Writer-in-Residence: Getting Started
In his talk at Open Eye Gallery at the end of July Michael James O’Brien, in a slightly altered version of Walker Evans, enjoined us to “Spy, eavesdrop, listen. Die knowing something.” It’s a phrase that came back to me hearing John Le Carré read his memoirs on the radio, as he commented on the closeness of spying and writing. I am learning to be a kind of spy in the world of photography, listening as hard as I can, trying to look at the world in a new way, trying to understand what it might be to write the world through light.
Our first event linked to my writing residency at The Open Eye was a Poetry and Protest workshop involving American ‘Occupy’ poet Juliana Spahr, radical poet Sean Bonney and poet Ruby Robinson who were sponsored by the University of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing. (The Centre has also enabled me, as a PhD student, to work with the Open Eye as a writer.)
Poetry and Protest asked participants to engage and respond to Koki Tanaka’s Biennial exhibition which, inspired by Dave Sinclair’s original photographs, revisited the Liverpool school-childrens’ strike (1985).
Participants took about 30-40 minutes to have a good look around at the exhibition and talk to each other in the process. Some listened to the interviews, some also spent time considering the exhibition by Iranian artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian. This includes work that documents the daily lives of three submersibles (Anti-Catty, Princess Rambo and Space-Sheep), works smuggled from Dubai to Liverpool.
Shared responses to the exhibition varied from the doubtful, to the curious to the questioning. What is the value of re-enactment? How do we have a voice? Who decides what was really happening? ‘How stylized the strike became when it became art.’
Juliana Spahr chose not to read from her own work but from African Dawn, the words of Keita Fodeba, the African poet and politician, killed in prison in the Republic of Guinea in 1965. Juliana shared her thoughts on how Fodeba developed a tradition of writing a good poem:
- It must define accurately the historic moment of the struggle
- Mark off the field – be clear about the terrain
- The poem must understand its history, recognize one’s advances and open up the past to the future.
Ruby Robinson, born in 1985 (the same year as the Childrens’ Strike’) talked about the idea of physical protest seeming radical to her, asking Am I a poet? Am I a radical? She also discussed what can happen when we’re “powered over” ~ one response is to comply with the wishes of the powerful, to protect ourselves. What does this do to our identity? Ruby’s interest in trauma is explored in her first collection Every Little Sound, from which she read her astonishing, long poem Apology.
Sean Bonney read work from his recent book, Letters Against the Firmament. He writes in rage against the forces of the establishment, and in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed.
We did more on that afternoon than I can share here but it felt unusual and challenging, sharing poetry and ideas with friends, students, arts professionals and practitioners, poets, mental health campaigners, other interested folk. I’m looking forward to the next time.
—
Further reading:
Sean Bonney Letters Against the Firmament (Enitharmon Press, 2015)
For Sean’s blog: http://abandonedbuildings.blogspot.co.uk
Ruby Robinson Every Little Sound (University of Liverpool Press, 2016)
Juliana Spahr That Winter the Wolf Came (ak press, Commune Editions, 2015)
—
Written by Pauline Rowe, Writer in Residence