ONE FEBRUARY EVENING in 2005, 16 people sat squashed into sagging sofas and a
motley collection of chairs in a timber-beamed farmhouse in Devon. As is
usual on the first evening of an Arvon course, we were doing the
introductions. “Say your name, and something about your shoes,” I suggested,
borrowing a trick from the writer Philip Hensher, with whom I'd tutored my
very first Arvon, also at Totleigh Barton, five years previously. A
Palestinian man spoke first. The shoes he had on, he said, were the only
ones he could find that didn't hurt. Most shoes hurt because when he was
tortured, they “concentrated on legs”.
It was a chilling introduction to what was and remains one of the most
extraordinary weeks of my life. Teaching creative writing to a group of
strangers in an isolated place for five days is always an intense
experience. I'd done four or five Arvons by then. They'd been hard work but
also great fun. The Arvon Foundation has been running residential writing
courses for the public since 1968 - 40 years ago this year. Totleigh, an
11th-century manor farmhouse, was the first centre, founded by John Moat and
John Fairfax, with Lumb Bank in near Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire opening soon
after, leased from their friend, the poet Ted Hughes. There are now four
centres in all, each in a beautiful part of the country, including The
Hurst, in Shropshire, former home of the playwright John Osborne.
As well as its popular public courses, however, Arvon also runs partnership
weeks, bringing in a pre-existing group for five days, again tutored by two
professional writers. To date they have hosted such diverse gatherings as
disadvantaged children from Kidz Company, carers from the Princess Royal
Trust for Carers and a bunch of Romany travellers. This week was with
Write-to-Life - asylum-seekers and refugees from the Medical Foundation for
Victims of Torture.
From the moment they arrived, this group felt different. Berhanu, a gentle
Ethiopian man, got out of the taxi with three huge dishes of food - enough
for 20 people, one stacked on top of the other. He'd carried them all the
way from London on the train. That night, instead of the usual baked
potatoes and ham, we feasted on sweet and spicy lamb stew on big rounds of
injera, the sour Ethiopian bread, eating with our fingers.
Around the table were gathered faces from many of the most troubled parts of
the globe: Kurdish regions, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Syria,
Albania, Palestine, Ethiopia, Turkey, Somalia, South Africa. I began
memorising names. There was Timothe, his handsome face wide open, eyes
shining with intelligence. Girel, whose gaze shifted to the side when you
tried to meet it. The impeccably dressed Faraidon, who at 14 had been
running supplies to the Peshmergas, or rebel fighters, in the mountains of
Iraq. I was acutely aware of the gulf between myself and my students -
culturally, linguistically, experientially. What could I possibly give these
people? What I didn't realise was how much they would give me.
We arranged to start the first workshop at 10am the next day. At 9.45am I sat
with my co-tutor, the wise and wonderful poet Hubert Moore, at the kitchen
table, wondering where everyone was. At 9.59am, Aziz strode in. “So, what's
for breakfast?” he cried, clapping his hands and beaming, his white teeth
striking against his black skin. He proceeded to fry up a storm of eggs.
Over the course of the week, I came to realise that this distinctly
unBritish attitude towards time was something to be celebrated; these people
are independent thinkers, unafraid to break the rules. It made them a joy to
be with.
As tutors, Hubert's and my role was twofold: to trigger each person's stories
- perhaps as therapy, but really whatever stories wanted to come out - and
to help those who wanted to develop their prose and poetry technically. The
stories that emerged that week are not mine to tell; needless to say, they
ran the gamut of human emotion and experience. I had to brace myself before
each person read aloud, not knowing what I would hear next.
Some wrote freely; others struggled to write at all, their memories locked too
deep. But the group had a way of helping each other. One day someone wrote
about a shaft of sunlight coming through a prison cell window, how he felt a
stab of jealousy when it passed for whoever had it next. Yes, yes, cried
someone else. I would sit in a place where the sun would fall on a bit of my
skin, even just a small bit of it, he said.
So each story told brought trust, and another story emerged in its wake. As
they picked up new ways of writing, the momentum grew. I remember Mohsen
staying up until 3am working on a story, knowing he was writing differently
and excited by it, unable to put down his pen.
I will never forget the moment when Girel met my gaze and held it. When Nadine
baked us bread, when Ozgur gave a tentative smile. Watching the burgeoning
friendship between Timothe and Girel, the playfulness of one reawakening the
same in the other. Or Faraidon seeing me swing my leg over a stile while out
walking one afternoon, and announcing that I crossed it like a true
Peshmerga. Or the evening it started to snow, and Aziz said he'd never seen
snow before, and we went out into the yard and ran round with our mouths
open like children, snowflakes falling haphazardly out of the violet-blue
night.
On the last evening, everyone read aloud to the rest of the group - including
those who had struggled to write and read out at the start. I felt immensely
proud of my precious charges. Then the singing began. “In Congo we sing when
we are happy, and we sing when we are sad,” Timothe said, “and when we're
angry, and when we're in love, and when we fall out of love ...”
I thought about the extraordinary ways in which the human spirit rediscovers
optimism and trust, how writing was one of those ways. Nadine swung her
hips, Girel boomed a glorious, deep baritone, surprising us all, and Claude,
having announced that he'd be the first black pope, wandered outside,
singing to the stars: “Voici le jour, voici le jour que le Dieu a crée ...”
I felt my heart had been broken and put back together in wonderful new ways.
How the Arvon International Poetry Competition started
In 1968, the poets John Fairfax and John Moat organised a group of
schoolchildren to go to Devon for a week to work, live and eat cider-cooked
“poet's stew” together. “Potato, onion, carrot and scrag-end of lamb,”
Fairfax said. “We weren't having these kids - if they showed up - being
served any fancy ideas about life as a poet.” They did show up, to great
success, and the Arvon Foundation has never looked back.
Ted Hughes, the Poet Laureate and guest speaker that first week, said: “There
for the first time I met what has since become familiar, the indescribable,
strange, intense euphoria of a successful Arvon course.”
Each course runs from teatime on Monday to Saturday morning. Two established
writers, one guest writer and 16 students get together in one of four
countryside retreats to write - and cook. The locations are wonderfully
isolating, often requiring a walk or a drive to use mobile phones or the
internet.
Tutors have ranged from Beryl Bainbridge to Ian McEwan; past students have
included Wendy Cope and Susanna Clark - who also found love there. Everyone,
beginners and experienced writers alike, find, if not romance, an
encouraging and demanding spirit in which their writing is embraced. This is
“The Arvon Magic”.
There are more than 90 courses a year to suit specific writing ambitions,
including novels, TV and radio, poetry and theatre. Courses cost £499-£550,
but the Arvon charity raises funds to grant-aid those on low incomes.
The Arvon International Poetry Competition began in 1980. The deadline for
this year's is August 15 at 5pm. All ages and every kind of poem are
welcomed. (020-7931 7611; arvonfoundation.org/poetry)
