who hadn’t found a bike or scooter, but had done the circuit on his legs: “I want to go to sleep as cosy as a basket of eggs.” For the full effect please imagine that distinct Hull accent shaping the words. I was totally charmed.

With the smiling help of their teacher, Ms Hodgeson, we displayed the poem as a frieze all the way round the walls, recreating that cycling round the playground look for indoors.

Shazea, Joseph, Chris, Sarah and Kate all told me great stories: of young poets finding their voices, children that normally avoided writing suddenly joining in, and other inestimably valuable responses. Us poets really enjoyed having colleagues for the week, and getting to read as well as eat together, and compare notes about workshops, school dinners and POETRY! Our reading in town on the Tuesday night at The Kardomah was a blast, we were joined by Joe Hakim, a Hull poet, and others who contributed via the open mic slot. One of the teachers who’d been most involved and helpful with our visit, Mike Goode, is also a poet, he got up and read  that night, inspiring.

What an intense week: thinking, planning, teaching, reading, listening, performing. It seemed like everyone we met was excited to be a part of this, and to consider poetry as a vital part of everyday life. As this was now over a month ago I’m hoping that the ideas are still filtering through the minds of the children we met and wrote with… I know they’ll be buzzing around my head on a permanent basis now!

Thanks for having us, fab unforgettable Hull!

 

l to r: Sarah Stutt, Joe Hakim, Chris McCabe, me, Mathias Tornvig, Joseph Coelho, Kate Fox, Shazea Quraishi