As we move through the year, we are getting toward the end of the Calendar which starts A BOOK OF OURS. It’s a long poem written and decorated by many people. Each line is six words long, with the six words the line must tell the story of a significant day of the year. Some people have written about birthdays, funerals, weddings, other people have celebrated the tiny triumphs of the every day. The beginning of the football season in the August bank holiday, the pleasures of ice cream, or flowers, or watching leaves fall in autumn. Or watching a winter sunset, the sun like a golden mechanism.
Woven into the poem are nods to history (the vikings, Julius Caesar, pagan ceremonies) and to the ways we mark the passing of time. The patterns we see in our lives. The cycles and the circles of being alive. And the cycles of homelessness too, the days spent living in permanent turmoil. The punishing life, the moments of escape, the dark angels of addiction.
Friends of darkness
Gather round me
Even in my best of times
They gather round
These demons of mine.
Lawrence McGill
It was one of our productive days, with rapid progress being through the to-do list. Several people talked about being sleep-deprived, pushed to the point where putting words together was simply too difficult. And yet, somehow, the whole room galvanised when the familiar illuminated pages came out and once again our artists and writers dived deep in the midst of making, forgetful of all else. When I said goodbye to Chris he was grinning with delight, even though he had dark smudges of exhaustion under his eyes.
“Bang on!” He said triumphantly. “We nailed it. Perfect we were. The collective is in operation.”
This workshop was part of the project A Book of Ours, creating an illuminated manuscript with people who have experienced homelessness or at risk of. Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The Booth Centre is here to bring about positive change in the lives of people who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, to help them plan for and realise a better future.
arthur+martha 