Perspectives
Published: 13 August 2016
Article Info
The Homeless Library exhibition in The Poetry Library at London's Southbank Centre is not only a history of homelessness in the UK, but also a living history, incorporating interviews, art books, and poetry from contemporary homeless people and those “who witnessed or experienced homelessness from the 1930s onwards”.
Lawrence McGill goes by the pen name Riff Raff, and has created dozens of handmade books that comprise part of this exhibition. He's friendly, thoughtful, and jots down clever quips as he points out his books, which guests are invited to handle with care, using white archival gloves.
Artist Lois Blackburn and poet Philip Davenport, who established the project, speak highly of the changes they've seen in Lawrence and others since they first started attending creative writing workshops. The homeless people who shared their stories experienced a safe space in the project's main venues, the Booth Centre in Manchester and the Wellspring in Stockport. Once a safe space was established, the means of expressing painful or frightening emotions could be explored. Writing workshops fostered a sense of trust in other people, and a feeling of community and shared experience. Blackburn and Davenport explain: “our very simple idea is to help people be seen and heard—and to believe in themselves. Several people involved found that these discussions, and making the poems and artworks, were a transformative experience. Two participants directly attribute this project to them no longer being homeless.”
Along with the poems and books created in the workshops, Blackburn and Davenport carefully collected stories. They hand-wrote interviews when people were uncomfortable with tape recorders, and checked and edited stories with their speakers before going to print. The care and respect shown for all the stories comes through. “A” was their anonymous guide, a homeless person who helped them gain the trust of the homeless community in Manchester. A says, “I was an alcoholic, left my house, everything. My dad died in my arms when I was 12 years old, Christmas Day. I was put out to foster parents.”
A's story, alongside those of other homeless people, can be found in The Homeless Library: A Catalogue of Homeless Lives, a free e-book that accompanies the project. Footnotes contextualise these powerful narratives. The first footnote reads: “Early death is a central feature of being homeless: current average age at death for street people is 48.”
Already an important community project, The Homeless Library has extended its impact, and some of the participants were invited to speak in the UK Parliament. Amanda Croome, CEO of the Booth Centre, says: “You don't solve homelessness by putting a roof over [someone's] head. I've never met anyone in 25 years [of working with homeless people] who doesn't want some version of these three things: positive relationships, safety, and a purpose.” She describes travelling from Manchester to Parliament with the writing group: “We helped one man put his sleeping bag into left luggage at the station. He travelled down with us, spoke at the Houses of Parliament, and took the train back. We got his sleeping bag out of left luggage, and that night he went back to sleep on the street.”
As well as building confidence and security through the workshops, Croome explains that part of her work is managing expectations. Speaking in Parliament didn't save that man from sleeping rough the same night, she explained. But getting people's voices heard is a start. “If people do rehab to remove addictions”, she explains, “but don't have something meaningful to replace them, then it'll fail. That's why the activities we do here [at the Booth Centre] are so important.”
The books and stories from The Homeless Library carry an impressive emotional and political weight. The energy that went into creating the books comes through in their reading. We are reminded that each time a story is told, there is a person behind it, doing the telling.
The Homeless Library The Poetry Library, Southbank Centre, Royal Festival Hall, London, UK, until Sept 18, 2016 http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/exhibitions/current/?id=115
For the free e-book The Homeless Library: A Catalogue of Homeless Lives see http://www.blurb.co.uk/ebooks/586385-the-homeless-library
