Poetry - Cooler than Ice
For a while now I’ve been running a weekly creative writing workshop at HIV charity Body and Soul. My original aim was to provide some form of relief - when you wake up each day with a virus people don’t understand and don’t want to talk about, writing things down can be immensely cathartic. But what I hadn’t prepared for was the unexpected bonus - writers on the course were good.
So good in fact, that we wanted to share their work. On July 1st Body and Soul held a fundraising event, where the whole, huge B&S centre in Clerkenwell turned into an exhibition hall. Simple rooms grew into gigantic fabric forests, huge cinemas and festival-style performance arenas. Keen to share the experiences of our talented wordsmiths, we were faced with the eternal challenge of the poet: how to grab ourselves an audience? And how to keep them interested?
Here’s what we came up with:
1. Poetic Bunting
A nod to this season’s most fashionable piece of nostalgia, poetic bunting instantly filled out the room with vibrant colour and atmosphere. On top of this, readers were encouraged to engage and interact with the poetry by following each poem as it spread from flag to flag.
I made the bunting double sided - on one side you’ve got the wordy, poetry bits and on the other scrappy cut-out triangles from magazines. This was far more serendipitous and exciting (and quick!) than the careful sewing that traditional bunting requires.
Once the two sides were glued together and cut into triangles,the flags were folded at the top and glued around parcel string and separated with bells.
2. Ice Ice Baby
One of our poets produced a really moving series of poems about the aftermath of her diagnosis, taking an the extended metaphor of trapping herself in ice to describe how she isolated herself from family, friends and home.
Always one for a literal interpretation, I got in touch with an old friend from the HIV lab at Chelsea and Westminster hospital, with access to the coldest freezer I know…
And voila! Frozen poetry.
Amongst other adventures, this experiment involved a gripping drive through London with a box of frozen poems preserved in dry ice, which gives off excitingly toxic fumes. It also led to a kind of ‘ever changing’ installation which slowly revealed more and more of the poem as the room filled up with people. I spent most of the evening mopping the floor.
Other pieces in the exhibition included a collection of hand written poems collaged into a giant sunset on a real, sandy beach; a life-sized door superimposed onto the wall (complete with hand-scratched poetry around the frame) and a pop-art style series of train tickets telling the story of one long journey…
Finally, we used the Therapy Rooms to create a series of listening booths, where guests were able to hear live recordings of the poets reading through their work. With the sound so clear you could hear the reader breathing, these were an incredibly intimate and intense way to connect to some sensational writing.
Readers read, listeners listened, people paid attention. A good job well done, and an amazing, truly inspiring event.
To read some of the poems (coming soon), or to learn more about Body and Soul click here.
Body and Soul are a registered charity offering support, advice and a holistic approach to helping people and families affected by HIV. If you are interested in making a donation or becoming a volunteer, please get in touch at 0207 923 6880 or visit www.bodyandsoulcharity.org.
