In terms of geographical identity, I’m a creature of what we could call the southern part of the north. I grew up near Leicester, then lived in Sheffield for several years, and (following a few brief forays further south) have lived for the past fifteen years in Liverpool – making frequent trips over the Pennines back to Sheffield to visit friends and family. I’m familiar, then, with the part of the country where the Midlands meets the north; but not so familiar with what lies north of that. So, for me, one of the great things about being invited to take part in Read Regional is the chance to visit parts of England I don’t know well or have never been to.
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| John Wedgwood Clarke |
Before my trip to Hartlepool, for a joint poetry reading at the central library with John Wedgwood Clarke, I mentioned where I was heading to a friend and fellow poet, Carola Luther. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘Remind me to tell you about my dream of Hartlepool!’ She told me that not long after she’d arrived in the UK from her native South Africa, someone had mentioned Hartlepool and, although she’d never been there and had no idea where it was, the name itself had stuck in her mind, leading to a dream in which she was undertaking a long and complicated journey, mostly by water, to Hartlepool.
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| Anna Woodford |
The writing group based at Hartlepool library, along with librarian Denise Sparrowhawk, were a friendly and supportive audience for John’s reading and mine, especially since they had just been engaged in a poetry reading workshop with Anna Woodford (hearing that the group were discussing some of our own poems, John and I retired to a modest/safe distance on the far side of the library). Following the readings, we had a vibrant discussion about poetry and about writing and reading in general. One group member had been struck by how much more she’d enjoyed hearing the poems read aloud than she usually enjoyed reading poetry on the page, and this led us to ponder the relation between the written word and the spoken/heard word, and the ways in which poems might take on a different sort of life in performance where sometimes they might lie rather flatly on the page, some of their meanings and nuances remaining locked away and inaccessible. Our discussion certainly suggested that bringing workshops and readings to libraries, enabling writers and readers to get together in a room and discuss the work, is a great way of opening up access to poetry.
The group were also full of information about the history and indeed the name of Hartlepool – which brought me back to Carola’s dream. I mentioned to the group that I was trying to write it up into a poem. The way the poem has turned out, it isn't really ‘about’ Hartlepool – it’s more about the strange way that places can take on a kind of life and reality in your dreams or imagination even when you've never visited them and indeed may never visit them. But it does at least contain something of the true origins of the name of the town.
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| Carola Luther PHOTO CREDIT Claire McNamee |
Poem for Carola
She’d not been long in this country,
she told me, and couldn't remember
where she’d heard the name;
but the dream had stayed with her
– a journey by water, a storm-drain –
and the name meant pool of hearts,
a place of sorrow like Alice’s
pool of tears; or perhaps
it was harts, a pool in the woods
where the deer would come,
bowing their heads to their
own dark images.
She told me she’d never yet been to that town,
but the dream had stayed with her,
and I understood, because once,
though I’d never set foot beyond Europe,
I dreamed of the Witwatersrand,
saw myself on the shore of a vast lake
flown with gulls, the white waters
breaking and breaking in long waves,
the sky bright with heat
and the cries of the sea-birds
and both of us kept these places
close in the mind, secure
and unchanging, and both of us felt
that one day we might meet them,
bowing our heads in greeting
and saying yes, I know it,
this is the place, I have been here before.
Helen Tookey, 2015
www.readregional.com/2015/04/13/a-dream-of-hartlepool/
In conjunction with this year’s South Yorkshire Poetry Festival, an exhibition entitled 'Translation' opened at Bank Street Arts in Sheffield on Wednesday, featuring the piece 'Twenty-Five Views of Japan' by Helen Tookey and visual artist Patricia Farrell. Their collaboration starts from a previously existing text, a 1930s account of a year spent in Japan. Playing with the idea of ‘views’ of a place not actually visited, the poems and images they create hint at, but never resolve into, miniature narratives of an imagined Japan. This exhibition uses the theme of translation, between media and between languages, to present projects from artists and writers.
bankstreetarts.com/exhibitions/translation/
In conjunction with this year’s South Yorkshire Poetry Festival, an exhibition entitled 'Translation' opened at Bank Street Arts in Sheffield on Wednesday, featuring the piece 'Twenty-Five Views of Japan' by Helen Tookey and visual artist Patricia Farrell. Their collaboration starts from a previously existing text, a 1930s account of a year spent in Japan. Playing with the idea of ‘views’ of a place not actually visited, the poems and images they create hint at, but never resolve into, miniature narratives of an imagined Japan. This exhibition uses the theme of translation, between media and between languages, to present projects from artists and writers. bankstreetarts.com/exhibitions/translation/
Helen Tookey was born near Leicester in 1969. She studied philosophy and literature at university and has worked in academic publishing, as a university teacher, and as a freelance editor. Her short collection Telling the Fractures, a collaboration with photographer Alan Ward, was published by Axis Projects in 2008, and Missel-Child was published with Carcanet Press in 2014. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming New Poetries VI anthology (Carcanet, 2015), the former co-editor of PN Review, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. helentookey.wordpress.com/current-projects/
The Carcanet Blog Sale
With every blogpost we offer 25% off a Carcanet title, or titles by a particular author or group of authors.
With every blogpost we offer 25% off a Carcanet title, or titles by a particular author or group of authors.
For the next two weeks, we're giving you 25% off Helen Tookey's Missel-Child