Poetical Chester

All smiles after the hard work - photo credit Maureen Weldon

I was delighted to be asked to give a workshop with

Chester Poets, such a friendly and talented group of people! It was 

held in the Friends' Meeting House, set amid the city's truly 

arresting architecture. 

 

This was particularly appropriate as I'd chosen to introduce the 

work of William Stafford, who was a Quaker, and to look at both 

his poetry and his prose writings on the process and the teaching of 

writing.

When I first read him, a year ago now, his words had an immediate 

and inspiring effect. The quotes below are from two of his books –  

Crossing Unmarked Snow and You Must Revise your Life.

“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say 

as...someone who has found a process that will bring about new 

things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say 

them.”

“My morning writing would begin for me by getting up about four 

o'clock. ...I lie down on the living room couch in front of a 

big...picture window which looks out on our quiet neighbourhood. 

The giant fir trees, ...rhododendrons and so on outside. I'm lying 

there relaxed, I have a blank sheet in front of me. I put the date on 

top, and I start letting whatever swims into my attention get 

written down on the page....I welcome anything that comes along.  

I don't have any standards.......I am not trying to contend for a 

place in magazines or in books. I'm just letting my attention flow 

where it wants to flow. And the relaxation of it is part of the charm 

for me.”

Among his themes are

the linking of inner and outer – the world of actual events located 

in time and place, and the world of the imagination, the river of the 

inner life.

 

Writing as exploration & journey. In this journey there are no maps 

but you are accompanied by your own inner compass and guidance.

 

The importance of being authentic, rather than 'good'.

 

The necessity of making mistakes/the value of getting lost and of 

developing total trust and belief in your own processes.

I used one of his writing exercises as a starting point. The road to 

your home or town or to an imagined home where you would like 

to live.

The day was humid and sultry, the windows of the room were 

open, but it was hot inside, and silent, just the sound of 

concentration, (yes, it has its own sound, like the faintest hum of 

distant bees) notebook pages flicking over, people lifting bottles of 

water and replacing them, heads bent over pages, people wrote 

quickly, without editing their thoughts first, immersed in the 

present, going where their inner river took them. Faint murmur of 

voices from people sitting outside in the garden.

When people read out their work, there was a childhood memory 

of coming home from school with 'rooks rioting overhead'. More 

than one person followed a path or came to a gate or doorway 

where a threshold was crossed, marking a boundary into another 

world, only subtly different from this one.

There were contrasts between urban 'whirlpools round the ringroad' 

and rural, 'trees [that] protect me' and there were train journeys, 

rain on windows and nostalgia, there was a character setting out 

into a completely unknown world, reminding me of Parsifal the 

innocent, about to enter life's theatre and learn, through the 

mistakes he will make, about the ways, customs and meanings of 

the world, how it differs from his own imaginings, how it will 

eventually, reconnect with the larger world, of the imagination, of 

metaphor, of soul and spirit.

'...if you're lost enough, then the experience of now is your guide 

to what comes next. None of us knows what comes the next second.'

'Let me plead, not for ignoring advice from wherever it comes, but 

for allowing in your own life the freedom to pay attention to your 

feelings while finding your way through language. ….........Into the 

unknown you must plunge, carrying your compass.....You must 

make 'mistakes'; that is, you must explore what has not been 

mapped out for you......Like Don Quixote ...you must loosen the 

reins and go blundering into adventures that await any traveller 

in this multilevel world …..and like Don Quixote you must expect 

some disasters. You must write your bad poems and stories; for to 

write carefully as you rove forward is to guarantee that you will 

not find the unknown, the risky, the surprising. Art is an activity in 

which the actual feel of doing it must be your guide; hence the 

need for confidence, courage, independence.'

William Stafford

For the second exercise, since William Stafford stresses the 

importance of 'being lost' – a remembered or imagined lostness. 

One of the enjoyable things about using a fairly broad topic like 

this, is the different ways that people will interpret it. 

Being lost in some cases involved that powerful feeling of lines of 

connection, linking trails and sense impressions dissolving, being 

rubbed out, vanishing and mocking your sense of being part of 

anything beyond you, and the acute and sudden alienation that can 

bring. This usually involved being on mountains and in unknown 

terrain. The word panic came up a few times, reminding of the 

nature god Pan, at home in his terrain and challenging your 

presence there. Will you pass the test and be allowed to find your 

way out of the wood or down from the mountain?

There was a lost object, and the blurring of a visual sense, an ironic 

take on a 'riverside walk' where 'you can't get lost' if you keep the 

river on your right, but which actually went nowhere near the river, 

highlighting the strange logic of public signs! Another involved the 

loss of a moral compass, a 'man without maps' and there was an 

atmospheric description of a 'lost' building, eerily abandoned, but 

with its own individual sense of desolation.  

In David Subacchi's Journey, we get the sense of moving fast 

through landscape, one image coming into focus then falling away 

behind, Time here has rhythm and urgency, as we move through 

history as well as space.

 

JOURNEY

Cardigan Bay at my back leaving screaming gulls

And postcard sunsets behind

Climbing afforested hills

Through grey ribbon villages

Past the long abandoned spaces

Of stone churches and Victorian school rooms

Up over Eisteddfa the moon landscape

Where in winter snow descends

Like a theatre fire curtain

Blocking passage to all

On, on eastwards by-passing Llanidloes

With its ancient market hall

Following a road that once was a railway

To industrial Newtown burial place of Robert Owen

And scene of Chartist riots

A place where labour was sold to factory and mill owner

Then forward to Welshpool’s agricultural wealth

Where dignity was sold to Lord Powys

North now in and out of England’s border

Rodney’s Pillar glaring down over Criggion’s quarry

To Oswestry more Welsh than English

Yet part of red soiled Shropshire

To arrive at Bersham where high above

The last relic of coal mining

Dominates the landscape for miles

Desperate attempts to grow trees

Failing miserably to disguise

That this is a slag heap

And so to Wrexham biggest town in North Wales

Border town, garrison town, once a mining

Brewing, brick and steel making town

Now a battered town

Scrambling for its dignity

Holding the line

Between survival

And obscurity.

David Subacchi

July 2014

And in his Empty Property, while it is the house that is 'lost', the 

powerful energy of abandonment that inhabits it seems to prowl 

like a wounded creature protecting its own space.

 

EMPTY PROPERTY

The front door was stiff

Requiring a kick to open

The sort of kick I imagine

Policemen or bailiffs deliver

When enforcing entry

As is normal when houses

Have been vacant

For some time

The smell of decay

Hung everywhere

With pen, paper and clipboard

I made cursory notes

More to prove I had inspected

Than to record anything

That might be worthwhile

A glance at every

Decaying room was enough

To satisfy me

That this was really

A bit of a dump

Turning to exit

The door resisted

Refusing to budge

As if showing contempt

For my disrespect

In panic I forced myself

Out the back way

Into an overgrown garden

Rusted hinges

Groaning in protest

Not looking back

I stepped over a garden wall

Into the alley way

Looking this way and that

Blushing with embarrassment

Behind me the empty house

Sneered in its loneliness

As I limped back to the car

My throat dry

Every muscle aching.

David Subacchi July 2014

(Both of these were written during the workshop, and are 

reproduced here with his permission)

 

Here you can read about David Feela's encounter with William 

Stafford

 

And after the workshop, there was just time to walk along 

Chester's walls overlooking the racecourse, and watch the last race 

of the day!