Quentin took these lovely Instagram portraits of some of the people who came on our workshop at Creator College for Refugee Week.
Click on an image to enlarge, and scroll through
Refugee Week Portraits
Yolk & Egg
Just keep swimming
Swimming swimming swimming
What do you do?
“Swim, swim, swim”
Lorna’s Poem
Running
Hearts beating
Can’t look back
Leaving everything behind
Escape
By Lorna W.
Jack’s Poems
It was really good to meet and chat to Jack and to talk about guitars, poems, Creator College and the workshop. Here is Jack’s evocative poem…
Fields
Rolling Colours
Forged by thought
Lordless lonely long nights
Open
Mountain ancient lost
Keepers of the beautiful
Life stained, the eternal
Thunderous ink clouds
Smudged dirty impenetrable
Lovers of misery
Lingering over buildings
By Jack Beaumont
Alison’s Poems
Alison’s Refugee Week poems from the Creator College workshop.
Chinquapin
Fear
Leaving home
Family has gone
Where do I go?
Safety
Hope
Hard travel
Harsh people around
Wish I was home
Safety
Haiku
Mountain
Above the farmhouse
Shelter water and profile
Threatening and safe
Three Words
The Tree
Planted in spring
Water and sunshine
Thirty years on
Now in woodland
By Alison Lewis
Lilybeth’s Poems
Goodbye Loved Ones
I’m leaving now
I’m going away
To my lovers
I can’t stay
It’s not you
It’s just me
A new country
That is me
A fresh start
A new life
A different culture
Will shine bright
Goodbye my friends
I’m going now
A new life
I start now
My name is Lily
I’m a flower
With flower power
With my personality
I shine bright
Share my story
It’s my life
In new places
I share life
What I have
Is my personality
I am polite
In new places
What I offer
It’s my name
Lily the flower
By Lilybeth Goodwillie
Sydell’s Poems in Golden Ink
Here are Sydell’s Poems, for our Hull Refugee week workshop, beautifully written in gold…
The Auricula Suite
I am drifting
I am following
Following the crowd
Crowds of leaves
Leaves are descending
Descending into fear
Fear of unknown
Unknown language spoken
Spoken broken words
Words of foreigners
Foreigners are scary
Scary foreign lands
Lands of people
People of England
England is beautiful
Beautiful green land
Land of unknown
Unknown foreign people
Horse
Shimmy, gallop
Bolt, shake, natter
Beauty, gentle, innocence, pride
Wild
Fig
Sweet, fruity
Velvety, soft, moist
Sweet, nature, touchable
Luxury, tempting
Edible, juicy
Exotic
What would you take with you?
My Nanas necklace
Three Words
The dog slept
The dog woke
The dog cried
The dog barked
The dog wagged
The love lasts
The love eats
The love gives
The love grows
The chef baked
The chef cooked
The chef chopped
The chef fried
The chef tired
The chef rolled
The chef proved
By Sydell Faith
Anne’s Poem, Sink or Swim
Anne’s evocative poem from our Refugee Week workshop at Creator College spans a year in a life…
Sink or Swim
I’ve no choice
They are shooting
Jump in now
Water so cold
Border far away
I am frightened
Please save me
Here’s the shore
Gasping, moaning, exhausted
A new future
One of happiness?
One year later
No – I am hated
They despise me
Take their jobs?
Take their girls?
It’s not true
I need help
To feel safe
To learn English
Get a job
Bring my family
All I need –
A peaceful life.
By Anne MacNamara
Dilzar is in the Building!
It was great to see Dilzar Shanga make an appearance at our workshop this week.
Ilona’s Beautiful Poems
Ilona wrote and read these beautiful poems at the My Ancestors were French Refugee Week workshop at Creator College…
Heart
Emotional mirror
Squeezed so tight
Will it ever recover?
Shattered
Forget your mother tongue
And accept strange sounds as yours
No choice left for you
Three Word Poem – The Air
The plain lands
And doors open
The air here
Smells so different
Vast flowery meadows
Lively smelly farms
Bread just baked
All is missing
Instead of all
Smog and dust
And fish shops…
So very strange
Why would you
Leave all this
And swap it
To such uncomfort?
“Some things happen
Time to go.
Try to find
Eager for experience”
Letters
Through the door
They pop inside
To make me
So very happy
“We send you
All our love
Just stay strong
‘Til the end”.
Every single postman
Bringing the letter
Made every morning
So much bearable.
Then the letters
Slowly got rarer
‘I’m still here!
I still remember!’
No more letters
To fill me
With home strength
For the end.
Yet, can’t stop
Thus I’m made
To find strength
Closer to me.
Ilona Urbikaite
Adam’s Poemed Illustration
We had a fabulous session at the My Ancestors Were French Exhibition, Workshop and Gig for Refugee Week on Wednesday. A big thanks to Alan, Mal and Sally at Hull’s Creator College for hosting the event.
There were some amazing and very evocative poems and art produced in the workshop that Louise & Amanda ran in the afternoon. Adam Wilson is the artist in residence at Creator College. His is not an illustrated poem, but a poemed illustration, ‘Stranger’.
Strangeness made Stranger
Language gap broadened
Nuances subtly lost
Meaning crisply missed
Refugee Week at Creator College
There were some amazing poems and art created at our My Ancestors were French workshop for Hull Refugee Week at Creator College yesterday. These guys Craig and Joe produced an awesome human beatbox rap. Keep an eye on the blog for more photos, work produced and film coming soon.
Your Ancestors were…?
It’s a poem, set to music, have a listen…
My ancestors were French,
And, for what it’s worth, faith ruled their lives.
Me, I’ve never been to church, and I haven’t been good.
But I’ve made my mark,
And I got in trouble,
Listening to my devil in the dark.
Y’know I’ve always landed on my feet,
And I’ve got a sense of history.
Yeah I’ve always landed on my feet,
And those flowers take me back…
The devil inside, he’s sittin’ on my shoulder,
Pushin’ me out so I’m sittin’ on a boulder
In the middle of the lake.
And the devil can’t swim,
So I’m feelin’ brave and I’m gonna get him.
It’s gonna get colder, if he falls in the lake.
He’ll be off my shoulder, off my back.
There’ll be no more trouble,
Gonna make a fresh start.
Stop listenin’ to the devil…
Gonna listen to my heart.
Gonna listen
To my heart.
© 2012 L. Duffy-Howard, Corey Clough-Howard
Jordi Savall in Salisbury
Jordi Savall, master of the viola da gamba at St Thomas Church, for the Ageas Salisbury International Arts Festival June 7th 2013. A superb musician and utterly cool.
We were lucky enough to meet the exceptional Jordi Savall once again this weekend at St Thomas Church, Salisbury, as part of the Ageas Salisbury International Arts Festival. Jordi played the most beautiful concert of Les Voix Humaines, mostly on his 17th century seven string English Barak Norman bass Viola da Gamba.
He is also very cool and gave Dexter a wink at the end of his third encore.
Click on an image to enlarge, and scroll through.
Rich took these beautiful photos © Richard Duffy-Howard
Rich & Lou Duffy-Howard
A Letter from New York
Look what arrived in the post this morning! It’s a lovely letter from our project friends in Historic Huguenot Street, New Paltz, New York State.
Have a look at their interesting website to find out all about them. Wouldn’t it be great to go and visit them sometime!
You can also follow the 19th century day to day diaries of Julia Lawrence Hasbrouk on Susan Stessin’s blog. The Hasbrouk family were one of the original twelve Huguenot families who patented the village of New Paltz in 1677, and records can trace the prominent Lawrence family to Hertsfordshire, England as early as 1580.
My Ancestors Were French 
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