The other day I had the great pleasure of making a journey into deep Argyll, over Loch Fyne by ferry (whilst it was still dark) then up to the Isle of Seil, to meet with poet, novelist and artist Kenneth Steven. The pretext of this visit was to record a podcast, but the truth is, it was about time we met! Two blokes, both about the same age, both living in Argyll, both writing poetry inspired by the spirituality of wild places – oh and we have connection to Iona and the Iona community too. How was it that we did not already know each other?
Kenneth and his wife Kristina were the perfect hosts- despite an earlier failed attempt to record over the internet which I messed up by getting the time wrong! They live in a beautiful place and I very much enjoyed our chat. We hope you do too!
You can listen on Spotify, Apple or Youtube – Here is the spotify link;
If you don’t already know Kenneth’s work, here is the blurb from his website.
Kenneth Steven is first and always a poet. To survive as a literary author he’s had to become many other things as a writer – he translated the Norwegian novel The Half Brother, he’s a children’s picture book and story writer, he’s an essayist and a feature writer – but it’s poetry and the love of poetry that lies at the heart of it all. His volume of selected poems Iona appeared from Paraclete Press in the States a couple of years ago. His numerous collections have sold many thousands of copies, and he has a strong name as a poet thanks to the poetry-related features he’s written and presented over long years: his programme A Requiem for St Kilda having won a Sony Gold for Radio 4.
His poetry has been inspired primarily by place. He grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands with a profound awareness of that world: his mother’s people were Gaelic speakers from Wester and Easter Ross. It’s the wildscape of Highland Scotland that pours through his pen.
It’s that same wildscape he seeks to capture as a painter. He and his wife Kristina live on the Scottish west coast, and it’s the ever-changing colours of sea and sky he loves so much: the myriad blues and the incredible beauty of the light.
Kenneth runs his own podcast, available to those who support his work through patreon- we very much encourage any of you who are able to reach out. We need out poets more than ever!
I am just back from Ireland and the funeral of my father, Seamus Goan, aged 86. I am still rather dumbfounded that the Catholic priest who led his short funeral (not a mass) at the funeral home refused permission to allow anyone else to contribute to the service in the form of reading a eulogy or even a poem. I contemplated ignoring him and speaking anyway but this seemed like an agressive act that was not the way to send anyone off. I decided in the end that I would tell the story my way, via this blog. I am very tired after yesterday’s ten hour journey, but as ever, I process best by writing so here I am once more looking at a white screen, fingers poised.
Where to begin? How do you tell the story of a life – particularly when I only know most of it through snatched stories and second-hand memories?
Behind the wheel of an Austin A30, around 1965
The first death of my father happened before I was old enough to form memories. His marriage to my mother was always problematic and at some point he disappeared, leaving a well of bitterness for my mother to swim in. She raised two children on benefits, struggling with her own mental health, and I grew up with a constant diet of stories about my father that could not have been less flattering. Some of the grim and uncomfortable facts of this early part of his life were without dispute, but I aways knew that my mother was not a reliable witness. My late sister was older than me, and had memories of him that she always cherished – we always knew there was more to this story. It would take almost 40 years for me to start looking for the rest.
Me in yellow (with the bowl cut) back row, around 1975
The next part of this story leaps forward to the early 1990’s. We had been invited to a friends house in Blackburn, Lancashire and I was sitting in her book-lined living room whilst she finished cooking. Idly, I picked up the telephone directory and flicked to the G section to see if there were any Goans listed – something that I had often done before, with no previous success – it is an unusual name, after all. This time however, there they were- four or five telephone numbers, with addresses, each a different Goan household.
(Incidentally, the name Goan has nothing to do with Goa. Our best guess is that it is a derivitive of Gowan, or McGowan, meaning Smith or son of Smith. Somewhere way back in my ancestry, they were working with metal. But back to the story….)
Seeing these names in the Blackburn telephone directory triggered a distant memory. As a child, we used to recieve gifts from an uncle and aunt in a place called… Blackburn.
I did nothing with this information for a while, as I was not sure what to do with the knowledge. I spoke to my sister, who was tantalised and immobilised in equal measure. I said nothing to my mother. Eventually the pressure was too great, and I wrote to Mr J Goan, asking if he might be who I thought he was. Mr John Goan wrote back, and he was indeed my Uncle. I remember the nervous drive over – little Emily was sick en route, forcing a detour to buy new clothes. I remember kindness, but awkward conversations, a sense of profoundly disconnected lives and the impossibility of questions or answers. I remember meat sandwiches, which I ate despite being a vegetarian. I remember not knowing what to do next, so asking my Uncle and Aunt not to let my father know I had been in touch – a request that they graciously honoured, as it turned out, for many years.
The years passed because of my own uncertaintly, but also I did not think I could take the next step alone, because even if I could keep a secret from my mother, I could not from my sister, and it was hard to draw her out into the adventure. We had both lived with the absence, but for her it had been invested with the possibility that one day our father would return and ‘rescue’ her from the difficulties of our childhood. When this never happened, meeting him as an adult was the end to her childhood escape fantasy.
The story then moves forward another ten years or so, during which (largely unknown to me) Michaela had stayed in touch with my Aunt Betty in Blackburn, quietly keeping the channel open for future connection. By then we had moved to Scotland and life was different. It seemed important to keep pushing outwards, to let the expansion continue. I can’t remember exactly what made me finally take the plunge, except that I hit the age of 40, and it seemed like now or never, with sister or not. I had no real expectations or hopes, just the feeling that there was an integrity in reconnection, even if this might lead to unknown difficulties.
I sent a letter to an address in Strabane, Ireland and three days later, my father called on the telephone. His accent was so thick I struggled to understand, but it was clear he was very glad to be speaking. More than this, he told me that my brother Stephen and his wife Kate were also living in Scotland, only about an hour from us.
In the end it was Steve and Kate (and their son Jamie) whom we met first. We greeted them from the ferry, little Emily standing back in suspicion, the two boys instantly playing together, the rest of us starting to map things we shared and would always be different.
My parent’s wedding, Sutton-in-Ashfield, 1965. (My mother had to leave her job at Boots chemist shop as married women were not allowed to work there.)
My first meeting with my father was part of a trip to Ireland, during which we spent a couple of days in their tiny flat. We drove together to the Giant’s Causway, and spoke at tangents.
It was obvious from the start that I was my father’s son. We looked alike. Our temperaments were similar- a certain shy reticence. Introversion. In other ways we were very different. My life had been about seeking respectability and safety. His had been an excercise in staying one step ahead of what he had left behind, at least at first. He used different names- even to the end of his life. He spent time in prison. My mother’s bitter condemnations (of both of us) rang out loud.
On that trip to the Giant’s Causeway, the conversation was sparse, and consisted of my asking lots of neutral questions, followed by short answers and long slightly uncomfortable silences. When we arrived at our destination, I took the kids off to scramble over the hexagonal stones whilst Michaela walked along the upper shoreline with my father and his partner Peggy. In that journey, he spoke much more freely to Michaela – it seemed easier for him to talk to women. She was unable to understand most of what he was saying, but there is only a limited number of times you can ask for repetition. At the end of one long monologue, my father said “So can you pass that on to Chris for me please.” He had been unburdening himself and making some kind of explanation, and she had heard very little of it. I never managed to find out exactly what he had to say in that conversation.
Inevitably, over the next 18 years or so, I began to piece together the story of his life, mostly not from him, but from conversations with Steve and other relatives. Here is what I know – it is not the whole truth and some might be not true at all, but it is the story I can tell.
Seamus Goan was born in Sion Mills, just outside Strabane, County Tyrone, in the province known as Northern Ireland, to Margaret and John, who worked at the flax mill that gave the town its name. He was one of five children who survived to adulthood – Michael, Molly, Gay, John and Seamus.
Flax Mills meant short lives for workers, who often contracted ‘brown lung disease’, and my grandmother died in 1947 when my father was eight years old, so he was brought up mostly by his older sisters Gay and Molly. My Grandfather died twelve years later, and somehow it seems that my father barely attended school and back then was unable to read or write.
As a young adult, he followed the exodus of Irish men and boys – and his brothers – over the Irish sea to England in order to find work – remember all those ‘no blacks, no Irish, no dogs’ signs that were placed outside ‘respectable’ guest houses? He found work on the construction of the new motorway system, and whilst working on the M1 being forced up through Nottinghamshire, he met my mother and they married.
My sister Katharine was born in 1966, then I came along in 1967. By then the wedding was already over. My mother raised me with stories of much of the bad that happened around that time. Gambling addiction and the stolen items to fund the betting from neighbours. The house empty of food or warmth and the bailifs at the door for unpaid bills. The fear and shame of this time never left her, unlike my father, who left and never came back – except that is not quite true, he knocked on the door some time in the mid 1980’s, but was given no welcome, so left before my sister or I knew who he was. I later found out that he sometimes drove his car to our street in order to catch glimpses of us, but we never met again as
He lived a life away from mine which I can only wonder at.
I know that at some point a few years after he left my life, he met Peggy and fell in love again. She was from a Protestant family, born out in the sticks outside Strabane so they made a mixed couple – something difficult to do in Ireland back when the troubles were still raging in the wild west border country of County Tyrone. (Strabane lost the greatest percentage of citizens to the violence of anywhere in the country) so they made a life for themselves in Cambridge.
Seamus was still working on various contruction projects – for a long time he was running gangs installing cables for cable TV. It seems he was always held back by illiteracy, leaving a job whenever this might be found out, mostly managing to cover it up and stay one step ahead of the shame. Later Seamus and Peggy ran a pub, working long hours.
During all of this they had two children- Stephen, then Sarah. Sarah was born with profound learning difficulties and it was her care than dominated family life for the next decades. From being an absent father, Seamus became as hands-on as it is possible to imagine.
If I am going to tell this story here, do I tell everything? There are dark sides to this story, which I was tempted to gloss over, but this does not feel honest, to the story we made together. My father was always ‘on the run’ in some way. He used the names of his brothers rather than his for many interactions with officialdom right up to the end of his life, for example. He went to prison for failing to pay maintenance. He never stopped the betting on horses and was most at home in a bar. At some point his new family was disrupted because he was jailed for faling to pay maintenance (not directly to us, but rather to offset the state benefits which my mother, sister and I existed on.) Money was always tight, always an issue. Steve and I have this in common, despte our different beginnings.
A man is never just one thing – we are many. We are capable of both good and bad. We are all redeemable. We can all grow and change. Steve told me that for most of his adult life, he had never passed his driving test (remember the interchangable name thing mentioned above) but then, as an older adult, he took it and passed it. Quite what they made of him turning up for the test I don’t know.
It seems he changed jobs frequently to avoid being shamed as illiterate, but around the time that we met, the same shame drove him to learn to read. He developed a taste for novels about cowboys.
By the time I met my father, he had moved back to Strabane, a place which had always been home to him – full of a network of family and friends that anchored his whole life. He was a regular attender at Mass and became that man who could always be relied upon to drive someone to hospital or go round to unblock a gutter, or deliver newspapers to those who were less mobile.
Meanwhile, he stayed in touch with friends and family in England too, often turning up wiht little or no warning in Scotland or England, having driven long distances seemingly on a whim, but always to see Sarah who was then living in supported accommodation in Cambridge.
My sister Katharine died.
May half sister Sarah died.
My mother died.
Peggy developed dementia, with Seamus as her carer. It was difficult at times, but he remained faithful. Once, after a difficult exchange, he created some panic as he left the house and booked himself in a hotel without telling anyone. Margaret, a family friend, found him and gave he a dressing down.
Then he developed dementia himself – revealed in irrational anger towards his landlord and some quite dramatic acts of confusion.
He left Peggy at one point and got on the ferry to come to England, but then disappeared. We had to report him missing, leading to police searches of all known addresses (including ours. There was a very funny moment when they opened our hoover cupboard and we imagined him standing there…) Eventully his numberplate was picked up by the cameras on the motorway system near Manchester, and Steve went over to bring him back. After this, his licence was revoked, but this did not stop the old pirate from buying another car – leading to Steve and I going over to Ireland to make some interventions…
First Peggy was persuaded to move into a nursing home in Strabane. Seamus was lonely, so eventually he followed. Steve, Kate, Michaela and I cleared out their home. They had very little and most things went ot charity shops. I constantly found myself comparing this process to that of clearing my mothers house, who had accumulated so very much. It felt unbearably sad at times, but perhaps this was another gift from my father- to learn that life is not measured by weight of posessions.
fixing a mower with my father, around 2013
I said none of this at the funeral, partly because of the religious ego that silenced any non-priestly voice, but also because it would have all been too much. I would have said something like this;
When I was a child, I was jealous of people who had ‘normal’ families. Mine was a mess.
When I got older, I realised that there was no such thing as a normal family.
Families form and fracture, like mine did, even before I could form memories of it.
It was perhaps harder for Seamus, losing his parents so young. It set him on a road that led to me.
It was hard too for Stephen and Sarah, learning to make their family work.
We know this – Despite the scars, fractures can mend.
I believe that this happens if we choose a path of love. It will always take us home.
I want to read a poem that was read at both my mother’s and my sister’s funerals that talks about love as a deliberate decision, and the consequences that it might have.
It is also a prayer for my father.
Cupped
Practice the wound of love Let it devastate Let it scrape your soul For blessed are the gentled Blessed are the meek Blessed are those whose fullness Is now found empty
Practice the wound of love Rest now in that broken place Where grief is never silent And ragged roots of love Tap the trampled earth Blessed are you as you reach for love Because it reaches out for you
Practice the wound of love Let it devastate For nothing ever came from nothing (Apart from love) At the end of everything We are just cups Who are cupped. We are held.
One of the delightful things about our Proost project is that it enables us to walk the edges and find others that are doing the same. We try to gather some of this edge walking via our two podcasts- one that has a more general focus (and includes trying to do Proost ‘buisiness’ out in the open), the other one gathering poets and poetry- as this seems to have always been a strong and important strand of what we are about.
Today I was delighted to listen and share this conversation;
Where does poetry go? What is it for? How might it be used in the service of justice, peace and reconciliation? How does this relate to spirituality?
In this episode, our Talitha talks to the poet, musician and activist Samara Pitt about her practice, her songs and her love of words. In particular, she describes a process of turning poetry into song – an almost magical process…
Samara describes herself like this;
Samara is a 7th generation coloniser-inheritor living on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri Woirurrung people in the hills outside of Naarm/Melbourne.
She has lived and worked in several different intentional communities, most recently at Gembrook Retreat where the community invites people on to the land to encounter God in creation and to equip each other to live a soulful life.
She loves singing, singing with others, and putting music to words that help us listen more deeply to Country and to soul. Drawing on the liturgical tradition of sung refrains as a congregational response to the reading of a psalm, she has just started to compose short songs based on the repetition of short phrases, designed to help us dwell with the emotion and beauty of words and harmonies. They are also a grateful tribute and offering to the writers.
You can find more of Samara’s work – and support it – here.
Here is Samara’s account of her poetry choices for this episode.
Shaun Tan is one of my favourite writers and illustrators working in these lands now called Australia. His books are haunting and beautiful. and help me to look at the ordinary through the lens of wonder and imagination. This is taken from his book Tales from the Inner City which explores the mythic presence of the more-than-human world in the midst of our cities.
The lyrics come from Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s book ‘Thin Places’, a mix of nature writing and Troubles memoir about growing up in in the midst of violence in Derry and the role of nature in helping her find peace and healing.
Gout Gout is an up and coming Australian sprinter who gave the most poetic statement I’ve ever heard from an athlete in a press conference, when he was asked if he still feels normal. I found another slam poetry style quote from him about how he ‘steps light but presence heavy’, and then added my own line imagining the cycle of preparing for, running and coming down after races.
I found these lines in a book by Chris Anderson called ‘Light when it comes’. Based on the spiritual practice of ‘examen’, these words suggest that we turn to face darkness rather than flee from it.
For years now, we have been trying to get a project over the line. It has often seemed like it was never going to happen, but now we are finally on the cusp of making it reality.
When we moved to our house, we were not looking for lots of land. Our brief was simple – a smaller house, with room for a pottery studio in which we could work and run workshops, and a small vegetable patch to grow as much food as we could. The aim was for a simple lifestyle, as environmentally sustainable and low impact as possible. Things did not quite work out in the way we planned…
Firstly, we ended up buying a house that came with a large area of overgrown woodland. When we moved, it was impossible to explore most of it, choked as it was by invasive rhodedendron and buddleia. I felt the responsibiity to care for this land keenly – to take out the invasive species and let the old oak trees breathe. I have since spent a long time and lots of hard work trying to do just that – and slowly it has started to transform the woodland back to what it always should have been- a pocket of beautiful oak rainforest, perched above the Clyde estuary…
The other thing that did not go to plan was that we had an unfortunate brush with officialdom. When we moved to our new house, we asked a series of questions of Argyll and Bute planning department about what permissions we needed to obtain to work from home and run pottery workshops for members of the public. We were told (by e-mail) that we required none. Accordingly, we built workshops and pretty soon a third of our income was made up of people paying for pottery workshops.
Unfortunately, following a complaint from a neighbour about us running a business from home, the planning department conducted an investigation, and decided that although our activities were not in breach of planning, the building we had erected as our workshop was not deemed to pass building regulations for recieving members of the public. We appealed, on the basis that we had previously been informed by e-mail that building regulations were not required, but to no avail. Conspiracy theorists might well enjoy the fact that our beloved council deleted all documents and e-mails relating to our enquiries, meaning that the ombudsman was not able to rule in our favour. Such is life. We adapted and moved on…
My mum died. Here she is, sitting in a garden, her favourite place in the world. She never got to see our new garden, here in the Clyde, being too ill to travel north. When it came to a share of the small amount of inheritance from the sale of her house that was coming to us, I wanted to make something that might form a lasting memorial.
Could we use it to build a new workshop? Something that enhanced the woodland, built from sustainable materials and using low impact construction methods?
Even better, could we make a space in the woodland that might become a haven for people – for artists and makers to spent time creating and recharging their passion?
Fortunately, we have a friend who runs a company who have the skills to make something like this happen. Without Stuart and his company Fynewood, we would have given up long ago as we have tried to navigate the labyrinth of planning. Along with Ronan (who handles design and planning) we came up with something…
We now have planning consent to put up two small buildings – one a micro-lodge with shower and amenities, the other a workshop with disabled access loo. We intend to make the whole site fully accessible to people in wheelchairs by putting in a graded pathway and decking.
We will then use the premises in a number of different ways;
A place for people to make artist retreats. People will be able to book both the accommodation and the workshop for either four, seven or eleven nights.
We intend to make some slots available at low/no cost to artists who would otherwise not be able to participate.
Our own workshops. Pottery, retreat days, poetry and writing days.
Guest workshops. Working with our network of artists and creatives, to host a wide range of arts, crafts and writing.
Bookings by other artists to run their own events.
As you can imagine, the costs of making this happen is a real challenge – particularly as these costs have been rising constantly, making everything much more expensive than when we started this process. Conditions imposed by the planning department have raised these costs further – we are still negotiating some of these conditions.
Despite this, we are pressing forward, determined and very grateful for the support of Fynewood.
If you are an artist, and you have ever taken, or would like to take, an artists retreat, then we would love to hear from you.
If you have undertaken workshops, would like to start or attend more, we would love to hear from you.
If you have run workshops yourself, we would love to hear from you.
Crowdfunding
The next way you might be able to help is to support this project more directly – specifically with the accessibility side of the project. Feel no pressure, but if this project connects with things that you find important and you have some spare cash to put towards it, then we would be most grateful.
Back in 2020, we were amazed when our crowdfunded ‘shop shed’ was so well supported. We decided to reach out once more to our wonderful supporters.
We have set up a new crowd funding portal, with a set of rewards as before – both physical things, but also the opportunity to book in advance as a way of investing in the future.
Why? is it because it is ‘good’ art? I am not sure how to judge such a thing. Is it because it is brave and fearless in the face of unyielding bureacracy? Perhaps there is some of this here. Is it because it captures a mood- a national feeling against an unjust law? I hope so. God knows, we need our post-modern Prophets even more than the ancient Israelites did.
There remains something else too that makes me slightly uncomfortable- the celebrity mystique of protest art that is allowable somehow because it has been owned by the establishment – permissable as a democratic safety valve that pretends towards non-conformity whilst at the same time playing the art game as well as everyone. The Banksy machine is very well oiled after all…
He even made a self-aware film in which he describes the rules of the machine…
Michaela tells me that the inverse snobbery in me never allows me to fully enjoy anything that is popular, and this skews me towards art that is made on the edge, the fringes rather than the centre. The irony here is that I love art that challenges our culturual assumptions injustices but in order to do this, it has to break through the algorythms somehow to reach large numbers of people… just as Banksy has managed. For art to engage, it has to find vehicles that will allow it to travel.
Here is a case in point. I was recently asked to supply some poetry for an art exhibition entitled ‘A colourful world’. The idea was to place some poems on coloured cloth and drape them in the entrance. I suggested this poem from 2014 as it seemed to fit the theme rather well. Each three-line verse taking a different colour as inspiration. It was my attempt to consider the beauty and brokenness of this wonderful life that we have, in all its different colours…
Blue hangs like a limp flag above him
Stirred only by half-a-breeze
Always waiting for tomorrow
.
Light falling through these trees
As if through ten green bottles
Hanging on for the fall
.
In a crush of commuting greys she wore bright orange
Less to draw attention to herself, more in blazing protest
Against complicity, against the curse of ordinary compliance
.
Yellow says hello
As the summer strips the grass to straw
And flowers forget their gazing upwards
.
Red bowl of the sun in a darkening sky
Curtaining so fast that I reach out
Grasping as to cup it, to keep it close
.
Pink flesh unfolds like a flower
This fragile child, as if fearing the late frost
Now wrapped up safe in mother
.
The night is purple, not-quite-dark
Wide open like the mouth of a whale
Or the space between stars
.
Black like before-life, like un-pregnancy
Like before the big bang roared outwards into us
Before love made anything possible
.
Grey like the day she came to say “The time has come for leaving”
The sun itself was choked by cloud
The very sea was weeping
.
Water falling down on these old rocks
Gilding them with liquid silver
This normal place, anointed
.
Age has turned your hair pure white
Like the soul that dances in you
You are cathedral and I, your evensong
.
Sunlight makes alchemy from mountains
Now gold in the evening mist
Far beyond the wealth of kings
.
Brown like the ground where we lay down
The earth is pillow-soft
And waiting
After accepting this suggestion , the curator later gave me a print-out of the poem with crosses next to the verses he wanted. Black, pink and brown where all out, as was white. He only wanted ‘positive’ verses, or ones he could understand. He wanted a kind of ‘Hallmark’ poetry that was pretty, ornamental, but unchallenging. When I suggested this was not the way that most of us experienced this colourful world, or wanted to engage with it through art, he told me that I would have to deal with the ‘complaints’. In the end, we did use most of the poem, but it left me thinking again about art gatekeeping.
What does this look like at my end of the market? Where are the organisations that would foster/network/encourage/publish this kind of art?
Of course, in this internet age, we are all our own agents, our own publicists… each one of us has the same chance, right? The same access to the communal megaphone? Except it does not seem to work like that. In a world in which we all have access to mass connection, it has remains as true as ever that the media IS the message.
Art that challenges can not play by the same rules. It must find other ways to support and sustain itself.
It is for this reason that I am involved in the Proost project, which is an attempt to network and bring together a community of artists around the intersection between faith and social justice. This is not about selling product (although this has to be part of it) rather it is about finding a collective voice.
This meet up is a chance to be part of what Proost might become. We would love you to be part of it.
Saturday will be a day for networking, sharing ideas and making art together.
There will be a ceilidh in the evening!
Sunday will be outward facing, inviting the wider community of Castlemilk into spaces we have created. There will be live Raku firings and other installations.
We are very grateful to St Oswalds, Kings Park Parish Church and to the wider diocese for hosting and trusting us.
Over the weekend, over 300 people marched through my home town of Sutton-in-Ashfield in a protest against… well that is not quite clear. Immigration? Sexual assault of a minor? A hotel that might/might not be taking in asylum seekers? A loss of white male identity?
What we do know is that it all started with this post from the local MP, Lee Anderson.
There is so much about this post that is misinformation, intended to fuel a particular narrative. It worked.
There is a real question of whether Anderson broke the law in revealing this information – if indeed it is true. Truth Against Hate (an organisation that seeks to work against racist amd hate) puts it this way;
…the individual in question has been charged, which means the case is now active under UK law. That means public statements which risk prejudicing the trial could be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act 1981.
Anderson also links the case to immigration and asylum policy, which some legal experts say could inflame tensions or risk stirring up hostility. We are not accusing anyone of a crime, this post simply asks whether his actions are appropriate or lawful.
If you believe this should be looked into, you can report it to your local police or via the national service:
This story has not been picked up (as far as I can see) by national news outlets – apart from a story in the Mail and the Express who have chosen to focus on the fact that a woman wearing a union jack dress was denied entry to a Wetherspoons pub in the middle of the town as police were trying to reduce tensions and alcohol intake. Of course, the right-wing red tops chose to depict this in a rather different kind of way.
As I watched the march unfolding via facebook, and messages from Michaela’s relatives who still live there, one thing that seemed obvious is that most of the people on the march – apart from a few drunk thugs – thought they were doing a good thing. They have been fed so many lies and half truths by Anderson and countless news and social medial outlets – often funded by shady ultra right wing sources – that they feel themselves to be the good guys in the face of some kind of liberal conspiracy. One sign being waved on the march read ‘Not far right, just concerned’.
The idea that the ‘hoards’ of young men ‘flooding’ into the country via the small boats constitute an existential threat to our country, particularly to our young women, has been pushed relentlessly via outlets such as GB news. This exchange is rather instructive;
The thing is, this is not new.
A certain kind of politics has ALWAYS sought to portray ‘the other’ as ‘the problem’. We know this of course, but yet it works anyway. The question I find myself asking is WHY does it work? How are we so easily taken in?
The answer is partly to do with fear. Firstly the fear of the black and brown outsider, secondly the great fear of those who already feel left behind and excluded of someone else replacing them, getting hold of those things that are scarce and almost out of reach. Housing, the NHS, benefits, jobs, education- exactly the themes that much of the narrative on GB news cycles through over and over again. They know that if people who feel already disadvantaged are presented with information that others are getting what they can not have for free, this will create a reaction – whether or not it is true.
I will not link to any of the news articles or videos, but you do not have to look hard to find articles and social media videos with titles like ‘Immigration is obliterating our communities’. It is all the same fear mongering, targetted at people who already feel excluded and worried about their futures. It is like spraying petrol at a hundred candles. Most commentators feel that this will inevitably lead to violence.
There is more though – for this to be believable, Anderson, Farage and their chums on GB news need ‘experts’ who can back up their outrageous claims with ‘research’ and apparently informed opinion. Much of this is filtered through so called ‘think tanks’ of the Tupton street variety.
The point of this piece though was to connect this post with the one I wrote yesterday. Ther report in The Guardian revealing the work to understand the links to racism and slavery at Edinburgh University.
Today, another article concerned itself with information released about the use by the far right of long ago discredited pseudo-science such as Phrenology and Eugenics.
The advent of modern genetics and human population data has shattered the idea that there are biologically distinct groups, or that humans that can be neatly categorised based on skin colour or external appearance. Genetic variation between populations is continuous and does not align with social, historical and cultural constructs of race. Race, as a genetic concept, does not exist.
Yet, says Angela Saini, author of a book on the return of race science, “people don’t stop believing falsehoods just because the evidence suggests they are wrong”. As IQ testing became the metric of choice for those seeking to draw conclusions about racial differences – often based on biased or fraudulent datasets – old, discredited arguments resurfaced.
In other words, the ways our Empire ancestors justified conquest and colonisation are still being used to justify the ‘othering’ and dehumanising of black and brown people – this time to gain political advantage.
With the recent rise in ethnic nationalism and the far right globally, a resurgence of interest is under way into theories of racial exceptionalism. Last year, the Guardian revealed that an international network of “race science” activists, backed by secret funding from a US tech entrepreneur, had been seeking to influence public debate. Discredited ideas on race, genetics and IQ have become staple topics of far-right online discourse.
“The ideas have absolutely not changed at all,” says Prof Rebecca Sear, an anthropologist at Brunel University of London and president of the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association. “If you can provide a measurement – IQ, skull size – that helps give racism a respectable gloss.”
I had a conversation with a dear friend recently about how we might approach information or facts on some of this material. I suggested to her that the word ‘hermaneutic’ is important. (There is more about the word here.)
We look at everything through a set of goggles – most of the time ones we don’t even know what we are wearing. This means that how we read things is distorted in ways that we are often only partially aware of.
It also means that information that we (and others) give out – including this blog – is shaped by the hermaneutic of the person or organisation that provided it. In this case, it then becomes important to try to understand this as a means of understanding what is being sold. Facts are dangerous things, easy to use in ways demanded by a particular hermaneutic. If we can understand the nature of that hermaneutic, then perhaps this might enable some compensational caution when these facts become too convenient for a partucular narrative- particularly when this create victims out of victims and suits the ends of people who already have too much power.
Imagine stepping away from the digital world and immersing yourself in the raw beauty of a tiny Hebridean island. What if you went there with a purpose, and deliberately called it a ‘pilgrimage’? What if you split your time there between laughing with friends and times of deep silence? What impact would such a time make in your life? Would it just be a nice interlude, or might it start to shape you in more profound ways? How might relationships that you formed there impact survive back in the real world, both in terms of the divine and profane?
On our most recent retreat, back in May, I took the opportunity to ask some of my friends these questions. We went to the island of Lunga, part of the Inner Hebrides, just the other side of the ‘Grey dogs’ tidal race from its more famous neighbour, Jura. This remote location, with its sense of wild beauty, provided the perfect backdrop for our trip, and this time, the sun was shining throughout. As we explored the island, we were reminded of the rich Celtic heritage and the spiritual significance of these islands – and how they connect us with an older spiriuality that was always connected to earth in ways that we have largely forgotten.
The retreat was more than just a getaway; it was a gathering of friends, old and new. We shared stories, laughter, and deep conversations, creating a temporary community that felt like home. I have often reflected on how these people, some of whom I see only once or twice a year, have become for me a kind of Anam Cara- deep soul-friends of the kind that ‘know’ me in ways that it is impossible to fully describe. Some of this is fostered by the island – the exposure and shared need for each other it places in us but also by the raw uncouth toilet humour that has two superpowers – it is very funny, but also strips out all pretense.
These video’s were recorded in a hurry, right at the end of our trip, as I it felt like an imposition, an indulgence. I am very grateful that some of my friends were gracious enough to take part.
I played cricket yesterday. It was the first match of the season, which we won, despite dropping at least 15 catches (I have a black finger of shame) and enjoying many comedy moments. So it was, stiff and sore, that I ventured into the garden early this morning to attend my ‘church’.
The birds sang hymns.
Deer in the thicket were present but unseen like the Holy Ghost.
I planted onion sets like one might lay down gifts at the altar.
I wove and tied up live willow as if wrestling with theology.
I mark my blessings one by one. No matter what may unfold in the future, I count this day – its beauty, it’s promised companionship and the health I now enjoy – as a gift I should treasure…
…and it all made me think about the earth that sustains us. The community that carries us. The inter-relatedness of everything…
…and the spirit (that I sometimes call god) who holds it all together – or perhaps it would be better to say ‘who loves it all by becoming what s/he loves’
I have been loving the start of the daily lent posts over on the proost.community blog. If you are needing something to give pause and focus during this season, you might want to check it out.
Even better, we are looking for contributions- poems, music, art, anything really.
Because today’s post was my poem, I thought I would replicate it here.
Spring window, Otter artwork by Sarah Woods.
This morning, up here in Scotland at least, the sun is shining, the sky is blue and the sea flat calm. If you had no connection to the world we are part of – if we were truly able to live in this moment alone – then it would be a day to truly glory in. In an age of smart phones and media feeds, many of us find this impossible. There is a background noise to our times that is oppressive. I will not list the reasons for this – you know already.
There is something that unites many people on all sides of the political spectrum just now – a sense that things are not right, that deep within our culture, our economics, our political systems, our ways of living life, something is not working.
Does this dichotomy remind anyone of anything? How about the beginning of 2020?
That was another glorious spring, with a different kind of oppressive background noise. It might be difficult sometimes to remember, this is not the first time that humans have lived like this. This is not the first epoch of injustice, of super-rich so-called-superheros, of wars and division making. Think about it.
So this morning I offer one of my own poems, written back in that 2020 springtime. It became part of a book illustrated by Si Smith.
Human races
The upright ape ascends from knapped flint to Silicon chip. He scratches sonnets in split slate and Solves problems (almost) as fast as he makes them. His alchemy promised gold, but instead just turned the Lights on, lighting a road ahead called Progress.
There is nothing new under the sun; the circle is still Unbroken. Empires rise whilst others fall; ours was Not the first at all. It turns out that our times were never Linear (just oscillation) and that for every page of Knowledge gained, another is forgotten.
But what are we, if not whisps of the same Spirit? We carry in us the same am-ness as all things that ever were, Hidden under thin skin and hubris, waiting for those moments Beneath stars or trees or tenderness when we remember; It is all about connection.
It has been a while since I have posted any new poetry here. This is not because I am not still writing, rather because the way that poetry allows me to explore ideas (which this blog is primarily about) fluctuates.
Today however, I am going to share a brand new poem, which makes some rather profound theological statements – ones that I know many of my friends will find troubling.
I’m not going to explore them here – at least, not yet. I am not even sure that I agree with them all just now.
This is one of the gifts of poetry – it can become it’s own voice, its own person. As well as a way of exploring then externalising, poetry can go further than this, and be part of a dialogue even with its author.
The dialogue does not even need to find agreement. It might be possible to hold more than one perspective – as if our theological constructs are just different poems.
It is in this space that this poem sits just now. In committing the words to keyboard and screen, I am able to stand back and consider them as if they were not mine.
Except they are mine. In writing them, I was consciously breaking through some barriers into places that feel new.
this fragile tent 