I'd like to tell my story so I can understand it

Christian, by Christian, Jimi and others book detail. The Homeless Library exhibition, Poetry Library, The Southbank, London

The Homeless Library contains many interviews with people who are currently homeless or vulnerably housed; it also includes conversations with support workers. In the following two-part interview, Katie who is a support worker at The Booth Centre talks first about her own life journey to the Booth Centre, then a day in the life at The Booth.

The Homeless Library is a project devised by arthur+martha to document the heritage of homelessness using interviews, artworks, poetry.  An exhibition of handmade books from the Library is open to the public at The Southbank, London until 18 September - the following interview is illustrated with photos taken at the exhibition. A  free ebook The Homeless Library can be downloaded here.

This project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Part 1

Katie:

Going right back, my first contact with homelessness was on the morning walk to uni in Newcastle. I used to chat with the guy selling The Big Issue, a really sound guy. We would talk about everything - not about being homeless, it's not what defines you is it? I was brought up to value all people. I was lucky enough to have a roof and a strong family. Used to buy the magazine it was really good and I wanted to work there. I was already a bit of a lefty and was fascinated. 

When I left uni I was in limbo, crashed at my parents feeling like a child. Then I came to visit a friend in Manchester and I loved the city, the welcome, the vibe, the edginess. If something's edgy that's not necessarily a negative. Manchester's got plenty of edgy, in fact it's got pockets of all the UK rolled into one, it's earthy and creative, it's a melt. The segregation's not as apparent as, say, London or Leeds. People welcome you, it's big enough to have energy but small enough that you see the same faces. The industrial background increases the diversity. If everyone's the same there won't be edginess, you're in a comfort zone and how are you going to be challenged?

This centre (The Booth Centre) keeps people on their toes, keeps them trying new things. The Booth for me contains all the paths I've gone down in the third sector, the charitable sector. All the roads led here. First, I worked at The Big Issue saw an ad and knew I'd get the job, it was so right for me. The journey started. 

Then I worked at Prince's Trust, then supported housing for 9 years. Young people, intense, that was a baptism by fire. A 24 hour housing project with 20 young people who'd been asked to leave their family homes. Mostly because of relationship breakdown. Some youth offending, mostly breakdown with parental relationships. It was an eye-opener. Some surreal situations came out of all that, and some joyful. I knew I had to move on.

I knew about The Booth from all this work I was doing, heard about it, so there was already a bit of connection. I took a 4 month break from work and saw the job here advertised and thought that's for me, it just felt right.

I came here on a taster morning. Chatted to a lot of people inside, then they said go into the garden. I went out into the garden and had some conversations. Someone told me, "It's a test, they only put you out here because we are the most chaotic people here and they wanted to see how you got on." People here are often more clued up than many of the organisers. It's the same with mental health, the so-called patients will know more about medicine and symptoms than the professionals. On that first day someone told me "I would be dead if it wasn't for this place" - and I thought I want to be part of this.

WISDOM AND TRANQUILLITY: re-labelled pharmaceuticals, made by various participants. The Homeless Library exhibition, The Southbank, London

This centre is for the people, look around, they're choosing the art on the walls, they're painting the walls, they're volunteering. That's why it's such an emotional place, they've committed to it. Some days you go home and you're frazzled firefighting and you've heard some awful stories. It's like being in a volatile relationship, moments of joy and heart-tearing moments. People feel comfortable here, so they'll be open and honest. You will hear things that you might not in another place like supported housing. Children and young people need to feel safe and loved. But people here have been so excluded from so many places they don't need too many rules.

Squaddy Dave, by "Riff Raff", book detail. The Homeless Library exhibition, Poetry Library, The Southbank, London until 18 September

Interviewed by Phil Davenport at The Booth Centre Aug 2015

         

LOVESHIP: The Homeless Library at the Festival of Love

FRIENDSHIP BECOMES / HEARTSHIP BECOMES / 

COMPANIONSHIP BECOMES / LOVESHIP by Peter Twigg

The Homeless Library at the Southbank, 2016

The Homeless Library had its public launch on 11 July, at the Poetry Library, Southbank in London. I have rarely been at an art event where so much goodwill shone on so many faces. The exhibition is part of the Southbank Festival of Love and it felt to me that our launch lived up to the name. 

Five participants in the project came to send their books, poems, interviews and artworks out into the world. And an audience of 70 well-wishers arrived for the event, which included a public workshop to demonstrate how the books and poems were made.

Jack Quashie reading at the Southbank

We gave a short tour around the exhibition in which different participants spoke about their work, the making and the meaning of it. There were some tears and a lot of banter too. There were also some heartrending moments. Jack Quashie read a short interview extract about walking for ten days across desert as a refugee and the crowded room went silent:

"When you are walking on sand, you cannot lie down and go to sleep. Even if you are tired, you cannot sleep. The sand moves like waves on water, if you lie down and sleep it will bury you. When people died we did not dig graves for them, we left them on the sand and it covered them. Sometimes the skeletons come back up again. And then they sink under the sand once more. I try not to think about it."

We ended our tour with a reading of the poem above, by Peter Twigg. It is a sweet little piece about human connection and Peter read it with such warmth that I think he charmed every listener.

Peter Twigg and Christine Hough mid-workshop

Phil Barraclough (in orange coat) explains his work, to Lorraine Mariner far right and others

We then ran a workshop for an hour or so in which our participants shared their skills, encouraging the audience to become makers. It was a big pleasure to be with such a mixed group of all ages and all backgrounds and make work together, peacefully. To sit around a table together while making poems, writing, art, is an activity that has been part of my entire life. When I was a child my mother would sit myself and brothers and my sister around the kitchen table with paint, paper and bits of cardboard to keep us amused and to keep an eye on us. While we sat around that table the arguments would stop, the worries would stop, and a kind of busy calm would descend on us.

The same magic occurred again at the Southbank on that July afternoon. Maybe it was because our band of bookmakers have now become so confident that they happily encourage others. Or because the Library staff and the audience were open-hearted and keen to join with us. Or maybe it was because both my mum, Shirley, and Lois' mum, Pat, had come to the launch and were lending extra support. For a short time, I felt I'd come full circle and had arrived home.

Poem on pillar by Paddy; booklets on bookcase various participants

On behalf of all the Homeless Library team, we would like to thank the staff at The Saison Poetry Library, Southbank for their extraordinary kindness and support. We would particularly like to acknowledge the help of Chris McCabe, Lorraine Mariner and Pascal O'Laughlin for their skill and enthusiasm. It means a great deal.

The Homeless Library is on exhibition at The Poetry Library, Southbank until 18 September 2016. This project is supported by The Heritage Lottery Fund.

Photographs by Julia Grime, 2016

Book by audience member made as a 'reply' to the exhibition during the workshop

UNIQUE HOMELESS LIBRARY EXHIBITION TO OPEN IN PARLIAMENT

Homeless people in Greater Manchester and Stockport have handmade the first history of British homelessness, which will debut at the Houses of Parliament next week.

Ann Coffey, MP for Stockport, and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults, will open the exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall of the House of Commons at 3pm on May 24, 2016. The exhibition will be on display in Parliament for the rest of the week and then go on to public exhibition at the Southbank Festival of Love, 9 July-18 September and will tour venues in NW England. 

The Homeless Library has been made by local homeless people and opens up previously untold stories of the lives of homeless people through interviews, artworks, poems and handmade books. This unique and unprecedented history of British homelessness has been devised by arts organisation arthur+martha, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Ms Coffey said: 

"This project is both a piece of history and an art piece. I don't think I've ever come across anything like it before. It's beautiful. These are fascinating stories that need to be heard. Being heard is something that everybody needs, it makes us a society. Maybe these books are something we can all learn from - and maybe we can help the storytellers." 

Many homeless people live and die as ‘invisibles’. When they die their very existence sometimes leaves no mark. This project opens up an untold chronicle, that exists off the pages of official history books.

Instead, it is a history based on conversations: people's descriptions of their own lives, as told by contemporary homeless people and also older people who witnessed homelessness from the 1930s onwards. Along with interviews, there are artworks and poems. Many people involved found that these discussions and making the artworks and poems were a transformative experience.

Each book in the Library is handmade - often recycling secondhand books, which were customised and handwritten. Recycled secondhand books make the point that homeless history has been crowded out by other voices.

The Homeless Library is supported by The Heritage Lottery Fund and partnered with The Booth Centre, The Wellspring, and Bury Art Museum. Alongside photos of the handwritten books, you can read the interviews at The Homeless Library page on Facebook and blogspot

Daydreaming on the night-shift

To shut eyes
Past memories that have been awoke
To perceive
Encounters in
The most inaccessible regions
Music from my past
Of the seen and never-seen.

Anonymous


Philip writes:

A downpour of icy rain and ankle deep puddles mark the first session of the year for The Homeless Library. I arrive at the Booth Centre soaked through, shivering and sneezing. I have been in the rain for approximately one hour. Many of the people around me drinking cups of steaming tea or hunched over baked beans on toast have been out all night for many, many nights.  They blink themselves into activity in the bright lights and noise of the canteen.

Phil and Paddy

The workshop starts. This is the beginning of the new term as it were. The plan for today is to be playful and gentle. Lois has brought in a set of postcards for collaging, which people take great delight in subverting, tweaking and generally messing with. We start things in as light a way as we can at the beginning of a run of workshops. Humour is preferable to heaviness and optimism beats the cynical. Our helpers Juliet and Christine are amazing cheerleaders for the upbeat.

I ask people to write about their dreams. Just a line or two. These are then cut up put into lines, put in a hat and taken out one by one to be read as a surrealist poem. It's a nice party trick and a rich if well-worn technique to bring to creative writing. It also produces some genuinely lovely lines - and some juxtapositions so outrageous they make people gasp. We try another tack. I invite people to write a description of a recurring dream down one half of a piece of paper and a Salvador Dali quote down the other half. Dali's words intertwine with their own; it's a potent cocktail.

These little poetic pieces are rewritten onto the back of the collage postcards. A wish you were here card from the subconscious.

As with many of our sessions the morning passes in a rush and a push. The people involved are sometimes in a very volatile state. There's a lot of goodnatured banter but also some more destructive undercurrents. And some sad glimpses. One person I was talking to mentioned that their recurring dream was of being raped by their father over and over again, as they had been during their childhood.

Reading the poems later as I type them up for our records, I am struck by the melancholy that so many of them contain.


From the top of the mountain to the bottom of the sea thru the snow and thru the wind and thru the dust all-a all-a lone lone - a boat, no one on it...

"Paddy"


In amongst the word play and phantasmagoria are little snapshots of people trying to make sense of their lives, looking for a path to acceptance. But how do you make sense of your life story when the scriptwriter is so harsh?


Daydreaming on the night shift
Forgetting all the moaning of the morning
That mushroomed into the afternoon
Still not believing in the evening.

"Riff Raff"

The Homeless Library project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

Safe arrivals

Detail from the quilt Bombers Moon

Phil writes:

Most of the people we have met in 2015 are on journeys. A lot of the homeless people we've talked to are searching for solutions, for insight, for comfort. Many are on the move, sofa-surfing, living in temporary accommodation, or on the streets. I don't think that I have ever met so many people genuinely on a quest for knowledge as I have in the homeless community. The homeless centres we've worked at, The Wellspring and The Booth Centre, are more full of questions than any university. 

It's been a year of big journeys for us too. Some of the journeys have been external - out into the world - some of them have been artistic, and some of them inner journeys. We've just travelled to Lithuania, setting up a new project faraway. Artistically we are stretching as well - our quilts are a meeting of the arts of textile and text - poems in stitched pages, they are a wide-open horizon to us. The Homeless Library has been an even bigger artistic stretch, working with homeless people to inscribe their own lived history into reclaimed books. 

The inner, personal, journey for myself has been to try to accept the death of my father, Ellis. For him, arthur+martha was a source of pleasure, curiosity, sadness - he continually asked about our sessions and the people we met. We talked about arthur+martha right up until his death. As an old soldier he was especially touched by the interviews with another ex-soldier, Warren, for The Homeless Library. When we would sa goodbye at the end of one of our many epic phone conversations he'd sign off with a cheery: "Travel hopefully." 

To everyone we've met and worked with this year - especially people who are on a hard road - we wish you safe arrivals. 

WE DON'T FEEL SAFE

'The Ark' homeless camp (now demolished) Manchester 2015

Our work is always an experiment, like any creative making. That means we never quite know where an idea will lead. For instance, a recent discussion about soup kitchens turned into a description of homelessness as a food-chain, with predators, hunting packs and people as prey.

I'd had a vague idea about a human food-chain previously; the interviewee below picked up on this and made it into a frame for his own experience. Let's be clear, this is only one way of seeing the homeless community, and there are probably as many visions of the life as there are people experiencing it. But - as this interviewee asks - how can we see through many eyes at once - and how do we inhabit our own truth? 

Street protestor in Manchester 2015

Anonymous:

You've spoke to all these homeless people and you've got all this information but it doesn't make any sense to you, you don't know what it means. That's because you can't know. You haven't lived it...

This life, it's a food chain. I've been on all stages of it. You can be in any of these stages at any time. You gotta know who you are and what you want, or someone will try to take you over. I've been a young shark, I've been a drinker, I've been vulnerable.

First you've got sharks. You've got the loan sharks and the drug sharks. You'll never meet the main shark, he has his thousands around him. You're only meeting the young sharks, the baby sharks. 

The sharks try to drag you back in to the life. They'll give you a taster and then you'll learn how to sell. Selling to others so that you can afford to buy your own. Sharks get into the pride of women to get them onto drugs, then the girl's on the street. The sharks get into people to get them feeling the lowest of the lowest. Then they're vulnerable, then get them earning for their drugs or drink. Even when you're prostituting everything that you are they'll take their 50% and they'll never let you go. If they ever give you a little, you owe them forever.

I was a little shark, but the Christian side of me was stronger. A footman. The footman, I call them "footstool", only has so many drug bags on them at a time. The footstool goes out with a few bags only. If he knows he'll get done by the drug squad he'll try to pass the bags to another footstool. If they get frisked for 20 bags that's a lot of money, they'll probably only have three or four.

Sharks. They're the powerful, the manipulators. You could say that the Council are also sharks. You could say that some who offer help are pulling us back in. They'll pull you back in because they want to be in control of your life. Help you and get you depending on them. I take a little bit of help but put my own into it too. People get dependent on help just like drugs cos they don't have their own mind.

Next down you've got the strong ones and the clever. They're the ones who want to get through, want to get out, get into different stuff. Sometimes they're clever enough. Sometimes they're too strong, too violent. Dog eat dog. They're powerful but not as powerful as a shark. The groups of users and drinkers are in there - "it's my turn to buy now, yours later." Social pressure. Drinkers often drink because they're in a pack and can't get out of it. They're usually after money, they're feeding for it. Others buy for you and then you for them. It'll always come round to your turn to pay and if you haven't got money you're gonna get hit, beat up.

The police are on this level but leave it alone mostly. If you're not drinking or digging (using drugs) on the street they won't get involved. Sometimes coppers have kicked me around and stuff but they won't really get involved with the homeless. Move you on and that's it. Sometimes they even help you.

You also get the political groups. They manipulate too. What do I think of the homeless protests? We were doing it ten years ago. The Council claimed there were only 23 homeless people in Manchester. So five of us got 4500 homeless people marching. The Council don't want to know the numbers, they don't want the numbers known. The number of people on that march went into a lost file...

Last, at the bottom, are the vulnerable. They are the food. They've got mental health issues. And they are the girls on the street, they've gotta do it for the habit. Prostitute themselves to pay for the drugs, do whatever they have to, you know what I'm saying. Maybe they suffer most.

Bad things happen on the street, some people go crazy. I've had 15 years on the street and that 15 years is in my head. I'm in a flat but I have bad dreams. I don't sleep in the bed even now. Still get flashbacks, still processing it all. I've talked to so many people I've not just got my own problems, I've also got other people's problems in my head. Seen people dying, friends, it does get into your head. I used to think other people were more important than me, it made me feel good to help them, to put them first. Now I've learned to put myself first...

Now, I'm stepping back from it all. I'm putting your mind in the frame of it.

(Interview with Phil at The Wellspring 27 October)

Chalked pavement text, Manchester 2015

The Homeless Library is the first ever attempt to write a history of homelessness in Britain. It includes not only individual testimonies, but also poetry and art, giving it a shape like no other.

The Homeless Library project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The Red Door

For the project The Homeless Library we are very lucky to be working with artist Jeni McConnell. The following is her account of a session together.

Early in September I spent a day working with Lois, one half of arthur+martha on the Homeless Library project.  We were in Bury at the Red Door Drop In centre, part of St Joseph's Catholic Church.

The day began with unpacking my book making goodies from my trolley and boxes. Lois had a similar stash - we must have looked quite curious to the people in the centre when we first arrived - they'd seen Lois before of course, and Philip, but not me - or the huge rolls of book binding cloth I was carting around with me.

Artist book collaboration Justin and Jeni for The Homeless Library. 

The centre was bright and full of chatter and busy activity, we sat in the main space, quite a small room in which it seemed most things happened.  Quite a few people busied themselves in and out, it was a beautiful dry day, with the sun peeping through the white (and some darkening) clouds.

Lois and I sat inside at the central multi-purpose table so we could have a look and chat through some of the work made, and to do our own quick skills sharing session with some quick book making techniques.

There are many stories that have been shared so far in the project, some as poetry, some hand written, some typed.  These have been intertwined within the folded pages of books, print work and other papery structures produced in earlier workshops.  There is an excitement building about this project, I'm keen to see how it unfolds along the rest of the way, and to read more of the stories too.

For this session I took some of the already printed stories to explore book ideas with. Reading through any of the texts I find there are certain words that stand out - almost as if I was going through with a highlight pen - they needed to be said a little clearer and I played with ways of doing this.

Justin came to join me, he'd been working with Lois in an earlier session and had some of his own words already written, but first he helped me work through the idea with the bits I had. We shared thoughts and ideas as we went along.  I do love the process of sharing something I can do with others, it's such a pleasure to see anyone's confidence grow as they pick up a new technique and working with Justin was just that.

We cut a story into thin same sized sections, there was an odd pleasure in it dividing the story so evenly and we cut the same sized pieces of tracing paper to use together. Justin read through the story and underlined words he felt were important, that needed highlighting, that needed to be shared in a more visible way.  There were cut out and stuck onto the tracing paper as a separate layer.

Conversations drifted on the air, "I found someone in me lounge this morning, I had to get out before I punched him. Why would someone be in my lounge? I came here".

Justin and I talked about reading other people's stories, about whether it was easy to find the right words to cut out, to in some way raise the status of.  We agreed it was - things just pop up and feel important.

As he reads he intermittently tells me stories of his Mum and his twin sister, who has recently died.  His Mum was a child-minder, but she also showed other people how to child-mind too; she shared her skills with others. He smiled as he explained they always had old cardboard, empty loo rolls and used tubs ready to make things, she was always making stuff with him. He seems to be really connected back to that time, he talks quite fast, an excitement about the memory perhaps.

Then, the now of the task in hand stops him short, "I need to concentrate, I'll shut up". We glue and cut in silence.

My ears again become aware of the others in the room, a tiny front room type space, a sort of flat with a living and dining area, as well as a kitchen. All one space, with a busy washing machine in too.  Here folks sit and natter, watch TV, get help and advice from the staff.

I know I smell, I can't have a bath
I'm not right, I'm not with it
It's these tablets ...

We've cut out all the words and they are glued on to the tracing paper. I'm pleased with the result and Justin thinks it's a good idea too; we carry on.  He makes the decisions on cover and inner paper we can use and we being to make the book covers.  Making holes is hard, we could do with a hammer but it's not safe to have one so we sort of struggle along, but enjoy the challenge of a little bit of making do too.

After lunch Justin starts to work on his own text, cutting it into sections to go with his story.  We talk about plans for his book and we work together on the table for quite a while, until it's time for me to go.  His book isn't quite finished, but he is clear with what he needs to do and I leave him all the materials he needs and tools he can keep too.

He promises to finish his book; I hope he manages it!

On the road? or life on the streets?

--> I met Billy at The Red Door, Bury for the project 'The Homeless Library'. Here he drawers the distinction between people 'on the streets' and people on the road:

Some people on the streets, some on the road. Different ways of surviving. I’m just re-building my empire. Not in one town, I’ve moved from 16 years old, up and down the country. Up here aged 16, then back down South aged 17, up and down hitch-hiking since.

Salvation Army Hostels, or use whatever you have around- some tarpaulin, a sheet of cardboard, you can get away with sleeping in your clothes in the summer. I’ve always worked, nothing industrious, all sorts. You could travel across Europe, you could go down to Kent now to pick the apples, missed the strawberries.

Travelling Showmen, that’s part of my family. I’ve got a trailer right now. Had a house in the past, but I’ve come back to the road. Re-building my empire.

Detail of artist book, (Salvation) made in collaboration for the project 'The Homeless Library.'

The Homeless Library project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund

Poverty and the great sheep dog trial

It's been a strange week of highs and lows.

We started the week with The Homeless Library saying our goodbyes at The Red Door, Bury- (a homeless day centre) during that day writing down a brutally honest account of a women who as a 15 year old was let down by the authorities, falling through the cracks and ending up leading a life of prostitution and drug taking. A tragic story, re-counted through tears, a story that could be repeated up and down the country by other men and women.

I spent Wednesday at The Farming Life Centre with The Country Craft Group for Stitching the Wars,  a delightful afternoon spent stitching, drinking tea and discussing poverty associated with the war- with the distance of time, making reminiscences of hard times full of colour and humour.

Thursday was at Blythe House Hospice, a place on the first impression that could be so sad, but in reality is warm and full of life... fantastic reminiscence and stitching for Stitching the Wars...

On Friday we secured a fantastic exhibition venue for our quilt 'A Bomber's Moon' more on that soon. On Saturday we found out we have been awarded a significant grant for a new project- more or on that soon...

A Bombers Moon- detail.

Before I started Stitching the Wars, I admit much of my knowledge about farming was gained from The Archers. Working with The Farming Life Centre has been an amazing opportunity to meet and discuss life on the land with farmers who have worked the land for the last 100 years. Yesterday it was the Hayfield Country Show and Sheep Dog Trials where I exhibited the quilt 'A Bombers Moon', and worked on the new quilt for Stitching the Wars. The quilt got a great reception, with many positive comments- it's such a tactile piece- I watched as people made a bee-line to come an hold and touch the artwork (I still get nervous showing such a piece- want to do justice to the people who have contributed to the project and to all the organisations who have supported the project)  On the face of it life in the country looked as it does in the adverts, green and pleasant and for many people it is, however scratch the surface and you find a different reality. There are farmers who are doing well, but many are on the bread line, many going under. I spoke to one women, a sheep farmer who explained incredibly tight margins they work to, (like so many dairy farmers in the UK) She's just had to get another overdraft to tide them over till the income trickles in from sales of the wool. She was still smiling. A day out meeting friends, sharing a story and eating the best pies in Derbyshire.

It's Monday and I'm knackered. What will this week bring?

Thanks to the Farming Life Centre for letting me share their stand, exhibit the quilt for the 2 days of the show and promote the project.

A diamond flat

artist book, made by participants at The Wellspring, with artists Jeni McConnell and Lois Blackburn

--> The following short but powerful account describes how very easily any of us could end up homeless:

There had been a computer error, it wasn’t my fault but my housing benefit had stopped going into my landlords account. He threatened me and when the 6 month lease came up he didn’t re-new it. I moved in with my partner, but we argued, silly arguments- I ended up in a real mental state- went out drinking, got so bad I throw myself into the road, ended up in hospital with no-where to live.

That left me on the streets for a couple of days, staying at friends houses, I didn’t feel clean. Then the Council gave me a place - sheltered housing for the homeless, but it was infected with ants and all sorts of horrible things. I hated it so much I went back to my partner. The relationship got quite violent, so it happened- ended up homeless again. So when they gave me this diamond flat, there’s no looking back. I can’t be pushed into something I don’t want to do. I turn 50 next year, excited! Life begins at 50.

Ellie

artist book, made by participants at The Wellspring, with artists Jeni McConnell and Lois Blackburn

Yesterday at The Red Door in Bury I worked with artist Jeni McConnell  making artist books and interviewing people for The Homeless Library. Jeni and I slowly progressing with the challenge of exactly how to integrate the interviews we have gathered into the artist books- it feels important we get this right- to do justice to the power of these stories and the trust people have shown us letting us into their lives.

The Homeless Library is a project devised by arthur+martha to document the heritage of homelessness using interviews, artworks, poetry. It is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

In THE DARK WOULD - The Verb BBC Radio 3 at 10pm, 19 April

'THE SECRET' by Márton Koppány. Courtesy of the artist.

THE DARK WOULD language art anthology will feature on BBC Radio 3 literary discussion programme The Verb this evening Friday 19 April, 10pm.  The programme can be accessed as an online broadcast, or later as a podcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnsf

Also featured on this edition of The Verb are Serafina Steer, Sheila Heti and Steven Hall.

THE DARK WOULD published by Apple Pie Editions can be purchased  from distributor Knives Forks & Spoons at http://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/


Philip writes:

It's a strange, tumbling and delight-ish thing, a conversation with Ian McMillan. Ian is the presenter for BBC Radio 3 literary discussion programme The Verb. I first met him at a creative writing session in The Big Issue office, which was gleeful, haphazard and yet sharp-focussed; the second time was yesterday at the big Beeb studio in Mediacity, Salford for a discussion about THE DARK WOULD, the anthology of 'language art' I've been compiling over the last two years.

THE DARK WOULD brings together some of the many outpourings of contemporary text art and poetry practice that cross and eddy through the world right now. From 'outsidered' art (which of is one of the mainsprings of the work of arthur+martha) to Conceptual Poetries and Arts, Text Art, Vispo, Concrete Poetry et al, etc, it's a big rush of invitees. Trying to represent them all  adequately in galloping McMillan-style on a radio magazine programme would've been impossible - and risked severe oxygen deficiency. Instead, we talked through two pieces in greater detail, hoping that they might be ambassadors for the whole collection, which spans 300 pages in the paper volume and over 1000 pages in the virtual Volume 2.

The first to be considered was the cover of Volume 1, a piece titled 'THE SECRET' by Márton Koppány. This visual poem refers, very elusively, to Márton's childhood home in Budapest, and the presence of the holocaust (sometimes spoken, sometimes un-) within it. Márton's parents were both concentration camp survivors; others of his relatives didn't survive. This piece is extraordinarily elegant and spare, a poem comprised of brackets only. It says a great deal, it seems to me, about the limitations of language and of passing on experience, without employing words. 'THE SECRET' was exhibited in a railway goods wagon as part of the exhbition 'a map of you' which I curated at Bury Text Festival 2011. The piece employs the font style of old railway signage and that together with its historical context meant that it seemed best framed by the doorway of a rail truck - recalling people bullied and bundled into goods wagons and cattle trucks, sent to their deaths. Looking at the cover of the book, I'm reminded of the holocaust survivors Lois and I met and worked with in Manchester. On the front cover of this book, 'THE SECRET' suggests other things too - it is perhaps a path, an opening into a wood.

The second work we discussed was Richard Long's 'ONE HOUR, A SIXTY MINUTE CIRCLE WALK ON DARTMOOR 1984'. This is a circular text piece, sixty words, written while Long made the walk across Dartmoor: 'JUMP SHADOW GRASS ICE SCUFF SOFT BLUE BREATHE...' It is a clock made out of words. Like much of Long's work it combines beautiful starkness with an after-echoing complexity. The writer Steven Hall was also interviewed on the show and, when he saw the book, was delighted to discover Long's work. I invited him to read the piece on air. It's a wonderful reading, although of course it is NOT the piece Richard Long made; in some way it's a breaking of it. By recasting it as a reading, we lose the component that makes this work vital - the use of space - which connects it to the circles of the globe and time. But occasionally we have to break apart a mechanism in order to understand it; having heard it, I re-appreciated what a thing it is, back on the page. Richard called me to discuss his work in the anthology and suggested a companion piece for this one in Volume 2 (our virtual volume). This was also a circular work, made in 2011 in South Africa. Moving between the two is a movement from paper to virtual pages and through Richard's ageing process - 1984-2011. It speaks to the broader theme of the anthology which is mortality - having a body, then not having a body.

These notes are written before The Verb is broadcast this evening; I wanted to acknowledge the two 'ambassador' pieces, but also the limitations of such discussion for a large book. THE DARK WOULD contains a wealth of remarkable works, essays, interviews - people, in fact.

People who are often overlooked in such summings up are the outsiders. Which is where I came into this piece, meeting Ian at a poetry workshop for homeless people. I'm proud to say that the arthur+martha project 'the warm/&/the cold', a large communal textwork made by homeless people as a quilt, is featured in THE DARK WOULD; as is a piece from our Spaghetti Maze project with people who have a dementia diagnosis.

I'll end by giving a list of contributors' names. And even this feels incomplete...

Jerry Rothenberg, Rosmarie Waldrop, Marvin Sackner, Tom Phillips, Nja Mahdaoui, Tom Raworth, Ruth Sackner, Paula Claire, Susan Hiller, Robert Grenier, Ed Baker, Lawrence Weiner, John M Bennett, Kay Rosen, Allen Fisher, Richard Long, Ron Silliman, Richard Wentworth, Kevin Austin, Maria Chevska, Alan Halsey, Ken Edwards, Mike Basinski, Charles Bernstein, Jenny Holzer, Hainer Wörmann, Tony Lopez, Fiona Templeton, Maggie O’Sullivan, Geraldine Monk, Márton Koppány, David Annwn, John Plowman, Jesse Glass, Jurgen Olbrich, Liz Collini, Robert Sheppard, Patricia Farrell, Fernando Aguiar, Shirin Neshat, Penelope Umbrico, Gregory Vincent St Thomasino, Anne Charnock, Steve Waling, Robert Fitterman, Michalis Pichler, David Austen, Keiichi Nakamura, Shaun Pickard, Geof Huth, Tony Trehy, Wayne Clements, Peter Jaeger, Elena Rivera, Kenny Goldsmith, Harald Stoffers, Erica Baum, Nick Blinko, Philip Terry, Caroline Bergvall, Carol Watts, George Widener, Philip Davenport, Nico Vassilakis, Monica Biagioli, Tacita Dean, Jeff Hilson, Alec Finlay, Christian Bök, Fiona Banner , Nigel Wood, Satu Kaikkonen, Simon Patterson, Dave Griffiths, Nayda Collazo Llorens, Vanessa Place, Peter Manson, Andrew Nightingale, Matt Dalby, Steve Miller, Christoph Illing, Sean Burn, Doug Fishbone, arthur+martha, Hung Keung, the gingerbread tree, Brian Reed, Laurence Lane, Tomomo Adachi , Tom Jenks, David Oprava, Scott Thurston, Julian Montague, derek beaulieu, Wang Jun , Mike Chavez-Dawson, Alec Newman, Rick Myers, Andrea Brady, Eric Zboya, Linus Slug, Jeff Grant, Richard Barrett, Christopher Fox, Linus Raudsepp, Carolyn Thompson, Tsang Kin-Wah, Stephen Emmerson, andrew topel, Anatol Knotek, Ola Stahl, Roman Pyrih, Christine Wong Yap, Sarah Sanders, Ying Kwok, Catherine Street, Michael Leong, Sam Winston, angela rawlings, James Davies, Rachel Lois Clapham, Steve Giasson, Amelia Crouch, Aysegul Torzeren, Jeremy Balius, Emily Crichley, Amaranth Borsuk, Ben Gwilliam, Imri Sandström, Sam le Witt, Fakhri El Ghezal, Michael Nardone, Tamarin Norwood, Lucy Harvest Clarke, Jessica Pujol Duran, Holly Pester, Rebecca Cremin, Ryan Ormonde, Nick Thurston, j/j hastain, Bruno Neiva, SJ Fowler, Alex Davies, Helen Hajnoczky, Samantha Y Huang, Anna Frew, Nat Raha, Jo Langton, Ekaterina Samigulina, Emma King, Leanne Bridgewater, Quentin Lannes, and more.

'THE SECRET' by Márton Koppány, in situ at

Text Festival 2011. Photograph by Julia Grime.