{"id":480,"date":"2019-10-29T08:52:57","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T08:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=480"},"modified":"2019-10-29T09:20:33","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T09:20:33","slug":"480","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2019\/10\/29\/480\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TO\nTHE BEGINNING AND BACK AGAIN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\ndoes one write the Divine? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

St\nJohn the Divine may have shown us the way in the fourth Gospel with his\ntimeless phrase \u2018In the beginning was the Word\u2019 but how do we write the word in\na world of seeming unbelief or disregard for formal religion and its trappings.\nI went along to the Writing The Divine workshop at St Chad\u2019s Parish Church,\nRochdale on October 19th<\/sup> to find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Rachel Mann<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The\nworkshop was run by Canon Rachel Mann as part of the Rochdale Ideas and\nLiterature Festival, extensively previewed here on our all across the arts blog\nsite, and was hosted by the Vicar, the Rev Mark Coleman, fresh from his arrest\nas part of the Extinction Rebellion demonstration in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canon\nRachel had prepared well and started the workshop, attended by a portentous\nthirteen would-be writers, including three men, not with a prayer but an\nexhortation to see the session as a series of headlines: -offering a sketch for\nwhat might be written in general, and writing in response to the Bible, which\nin itself is a collection of books and NOT an instruction manual. Therefore\nwriting the Divine depends on how we read and reflect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One\ncan use the Bible\u2019s stories as a launching to imaginary ideas, such as Rachel\u2019s\nown poem Joseph<\/em> and the Angel<\/em> where Joseph perhaps is in a room full of carpentry\ntools when the angel comes to ask him \u2018Do you understand?.  His imagining of boyhood \u2018with trees still to\nbe climbed,\u2019 I thought, might beg another question: is the boyhood his own or\nthe Christ\u2019s to come? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspiration\ncan come from the Christian liturgical hours or poems of others and Rachel\nimplored everyone to read widely. She read her own Evensong<\/em> as an example with its introductory quote from 17th<\/sup>\ncentury poet Thomas Traherne: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Love\nis a phoenix that will revive its own ashes\u2019. If God is that love his priest\nsings within \u2018walls of stone\u2019 and the narrator cries \u2018Hurry on\/Witness his\ntruth: \/ Glory is not a word, God is, God is\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One\ncan derive words from the Ministry itself and she read her The Ordinal<\/em> with its reference to ordination and a fitting order of\nthings with the opening lines: \u2018I\u2019ve lived for the feeling of others\/That\u2019s\nlistening of sorts\u2019, and follows with \u2018What have I learnt? That self is\nbitumen, black as tar\u2019.  She  has heard that \u2018self\u2019 give up its final word\nin \u2018coughs and whispers\u2019 in hospitals and nursing homes but remarks on \u2018How\nslowly we flow, we crack with age\u2019. Listening bears its own philosophy and care\ngoes beyond self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel\nMann is the author of five books and the latest is A Kingdom of Love <\/em>(Carcanet 2019). It is the latter she used to\nshape this workshop. She was poet in residence at Manchester Cathedral\n2009-2017 and she is now visiting fellow in creative writing and English at\nManchester Metropolitan University besides being Rector of St Nicholas\u2019s\nchurch, Burnage in Manchester. Her poetry was featured in Carcanet\u2019s New\nPoetries vol. VII in 2018. So she has form in teaching and guiding. Whilst at\nManchester Cathedral she looked at ways of using poetry in church liturgy. She\ndescribes herself as \u2018Theologian, Feminist and Queer Writer\u2019. She admitted she\nwas orientated to verse rather than prose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nvicar of St Chad\u2019s also offers poetry readings at civic events and I once read\nmy modernisation of lines from the Book\nof Lamentations<\/em> here at a commemoration for the Manchester bombing victims.\nRev Mark says he read from the Book of Revelations, or perhaps to give it its\nmore political and Greek name, the Apocalypse, whilst illegally blocking the\nQueen\u2019s Highway on Lambeth Bridge. However there was no politics at all evident\nat the workshop- only the Word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nworkshop word was divided into two with all of us asked to write something from\nthe heart as a first interpretation of the gathering and as an unleashing of\nideas, something which is not to my taste as it brings out the flippant and\nanti-social side of me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Michael Higgins, poet<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless,\nI managed to write a few lines of poetry attempting to portray the ghostly\nhaunting of a resting church and the awkwardness of forcing one\u2019s thoughts amid\na group of strangers. The others seemed to be scribbling furiously, despite a\nfew of them confessing to nerves and shyness and being new to the writing lark.\nI was surprised at their output however and rather than being a collection of\namateurish or hesitant outpourings I found the finished results to be quite\nmature, ranging from a confident inspiration taken from the talk and readings\nand from the Bible and past experiences. And some of it was defiantly written\nin prose! But this was only the beginning and before anyone actually read their\npieces Rachel took us through some more poems, mainly her own, and then put\nphotocopies of them on the table for us to \u2018beg borrow or steal\u2019 ideas or lines\nfrom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel\nadmitted to physical ailments, hospital treatment and a bleakness of outlook\nnot prone to humour and read from her more personal and enigmatic Give It Name, The Risen Life<\/em> andfinally A<\/em> Lesson In Evolution<\/em>\nwhere the use of seaweed to heal abdominal wounds brings to mind that \u2018All life\nwas water once\/ Perhaps I\u2019ll travel home,\/Relearn the tricks of fins, gill and\nscale\u2019. Consequently we were then asked to edit or amend our first drafts,\nthink anew and wander about the premises for peace and inspiration. I went out\ninto the October sunshine and sought it among the tombs, gravestones and\ngargoyles of the ancient church itself, ultimately landing at the tomb of the\n18th<\/sup> century satirical doggerel and dialect writer John Collier\n(alias Tim Bobbin), possibly the most famous of the Rochdale area\u2019s literary\nsons, and returned to my seat in the church to add a bit of irreverent\nLancashire dialect to my otherwise dreary lines of verse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I am not sure what Canon Rachel made of it\nwhen I eventually read it out for she seemed taken aback. Happily she rightly\npraised the offerings of the other twelve who later agreed to form a writing\ngroup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately\nI had to leave before the writing group could be set up but I am told it was.\nThanks to Rachel Mann and Vicar Mark the parish church will now have its own\nwriters and readers and I wish them well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rochdale may not be the centre of\nthe universe but when one considers what is happening or not happening\nelsewhere during The<\/strong> Rochdale Literature and Ideas Festival<\/strong>,\nit becomes so. The evening\u2019s entertainment advertised as Writers Showcase<\/em> was held at the plain yet grand church of St Mary In\nThe Baum in the centre of a town noted for Gracie Fields nostalgia and its\nmonument to the famed local dialect writers, Edwin Waugh, Margaret Lahee etc.,\nall monuments of the past. That is not to forget, though, Rochdale\u2019s current\nmusical songstress supreme, Lisa Stansfield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This event showcased local writing\ngroups and poets, unofficially led by ex-mayor and councillor, performance poet\nand activist Robin Parker and was compered by roving all across the arts<\/em> journalist Steve Cooke. The tickets were a mere\n\u00a33 and the fare a widely varied one worth much more, although the starting time\nof 5:30 pm may have interfered with Sunday Tea for some.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Northern Actress and singer Sue Devaney (photo right) started bang on time with a childhood poem on the theme of the day – Identity – <\/strong>and read her \u2018Who Am I\u2019 poem in the voice of her girlhood. Fresh from performances in Blackpool playing in Calendar Girls<\/em> and with past roles as Gracie Fields herself, not to mention her grounding in Oldham Theatre Workshop, she proclaimed her pride in being a Northerner: \u2018not a fool or victim – God hasn\u2019t finished with me yet\u2019. On the theme of being a woman she sang the Edith Piaf standard Je ne Regrette Rien,<\/em> bolstered by Gracie Field\u2019s whimsical offerings on life and its foibles. Sue was, as they say, \u2018on cracking form\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This hard act to follow was bravely\ntaken up by Touchstone Writing Group\u2019s performance arm, Pulling Threads<\/em>,* with its series of \u2018reminiscences\u2019 and\n\u2018autobiographies\u2019 of victims and witnesses of Peterloo, thus marking the\nbicentenary of the massacre in a human retelling and a poetic assessment of not\nonly personal but group identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Steve Cooke, left, introduces Pulling Threads<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This was a social, rather than a political,\ndepiction yet managed to maintain prosodic and poetic harmony between history\nand modern class identity.  One reader\ntook the part of the editor of a Liverpool newspaper. Another read a poem by\nOliver Lomax which describes Peterloo remembrance as \u2018the archaeology of the\nheart\u2019 and imagines a Sex Pistols\u2019 proclamation that \u2018we are all the body of\nJohn Lees\u2019 (a Peterloo victim). In a nod to Shelley one of the characters Mary\nHayes proclaims, \u2018We wore the mask of anarchy\u2019 in another crisis of identity.\nWhat masks do we wear today? And who is who?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Identity followed apace with\nEileen Earnshaw\u2019s Weaving Words<\/em>\ngroup, begun with Eileen theorising her own identity with a question to one or\ntwo members of the audience, one of them being me, on who were we? \u2018Rather\ntaken aback I answered, weakly, \u2018Just me\u2019. Eileen then offered a tender\nobservation on what I might be. Others wisely did not answer at all. The\nreaders recited poems in their turn on the myriad aspects of identity as being\npart of the present, past and future, not to mention the \u2018might be\u2019 that is in\nall of us.  Are we angels on the way to\nanother world?  Part of the Godhead,\ndespite him being depicted as a man? Or, contrarily, an insignificant creature?\nA creature which has lost its way? Or are we what we make ourselves to be? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this varied offering which went\nprecariously over time  there was a danger\nof forgetting all about identity and more on audience patience and forbearance\nbut there were some powerful readings of Walt Whitman and Sylvia Plath\ninterwoven to compensate. And ee cummings had his day with the unforgettable\nline on the complicated soul who \u2018sang his didn\u2019t, danced his did\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time thankfully catapulted the\nLangley Writers into a brief but welcome ten minute take-off on the Monty\nPython Four Yorkshiremen<\/em> Sketch,\ntransported to growing up on the Langley Estate in Middleton. \u2018We used to wash\nin the sink- You had a sink?\u2019 \u2018We used to dream about washing in the sink\netc.\u2019. It was a laugh- packed ten minutes indeed following a fast- paced script\npenned by Robin Parker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Katie Haigh followed with some of\nher own poetry and younger members of her family performing as Sign Along With Us<\/em>. For those who have\nnot seen this family their performance of modern dance  and mime, incorporating pop music and sign\nlanguage is a marvel in itself, brought about as a celebration of life with a\nyounger brother who cannot hear or fully communicate but who can certainly\ndance and mime. To see the whole family enjoying themselves on stage soon\ndispels any feeling of exploitation or child manipulation. What you see is what\nyou get – happiness and love – the prime mover of life and identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came Robin Parker with his\nmoving, and illustrated by film backdrop, High\nand Mighty<\/em> poem on his on-going battle as an activist to save his own flat\nand all the others in the by now iconic \u2018Seven Sisters\u2019 blocks in the centre of\nRochdale. But he also donned his Sex Pistols tee shirt to perform his punk rock\nprotest song I\u2019m a Pensioner<\/em>. The\ntheme here is I am growing old but still rebelling. His offering of Existent <\/em>with the immortal lines \u2018I\nthink, I am, I celebrate\u2019 owes more to Monty Python than Descartes. After\ncontemplating a medical diagnosis of man as merely unbalanced or balanced\nchemicals, he qualifies this with an ending \u2018I think therefore I am- I think\u2019.\nWrinklies take note.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Seamus Kelly
talking to Sidetracks And Detours blogger Norman Warwick (left)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It fell to poet Seamus Kelly to end\nthe evening with voices from the dark as he moved from the shadows and lamp-lit\ncolumns of the evocative nave of the silent church. \u2018Every word binds your soul\nto this, are you ready to show your souls?\u2019 Seamus\u2019s poems are deep yet\nrhythmic and full of surface ripples, revealing his love for nature and anger\nat despoliation and senseless exploitation. He had nothing but praise for the\nVicar of Rochdale who was recently arrested at the Extinction Rebellion protest\nin London. However, his work also shows a light hearted look at immigration\ncontroversies with his poem Les mots\ndifferents<\/em> lampooning foreign word in general and particular foreign words\nseeping into the language: \u2018foreign words immigrating without permission\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not sure what the deeper\nmeaning of his I Like Bicycles,<\/em> is\nbut it was an extremely light touch with which to end proceedings which had\ntaken up three hours of the Sabbath where a celebratory Evensong might once\nhave broken the silence of the tomb-like church building. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However we otherwise identify\nourselves in our confusing day-to-day lives we had tonight come together as\naudience and performer in a unique event that showed Rochdale literary and\nmusical talent in an unequalled atmospheric setting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time waits for no man. Bring on next\nyear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Editor\u00b4s\nnotes<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Thanks Michael for this\ncomprehensive and far reaching report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
    • Readers please note that that Left\nWrite, Left Write is a collection of poetry written and collated by members of\nTouchstones Creative Writing Group during the four year centenary commemoration\nof World War One. During this period the Pulling Threads performance arm of the\ngroup has delivered several performances of drama and poetry. The well-produced\nbook is available now and you can find further details on  www.touchstonescreativewritinggroup<\/strong>.com<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      TO THE BEGINNING AND BACK AGAIN How does one write the Divine? St John the Divine may have shown us the way in the fourth Gospel with his timeless phrase \u2018In the beginning was the Word\u2019 but how do we write the word in a world of seeming unbelief or disregard for formal religion and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}