You’re invited to a place at our table
We’re really excited that, this week, a brand new exhibition of poetry created by people at our Cornerstone and Morning Star services is launching. It will be live at HOME in Manchester city centre until December and we’d love you to go along, take a look, and let us know what you think.
Arts Council England funded the project, which was devised by poet Phil Davenport, who ran morning and afternoon poetry workshops at Cornerstone for a year; the poster poems were co-created with artist Christine Johnson and some additional workshops took place at Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Poetry Library.
Here, Phil Davenport, the poet who has worked with the people accessing our services to put together the poems that are on display, explains more…
Can you tell us a bit about you and your background please?
I’m a poet who likes to experiment with what we think a poem can be, and who can write it.
For the last 20 years I’ve written poems in collaboration with people who tend to be pushed to the edge of society, or are ignored — for instance people affected by homelessness, refugees, older people, including holocaust survivors, and others. By working together people get a chance to express themselves and we can help these stories to be heard.
I like poems that happen off the traditional page, so visual poems (like posters that are displayed in this exhibition) and sound poems are things I dip into a lot. In the ‘A Place at the Table’ project we’re ushering in visuals alongside the verbals.
What inspired you about this project and made you want to get involved?
People accessing Caritas services have extraordinary stories to tell.
Some people are struggling and it’s extremely moving to hear about their lives, other people are here because they simply want to be part of a group with a big heart, others again want to help their community.
Quite often there is a mix of all those things in one individual, and it’s energising to be around people with such intense engagement in life. I also feel strongly that our society has become unbalanced, unjust, and we need to share better — everyone has something to offer and everyone has a place at the table. Hence the title of this project.
What is involved?
Every Wednesday I come in for the morning breakfast and sit down one-to-one with people who’re currently experiencing homelessness and we chat about what’s going on for them. I make notes as we talk, then read them back and together we edit those words into a poem.
These can be quite difficult experiences, but we also talk about nice stuff, like the ingredients of a perfect breakfast. Then in the afternoon I run a formal poetry group with a mix of people from the local community and from the Morning Star accommodation next door. Those sessions concentrate on celebrating food, marking the seasons, warmth and storms. It’s a brilliantly funny group and we often end up in hoots of laughter.
As we work on poems in a more traditional way, the artist Christine Johnson is developing visual ideas for the poems with the group, so we have a sequence of large poster-poems which are being exhibited at HOME gallery from now until December.
What are you hoping the project will achieve?
I hope we’ll bring people together, through creative making, to have a good time, to go on an exploration of their deeper selves and to share with those around them.
There’s a lot of compassion and understanding shown in these workshops, a lot of kindness. And the pieces are tremendously touching, especially when they’re read together. They make a portrait of this community that’s unusual, quirky, full of connection but also suffused with anger and strength and determination for change.
What are you most looking forward to?
I look forward to each day I’m doing this! I never know how it’ll turn turn out, people are infinitely mysterious and full of possibilities.
Why do you think activities like this are important as part of the work we do alongside people at Cornerstone and other Caritas services?
Art humanises us, wherever and whoever we are. By making creative work together we learn to listen to ourselves and the people we share time with — and then reflect those insights back to one another. Poetry and art is profoundly helpful if you’re in a difficult moment — that’s often why artists and writers do it in the first place. People start to realise their strengths and the shared struggles they’re undergoing. There’s a lot of humour and also some breakthroughs in our encounters. One person has stopped drinking so he can come to the sessions. Another has begun to speak much more openly, because the doors to communication are opened by self-expression.
But more widely, I think it’s important to value the experiences evoked in the poems and artworks and to question what’s being asked of the reader. Why are 12 million fellow citizens in the UK going hungry? Why is this suffering occurring? What part does each and every one of us play in this story that’s unfolding around us?
Visit the exhibition at HOME and do let us know what you think about the poems. We’d love to hear from you.