Andy says hello

It’s one of those days that is so hot it hushes the city. Even the cars don’t seem to have the energy to honk their horns. The Booth Centre in the centre of Manchester is busy, but everyone is heat stunned.

I’ve here to jot down conversations and then rearrange the pieces with the speakers to make something new. I’m working alongside Briony from the Stitched Up Co-op, it’s her session and I am a kind of sideshow. People settle into the trance-like ritual of stitching, making cushion covers, embroideries, repairs…

I see a familiar face, one I’ve not seen in months. It’s Andy and we sit together to catch up and to make a piece. He’s been filling out his journal for our WHISPER TO ME ALONE project, he talks me through the journal pages, explaining his thinking. We are both wearing masks and so of course the chat turns to how strange it is, to be half ourselves and half medicalised.

The poem gradually finds its shape, other people chip in the occasional line or observation but the thread of it is held by Andy. When I read it back to him eventually, he nods brisk approval.
“It’ll do, Phil. Keep up the scribbling. I need a smoke.”

Reading it back, it contains all sorts of echoes for me. He mourns friends who are lost to the lockdown, scattered across the city in anonymous hotels, or simply gone into thin air. It throws a bit of dirt at politicians in general and our lot in particular. And underneath it all, under the mask, is an individual, who recognises danger but refuses to not be himself.

Red Dragon Zippo

A legal necessity, masks
I fully agree.
We just started too late and now the Dragon is here.
Listen to the ministers every day
A political mask. “Have a cigar old boy.”
Puff! The House of Commons is virtual
Defeated by the Dragon.

A mask changes you and now
I too am dragon-like
A dark persuader.
My neighbour says, “Andy you look better
Masked up.”
Cheeky sod. But I can’t smoke, can’t breathe
And the air has been sold off.

Cigarette butt in the night, a red jewel to see by.
All my pals, all my villains, where are you now?
Rich man, poor man, beggar man and thief
(especially the last two)
I salute you my lovelies
The subways are still open, though.

Pain in the butt, a mask
But it prevents people
Sharing spray with me.
Lean in
I’ll whisper fire in your ear…
Strike a spark, breathe it in – who am I?
Zippo with a red dragon
Tells me I’m more handsome in a mask.

Andy

As I cycle home from the Booth, I look out for faces I know. It’s difficult to tell these days because there are so many masks. I wonder if Andy would recognise any of the folks I pass by? Shoppers, office workers, rich man, poor man… Andy says hello.

WHISPER TO ME ALONE gathers words and art from people who have experienced homelessness — and the experiences of other vulnerable people — in Manchester during lockdown, using journals of writing, art and song lyrics and phone conversations. Supported by Arts Council England, partnered by the Booth Centre and Back on Track.

During the first lockdown the Booth Centre ran an advice drop-in and accommodated people under the Everyone In scheme. At 11am every day they ran a Facebook activity session to combat isolation, which included the arthur+martha WHISPER TO ME ALONE 2-minute poetry videos.

The heart of the moon

Necklace of Stars, poetry

How many of us
Have stood alone
With our thoughts and feelings
And gazed into this vast expanse
We call the universe?

I have, with my aching bones and my troubled mind
And I’ve asked the question — why?
Why does the moon beckon to me
What is this force that is pulling my gaze upon it?

Its a-luminous appeal
And surface scarred by time
Its craters remind me of the moment
The asteroids struck its heart
But we still both shine.

How the stars wink at me —
Are they calling me,
playing a game,
Or simply looking down?
Maybe guiding me to better times.

I take heart when the sun starts to rise
Life itself is enriched
By its warmth and energy
It shines so bright.
Now I have the answer why.
Do you?

Neil Sessions

Everything relates to the sun and the moon, to life playing its game. Why does the moon draw us with its craters, the knocks and bangs of life? The moon is very powerful, it gives us gravity, weight, it moves the seas. The waves of emotion in ourselves, the werewolves in us comes with the moon. I’ve got bruises of the heart – they relate to the craters on the moon. The moon must’ve hurt when those asteroids struck.

Surface scarred by time, that’s my life. But I’m still shining bright. That’s come from you, that idea. Telling me to be proud of what I’m doing, these poems. Telling me to rise up, to stand alone in my individuality. My poems are the voice I’ve found, words scattered on scraps and I’ve assembled them with you. You’ve given me a precious gift and I hope to pass it on.

Actually I’m dyslexic, it’s why they called me stupid at school, but I’m qualified to write this. I’ve got the certificate, I’ve lived a life that’s battered me and I write from experience. Sometimes my mind screams at me like a teacher — why can’t you spell this properly? But what we have got to communicate as human beings is more important than spelling it correctly.

I invite people to do what it says in this poem, to take time to look at the sky, to look at the whole universe, and gaze and ask why. We are going through some terrible times and we need to take stock. I understand, I used to do it after my wife died. I carry the whole night sky in my memory, I close my eyes and I see it all. And I’m still asking it questions. Asking why, asking why.

Neil Sessions

A Necklace of Stars, working with older people in Derbyshire, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts Derbyshire, DCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service. This project is particularly aimed at countering isolation; during the pandemic we’ve been working using distance methods – phone conversations and post.

While typing, pause to sterilise

Whisper to me alone

The new normal. Lunch, visor and poetry notes at The Booth Centre.

You’ll find the remarkable Booth Centre tucked down the back of Victoria station in Manchester, surrounded by garages, carparks, little eateries and mysterious businesses. Amongst drab surroundings it is a bustle of energy and purpose, a little sunburst. It provides extraordinarily imaginative support for the homeless community in this city. It’s welcomed arthur+martha here for over 10 years. Our Booth sessions have taken place in a hubbub of job clubs, quizzes, drama, singing, with everyone meeting together for exuberant mealtimes. It’s been a kind of home from home.

During the time of the pandemic, the Booth has quietened, but stayed busy. They’ve been supplying food parcels from their garden and providing activity packs and phones support for isolated people in lockdown. Many of the regular visitors to the centre have been scattered across the city in hostels and hotels, out on a limb.

Now at last people are starting to come back, and creative sessions cautiously beginning again. However, the big boisterous groups have gone, instead people work at individual tables, in large, well-ventilated rooms, wearing masks and visors.

(While typing this blog at the centre, I pause to sterilise my hands from one of the many bottles available.)

Today’s is the first poetry session I’ve run here in months. I work alongside the sewing group that Bryony leads on Wednesdays. The stitchers are deep in the making process, focussed on the intricate rhythms of stitching and colour. It’s a perfect atmosphere for quiet conversation — and I work with three people, jotting down their words, to make poems. I simply ask them to describe their morning and their impression of the world right now.

The person I’m talking to becomes emotional, suddenly blurting out words, letting go some old history. He apologies to me. Normally this would be because showing your emotions is “unmanly”, but these days the apology is because he’s scared of spreading the virus. He pulls his mask tighter, continues in an even tone, hidden under the disguise.

And so here’s a tale of coming out of prison straight into the wider trap of the pandemic — a whole world under lock and key. But it’s also a world in which we can finally hear birdsong in the city…

Been let out

The virus. Me,

I was in prison and then when

I got out, it had started and

The whole structure of life

Was DIFFERENT —

Getting a prescription, getting

HERE, haircuts

Seeing the doctor

Feeling of uncomfortableness

Of threat. And yet.

Have you

Seen the FOXES?

One was here yesterday. And the birds of the morning

When you get to hear BLACKBIRDS

— Beautiful —

Now the traffic is quiet.

People overcompensating

Gathering everything together:

“Get food, get supplies

That’s how we won the war!”

Inside

THE PRISON. Closed down, you were

Locked 23 hours a day

20 minutes in the yard

Volatile atmosphere, very.

Stopped all visits, all everything.

Coming out

Was the best day of my life

And then — REALITY ATTACK

Went into a shop and they stopped me

Didn’t know what they were talking about:

“Stay 2 metres back!”

Anonymous

During the first lockdown the Booth Centre ran an advice drop-in and accommodated people under the Everyone In scheme. At 11am every day they ran our Facebook activity session, which included the arthur+martha WHISPER TO ME ALONE poetry videos. To see samples of the Booth’s online programme go to these links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t60atajOgCw&t=5s

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5JJmqziR9EG1fM-hSv1-ag

Phil would like to thank Bryony from Stitched Up Co-op for welcoming him into her workshop.

Wake up to rise

Necklace of Stars

Widow

Dream, my dear wrinkly, in your lonely king-size,
Dream of using his feet to warm your own icy bones,
Put your arms round his flesh; arms, belly and thighs.
Dream of him living, his grunts, laughs and moans.
And may your dream end before you wake up to rise
From your untidy bed and the stab of him gone.

Tony

Tony: The virus makes you go into memory because the future is so uncertain. I plunge into memory and yet it’s distorted. The memories are juggled, they recede if I don’t want them, distant things seem like yesterday. A wonderful, happy day with my wife before she died. A day at the beach, seems so close and yet it’s a decade gone. I used to write for her and she used to write for me. So, to put poems on this blog is luxury. To write for someone else again...

Lockdown, Me

Whisper to me alone

Like a wolf
A wild dog sat in lonely lockdown
Another day goes by.
To some this is loneliness
But to me, joy.

Gives me time to reflect
Sitting here, pen in my hand
And my old Number 7
Jack Daniels, jotting down
Thoughts and
Reading aloud:

To the heavens
Ploughing down rain
To some this is hell
To me this is heaven.

So thanks to the gods
The old gods and the new
Brood of the trickster
We are the tales you’ll be told.
Another day, lockdown me
Life still rolls on
By Ragnarok set free.

Kris

WHISPER TO ME ALONE gathers experiences of people who have experienced homelessness — and the experiences of other vulnerable people — in Manchester during lockdown, using journals of writing, art and song lyrics and phone conversations. The lockdown photographs of Manchester that illuminate this blog were by Sue Dean, using her favourite camera, her phone.

WHISPER TO ME ALONE is supported by Arts Council England. Partners include The Booth Centre, Back on Track, Bury Art Museum and With One Voice arts and homeless sector global network. During the first lockdown the Booth Centre ran an advice drop-in and accommodated people under the Everyone In scheme. At 11am every day they ran a Facebook activity session to combat isolation, which included the arthur+martha WHISPER TO ME ALONE 2-minute poetry videos.

Smiley shoelaces. Photograph by Sue Dean, 2020

On a Midsummer’s night

Necklace of Stars

Neil Sessions:

How many people have looked into the stars at night and been speechless? Have you? But inside yourself you ask so many questions. What’s beyond that light? I’ve had the honour of working in the countryside all of my life. Working stupid hours and never getting time to stop and admire life. The universe does talk to us, but do we listen to the universe? There is an aura off the starlight, it’s very powerful. It draws us to it, gives us peace and makes us feel our place. Now I’ve got the time I’m coming back to those questions. Instead of taking life for granted, I’m exploring it. Opening my eyes to the starlight. If you can’t see it, you can’t write a poem about it.

Stars at night

Many a feeling
Many a sight
As I walked out
On a Midsummer’s night
The stars listened through the trees
Dapples of light were reflecting off me
I turn the corner
What beholds me?
A vast expanse
Of light you see
Twinkling, glistening
Shimmers of light
Oh the stars
They were so bright.
My heart was pounding
With love and glee
The whole of the universe
Was talking to me.

Neil Sessions

A Necklace of Stars, working with older people in Derbyshire, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts Derbyshire, DCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service.

This project is particularly aimed at countering isolation; during the pandemic we’ve been working using distance methods – phone conversations and post.

Social dancing

Whisper to me alone

Phil writes:

The isolation that has come with lockdown has forced many of us to look at ourselves and try to understand some of our dilemmas. It’s brought the good and it’s brought the bad. For some it has felt like a prison sentence. For other people it’s been a kind of opportunity. Anastasia points this out:

“I’ve had the chance to slow down, to quieten all the noise around me. To still the voices of busyness and make myself be calm. I’ve been thinking a little bit zen these days. Taking time to exist. It’s a choice isn’t it, what you do with this moment. Maybe I’ll learn from it.”

The writing and art is part of this process, it can be a tool for holding those reflections, so they don’t just melt away but are kept and thought about. Making a poem now is like no other time in people’s lives. We’re also experimenting with making poems over the phone, the author speaking lines down to the scribe (myself) and an edit agreed by reading it back.

It’s a whole different time
It’ll be unique in the telling
A different way of looking
We’re thinking the new thinking.

Anonymous

In reflecting the world through writing and art, we look at it more closely. This can be a celebration as well as a reckoning:

The birds tweeting
The squirrels hanging out — see!
Small bird, one of the tiny ones
The owl’s fascination
The great grey bird on the canal
Encounter in the kitchen, a Queen Bee
(Got to be careful with that one)
The squirrels drop round our way
For nuts and
Since we’ve kept our distance
We’re not so close to each other
But then. I look again and
There’s a hedgehog.

Alan

And in making things, we also make ourselves.

“I’ve loved having this writing and art, it’s keeping me going. It gets stuff out of my head onto paper. The art process helps. And when I lose making art, it feels like I lose myself some days. I hang onto me through the images and the writings. It’s all you’ve got sometimes…”

Anonymous

Selfie with mask. Adapted photograph by Sue Dean

The lockdown photographs of Manchester that illuminate this blog were by Sue Dean, using her favourite camera, her phone. WHISPER TO ME ALONE is supported by Arts Council England. Partners include The Booth Centre, Back on Track, Bury Art Museum and With One Voice arts and homeless sector global network.

Tantrum in Tesco’s

Necklace of Stars

There have been many, many limitations to everyday life during the Covid pandemic. The isolation, the reduced services, the shutting down of shared spaces. But one limitation that doesn’t get discussed so much is the limitation on being able to protest. Here our Necklace of Stars writer Jo makes a protest against invisibility. This is one of a series of pieces by Jo that explore ideas of rebellion. By writing and sharing them, the protest has happened – in you the reader’s mind!

August 1st, the big day is finally here. She peers into the mirror asking
the reflection if they are sure they really want to do this? The reflection
answers “Yes and don’t be chicken.”

The door opens, a deep breath taken and with the first step a new phase
commences. Its 20 weeks since her last venture out and everything
even more beautiful than before.

She reaches her destination and sees a lengthy queue and waits
patiently to enter the supermarket. Her turn comes; she takes the cart
and walks through the entrance, her heart pounding. Her inner self is
telling her “do it” “go on do it” and with the final push she throws herself
on the floor and starts to scream and yell.

Workers and fellow shoppers watch but no one knows what to do. The
yelling continues, her hands and feet banging the floor. The manager
arrives and enquires what the matter is and offers help. She replies
“Nothing, I just wanted to be noticed by someone, the last 20 weeks I
have been forgotten and I just wanted to be noticed”. She stands
up and makes her way to the checkout, feeling so much better knowing
she has returned to the outside world and made an entrance no one will
forget at Tesco’s.

Today’s blog comentary was written by Philip Davenport, arthur+martha. The short story Tantrum at Tesco’s is by Jo, from her series of written rebellions.

A Necklace of Stars, is supported by Arts Council England, Arts Derbyshire, DCC Public Health and Derbyshire County Council Home Library Service.

More than a watchman for the daybreak

Projects, Whisper to me alone

When I was a little girl I used to say, “I want to love the world better.” But it’s a job I cannot do. Sometimes I can’t even love myself.

16 years ago I got clean. I was using heroin and crack, introduced to them by an ex-partner. Even then I wrote every day, journals and diaries and books of all descriptions. Sometimes it was almost illegible. I did the cold turkey myself, writing every terrible day. My dad would say, “This is the book that will help the world, this will be how you love the world better. The story of how you healed.”

When you come off heroin, your body is all pain. You stretch and you bend and you twist, you twitch your legs, they call it Riding the Bike. Couldn’t sleep, I’d be pacing, I’d be looking at the sky. In the middle of the night I’d be looking out for that chink of light at the darkest time, just before the daybreak. When it finally came I’d think I’ve done another day, I’ve been clean.

I wrote about it every day, every detail. A whole book. Then one day I burned it all. Maybe the weight of those pages was too heavy.

Maybe you know that book too.

“A”

WHISPER TO ME ALONE gathers experiences of people who have experienced homelessness — and the experiences of many other vulnerable people — in Manchester during lockdown. We’re using journals of writing, art, songs, phone conversations and embroidery.

Photo above: Featured embroidery, by Marylyn MacLennan for the quilt, Here Comes the Sun.

WHISPER TO ME ALONE is supported by Arts Council England. Partners include The Booth Centre, Back on Track, Bury Art Museum and With One Voice arts and homeless sector global network.

In the sunshine you’re invisible

Here Comes the Sun, Whisper to me alone

The sun has been a symbol of hope and life to humans since the year dot. But it can also bring the harsh light of exposure. In this poem, written for our project WHISPER TO ME ALONE, Danny Collins describes the fear of being seen, when you’re homeless.

Everyone under the same sun

In the sun you are recognised
In the bright bright sun.
In the night, people don’t see
Homeless feel secure of a night.

When you’re living rough and get wet
In the rain, in the beer, in whatever
It takes days to dry out
And the sun sun don’t stay.

Used to sleep under a bridge
Ancoats to Rochdale Canal
Whitworth Park was my office
When it was warm, jumped in

And swam.
This woman asked
“Why you swimming there?”
“I haven’t got a bathroom love.”

Don’t like it when people pity me.
I said, “Listen love I feel sorry for you
You’ve got rent to pay, tax, electricity
I’ve none of that. Trees don’t have keys.”

Pulled the cover over and went to sleep
Left her scratching her head.
In the sunshine you’re invisible
But they still see you.

Danny Collins

This poem was spoken by Danny over over the phone to Phil, who wrote it down – an example of our current safe distance working. Danny calls this method ‘I spoke it, you wrote it.’

If you’ve enjoyed Danny’s poem, you might like to go on one of his Invisible Manchester tours, in which he describes living on the streets and reads his poems in the places where it all happened.

WHISPER TO ME ALONE gathers experiences of people who have experienced homelessness — and the experiences of many other vulnerable people — in Manchester during lockdown. We’re using journals of writing, art, songs, phone conversations and embroidery. Today’s embroideries are: Top, embroidered sun by Hazel Cawthan, and bottom embroidered sun, by Beryl Lott, for the quilt Here Comes the Sun. (Part of the Whisper to me alone project)

WHISPER TO ME ALONE is supported by Arts Council England. Partners include The Booth Centre, Back on Track, Bury Art Museum and With One Voice arts and homeless sector global network.