Flower Face - the story of Blodeuwedd

by Catriona Troth

Way back in the long ago, Prince Lleu had a curse- or some say an obligation - placed on him by his mother, Arianrhod, never to take a human woman as his wife. Well, Lleu did not like this; so he summoned the two sorcerors, Math and Gwydion and bade them conjure him a wife.

So Math and Gwydion took the flowers of the oak and the flowers of the broom and the flowers of the meadowsweet, and of them made the fairest and most beautiful maiden anyone had ever seen. And they named her Blodeuwedd.
*******

Wait, what? Blodeuwedd? As if it wasn’t bad enough that you conjure me up from a bunch of flowers for the express purpose of marrying this bloke Lleu, to cap it off, you’re going to call me Flower Face? Thanks a bunch.

Can we think about this for a minute? The guy’s mother doesn’t want him to take a wife. Which, as I see it, can only mean one of two things. Either mum is some seriously needy cow – in which case: Red Flag Warning. Or she knows something about her son. In which case, also, guy to avoid.

Did I get any say in this? Not Pygmalion likely. Magicians don’t have rules against sex trafficking. Why am I not surprised?

And the gilt was on this particular slice of gingerbread? Turns out Lleu is immortal. Or at any rate, he cannot be killed “during the day or night, nor indoors or outdoors, neither riding nor walking, not clothed and not naked, nor by any weapon lawfully made.”

Looked like I was stuck with the guy.

In the circumstances, could anyone blame me for taking up with the first presentable man who treats me like a woman and not his personal possession? King Gronw, it has to be said, was exceedingly handsome. And if Lleu was going to spend his time riding around Cymru, well, he shouldn’t be surprised if I made my own entertainment.

Okay, it was a teeny bit naughty of me to wheedle out of Lleu what the chink was in his immortal armour. (There always is one – magic’s like that.) And even naughtier to let it slip to Gronw, who had his own reasons to want Lleu out of the way. But I didn’t actually tell him to kill my husband at dusk, wrapped in a net, yada yada yada...

Anyway Gronw fluffed it. He only managed to wound Lleu, who turned into an eagle and flew away. And after you two magicians returned him to human form and nursed him back to health, you came after me (of course).

And how did you decide to punish me? You turned me into an owl. A bird hated and harassed by all other birds, you said. A bird who can only fly at night.

Well, suits me fine. Know something else about owls? We have extraordinary night vision and nearly silent wings. All the better to hunt you bastards down.

35 years ago today: the disrupted Peace March in Coventry at the heart of my novel, Ghost Town

It is 35 years since the Peace March in Coventry, organised to protest the murder of a young Sikh student, was met by skinheads yelling Nazi slogans.

The end of the march turned into a pitch battle between skinheads and young British Asians and their anti-racist supporters.

Today, the Coventry Telegraph has published a gallery of photographs taken on that day.  I have never seen most of these photos before - many of them were not published in the paper at the time. But many echo strongly the scene as I described it.

Here is the gallery of photos:

 http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/look-peaceful-racial-harmony-protest-11358066

And here is my description of the scene as the march disintegrated into violence:

****************************************************

The protestors came to a halt at the edge of the road, fists raised. Over their heads Baz could see the skinheads ranged across the entrance to the bus station. In between, two double lines of police, linked arm to arm, were trying to hold them apart by sheer weight of numbers. Dissonant shouts reverberated off the concrete walls of the surrounding buildings.

A little to the left, a lamppost stood on an island in the middle of the road. Baz elbowed his way out of the crowd and scrambled up, his feet balanced on the widest part, one arm wrapped round the upright, the other holding his camera. Bricks and bottles flew in both directions. A skinhead sat on the kerb, holding his arm. A young Asian stumbled away, blood running down his face. All the while, the thin blue line holding the two groups apart was washed this way and that, like seaweed on the tide.

This was no longer his city. The buildings were the same, but nothing else was familiar. It was as if the ground had opened up and spewed out a special kind of hell. Even the desi kids he’d marched with were barely recognisable.

As he thought this, the roar from the crowd reached a new pitch. Part of the Asian line stormed forward, arms linked, heads down. Baz spotted Vik at the apex of the charge, Saeed next to him. Across the road, the skinheads saw what was happening and stampeded towards them. They ripped through the police line and suddenly the opposing groups were head to head.

Baz zoomed in on the vortex of the action, and a face flashed across his lens. A broad face, reddened with acne. A face Maia had picked out in a photograph.

Startled, he pulled back, then struggled to locate him again. Anger, thickened with helplessness, seethed through him. No way to reach the bastard through that press of people, even if he tried. Nothing to do but keep the camera running.

And suddenly he saw him, in a space carved out of the mob, like a fighting ring without ropes. He had Vik in a headlock, but he must have been thrown off balance because Vik was driving forward, using his shoulder in the bastard’s gut. Then the two of them went down and all Baz could see was a shifting space in the roiling movement of the crowd.

He’d been praying that Vik didn’t have the knife on him but now, for a sick moment, he willed him to pull it out and plunge the blade into that bull neck. Then a police van came down Priory Street and more officers spilled out. They waded into the crowd, wielding truncheons, and heaved out Bull Neck. He had blood on his face. A few moments later, four more officers staggered out, carrying Vik by the arms and legs. They’d dragged his jeans and jacket half off him and several skinheads spat at his bare flesh as they passed.

Baz’s knees buckled and he almost lost his perch on the lamppost. But before he had time to think what might happen to Vik, he heard a pounding in the road. A line of mounted police officers galloped towards him, spread across the width of the road, their long batons raised high. Others had seen them too. People were screaming. Shoving frantically for the edge of the roadway. A young woman in a shalwar kameez tripped and those nearest to her yanked her to her feet.

If he stayed where he was, he was a sitting target. He managed one shot of the charge then let go of the lamppost and ran, heading for the protection of the arches. The road vibrated from the impact of the hooves. As they swept by, a baton caught him a glancing blow to his shoulder and pain shot up his arm. He lost control of his feet and stumbled over the kerb. His arms instinctively wrapped round his camera and his face hit the pavement. More pain, in his jaw this time. He curled into a ball as others scrambled over him, fleeing the charge. He got to his feet, spitting road grit.

His left shoulder ached from where the baton had struck him, as did most of his right side from where he had hit the road. But he seemed to be more or less in one piece, and the camera was undamaged. He took out a handkerchief and blotted blood from the graze down the side of his chin.

The horses wheeled for a second charge. At the same time, a phalanx of police moved down Priory Street, escorting a group of community leaders from the rally. Three or four of them were helped onto the roof of a police van. At the front of the group, Gurinder-ji stooped and took a loud hailer that one of the officers held out to him. He had egg splattered across the front of his jacket and his hand shook at little. A beer bottle sailed past the van and crashed in the road beyond. Gurinder-ji flinched, but stood firm. The loudspeaker squawked, then his voice came through, clear and steady.

“… remain calm and disperse quietly. I repeat, we ask you to remain calm and disperse quietly …”

You’re too late, Baz thought. They’ve got Vikram.

Why Undercover feels like one of the most important TV dramas for a long time

We are only three episodes into Peter Moffat’s drama, Undercover, on BBC1, and already it feels like one of the most important television events for years.

Why do I say that?

Well, for starters, the two lead actors – Sophie Okonedo and Adrian Lester - are both Black. They are playing a professional couple with a family. They have Black friends. They have a history of Black activism – especially Okonedo’s character, Maya, who is a lawyer working in both England and the US. Many of the supporting characters are Black.

We get to see a Black family doing ordinary things – eating pasta, driving to Cornwall, coping with the everyday problems of a special needs teenager. We see Okonedo and Lester in bed together, talking and having the sort of married-for-a-long-time sex that is as likely to end in hysterical laughter as grand passion.

Secondly, in the first few minutes of the programme, we are hit with the full horror of the system of capital punishment in the US – something that affects the Black population out of all proportion. We are told things I was aware of via Reprieve or the New Jim Crow – e.g. that you can’t serve on a jury for a capital case if you don’t support the death sentence, or that there are jails where the entire population is Black. But we see details that could never have imagined - such as the radio station that follows executions blow by blow, plays Arthur Brown’s ‘Fire’ with triumphalist glee and then does a countdown to the moment of the lethal injection is given.

But it is very easy for us in Britain to point at America and tell ourselves that all these problems are ‘over there.’ That we, here, have nothing to worry about. Undercover does not let us off the hook so easily. In the core of the story, back in London, we are forced to confront

• The consequences of police brutality and institutionalised racism in the UK

• The lengths the establishment are prepared to go to cover it up

• The cynical use of undercover policemen to build relationships with those under surveillance

Moffat has the compassion, too, to look at the question of the undercover policeman from both sides, to imagine the price paid by someone who gives up their own life to live that of their ‘legend.’

It is a shame that Undercover does not also showcase the work of a Black writer and director. But that doesn’t, I hope, detract from what Peter Moffat and James Hawes have achieved. There are little moments that demonstrate that Moffat has been listening with sensitivity. Moments like the conversation between Maya and the man she is defending on Death Row, dismissed by the Radio DJ as ‘a talk about hair products’ but which is really about Maya’s daughter and how she connects with her Black identity. Then there is throwaway line on the daughter’s arrival, as a new student, at her Oxford college. She is approached by an older Black student who has been assigned to be her ‘college mum.’ “It’s usually a mum and a dad,” she says, “but I hope you don’t mind having a single parent.” No need to spell out why they couldn’t find her a ‘college dad.’

Undercover is blowing me away, and I can’t wait to find where it takes us next. I just hope that, for once, this will prove to be a door opening to a new kind of normal, and not just a tick in a box marked ‘diversity’ that can then be safely forgotten about for another ten years.

Edit after watching final episode:
Wow! Yes I know there were some plot holes, but not nearly as many as you would think from reading Twitter. (Weren't people paying attention?) But there was a moment towards the end of the episode when I screamed so loudly that my son came running to see if I was all right. That was the level of my emotional investment in the story. Or more particularly, in the family at the heart of the story, so brilliantly created by Adrian Lester and Sophie Okonedo. Do I want to see a second series? Hell, yes!

Yvvette Edwards: finding inspiration from Monserrat to Hackney

In an event organised by Media Diversified, the launch of Yvvette Edwards’ second novel, The Mother, was held at Waterstones Piccadilly on 31st March.

Edwards, interviewed by Media Diversified founder, Joy Francis, proves to be softly spoken, self deprecating, engaging and – despite the often dark nature of her subject matter – very funny. Like many of her characters, she was brought up in Hackney and is of Montserratian-British heritage.

Francis begins by asking Edwards about the early inspirations for her writing.

Edwards says she was first inspired to write by her family’s reaction to the death of Elvis. “If you listened to my mother and aunts, you’d have thought a close family member had died ... I discovered writing could be very cathartic.”

As a young girl, she read ‘anything and everything,’ but she describes reading The Friends by Rosa Guy – with its black protagonist created by a black author – as a seminal moment.

She cites Stephen King as another author she admired. “But I’m getting old. My nerves can’t handle reading his stories any more.”

Her greatest love, though, is reserved for the Nobel prize winner, Toni Morrison. “It’s not too strong to say I worship Toni Morrison. Her language is so beautiful and the subjects she handles are so raw.”


Edwards then reads a passage from her debut novel, A cupboard full of coats, longlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2011. It is a passage where an old family friend, Lemon, cooks soup for Jinx, evoking memories of the past she has tried so hard to bury. Judging the laughter she evokes with certain lines, Edwards taps into many things shared across the Caribbean diaspora.

Francis asks her about the fact that both her books deal, in very different ways, with violence and in particular with knife crime.

Both books arose, in part, from ‘inciting incidents’ in her own life, she tells us. A cupboard full of coats was inspired by a friend who managed to rid herself of a violent partner, only to hear that the same man had murdered his next girlfriend; The Mother by a random and violent knife attack on her own stepson.

“I used to write about far more cheerful subjects, but when I was coming up to by 40th birthday, I think I discovered my mortality,” Edwards says. “I want to write about what isn’t written about – the stories and voices we don’t hear. I write about things I am troubled by.”

Edwards admits that she wrote several pieces before A cupboard full of coats – things that she would send off ‘without any editing’ and would be offended by any criticism she received in return, throw that piece away and start on something else.

“But then I got to the point in my life when I was thinking about what dreams I had to let go of, and what I needed to start taking seriously. I dragged myself up by my lapels and gave myself a talking to.”

And the result was A cupboard full of coats.

“The big difference was that I edited. I discovered that I loved it. That glee of finding the perfect word!”

How difficult had she found ‘that difficult second novel?’


Edwards revealed that she had written about 80 thousand words of another book that wasn’t working. “I asked myself all sorts of questions I’d never asked myself before, like ‘what are your themes?’ I could feel I was struggling. But it allowed me to work through the angst. And as soon I started working on The Mother, the writing flowed again.”

She chose to write from the perspective of a mother, rather than that of the kids experiencing knife crime, because “I wanted a narrator closer to me in age, someone who would ask the questions I wanted to ask, who would want to try and understand the perpetrator.”

Finally, Francis asked the very penetrating question, “How did writing The Mother change you?”

Writing dark books does take you to some dark places, Edwards admits. “But my views on young people and knife crime did undergo a massive shift. I thought I had a strong social conscience anyway, but this enhanced it. I think I am less judgemental, more empathetic.”

You can read my review of A Cupboard Full of Coats on Book Muse UK.

Young Muslim Writers' Awards

Yesterday I had the very great pleasure of attending the Young Muslim Writers' Awards, organised by Muslim Hands and sponsored by the Yusuf Islam Foundation.

Held in the Beveridge Hall in London University’s grand, Art Deco Senate House, this was a celebration of writing from children aged between 5 and 16 – writing that had been judged by authors including Louis de Bernières, Simon Brett, Brian Keaney, Roopa Farooki, Sufiya Ahmed and Rukhsana Khan.

The afternoon opened with a young girl reciting a passage from the Quran which exhorts man to read. Then the mood was flipped on its head with a skit from Islah Abdur-Rahman and Michael Truong of the YouTube hit The Corner Shop Show, squabbling over which of them should be allowed to submit a story to the Young Muslim Writers’ Awards.

The first award, for a story written by someone in Key Stage 1 (5-7 year olds) was presented by children’s writer Caryl Hart, who spoke of stories having the power to create empathy: “the key to combating inequality.”

Next up was 13 year old Zara Ayoub, whose story ‘It was a vampire bite’ has had almost 3 thousand reads on WattPad. She spoke wryly and maturely of finding sources of inspiration in reading and analysing book, but also in films and TV (“you parents will tell you shouldn’t watch too much TV”), in art, in free writing and in watching people. “There is nothing more inspiring than humanity. When I am on a long journey, I pass the time by making up stories about the people around me.” She then presented the award for KS1 poetry to Zakariya Robinson, who won the hearts of the audience by skipping shyly onto the stage and disappearing behind a podium that was almost twice his size.

Azfa Awad, herself a former refugee from Somalia and now Oxford Youth Ambassador and part of the Map of Me project with Half Moon Theatre, performed two exquisite poems, “Origins,” and “Celebration of Life.”

Author Roopa Farouki, presenting the KS2 short story prize, said, “There was passion, emotion, wisdom, humour, drama, meaning and real heart in all the stories

Tim Robertson of the Royal Society of Literature explained how the 500 Fellows of the Society are elected, and how each one signs a ledger, either with Byron’s quill or TS Elliot’s fountain pen. He went on to say how he hoped and believed that in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time, some of the young writers here would sign that ledger

Safeerah Mughal, who is clearly a talent to look out for, won both the Key Stage 4 short story prize for “A Peaceful Sleep” and the poetry prize for “A Quilt of Stars.” Her poem, which evokes a child with nothing but the sky to cover him, has also been selected to promote the Muslim Hands Street Child project. And the adorable Zakariya Robinson was called back up to the stage to receive, “Young Muslim Writer of the Year,” for writing, “well beyond his years.”

There was an acute awareness in the room of the particular burden carried by Muslims at this time – something encapsulated in judge Rukhsana Khan’s poem, ‘Not Guilty’, published in the competition booklet. It was addressed, directly or indirectly, by speaker after speaker.

Radio presenter Yasmin Kahn made everyone laugh with a story of teenage comeuppance and a mustard coloured jumper, before telling the audience, “It has never been more important that Muslim voices are heard.”

Maqsood Ahmed from Muslim Hands quoted Allama Iqbal, “the Pakistani Shakespeare”, saying “Let the young people be the teachers of their elders.”

The Chairman of Muslim Hands, Syed Lakhte Hassanain (having dryly admitted to having left his preprepared speech behind on his kitchen table) asked, “What do we place in our children’s hands? If we given them pens, they become writers. If we give them guns, they become killers.”

Zafar Ashraf of the Yusuf Islam Foundation, told us, “Just as it takes two hands to clap, words need both a writer and a reader. The pages of a book are brought to life only when they are opened.”

But perhaps the most powerful speech of all came from Ziauddin Yousafzai, father of Malala, the youngest ever Nobel Laureate, who was accepting a special award on behalf of his daughter. He declared, “We have to stop following blindly. We must keep the windows of our mind open. We must question everything. Everything. There lies the difference between education and indoctrination.” Then, to thunderous applause, he concluded, “These children are not just the future of our Muslim community. They are the future of the UK. They are the future of humanity.”

If there was any disappointment in the day, it was that we did not hear any of the award-winning stories and poems. Several of us who had been sitting together shared this thought with Maqsood Ahmed, who promised to consider both publishing this year’s winners in a newsletter or blog, and having readers on stage for next year’s winners.

Altogether, an inspiring and moving afternoon, and one to which I was privileged to have been invited.

Full List of Winners:

Key Stage 1 story: Abdul Maatin Riaz – The Pen with 70,000 Heads
Key Stage 1 poem: Zakariya Robinson – Kenning
Key Stage 2 story: Myra Durrani – The Haunted House Strikes Again
Key stage 2 poem: Aminah Rahman – Spring, Autumn and Winter
Key Stage 3 story: Imaan Maryam Irfan – Ivory Demons
Key Stage 3 poem: Naima Mohamend – Free Dubai
Key Stage 4 story: Safeerah Mughal – Peaceful Sleep
Key Stage 4 poem: Safeerah Mughal - Quilt of Stars

Young Muslim Writer of the Year: Zakariya Robinson “for writing beyond his years”

On the "I'd Rather Be a Rebel" Controversy

Many viewers of the film Suffragette may be unaware of the hurt and upset among people of colour caused by the sight of the four female stars wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the quotation from Emmeline Pankhurst.

I’d rather be a rebel than a slave

Why has that photo caused such outrage?

The original quotation spoke to the condition of women in the late nineteenth early 20th Century. Middle and upper class women might live in gilded cages, but they were bought and sold in matrimony for profit and prestige and were then expected to ‘do their duty’ and produce children. They were not allowed to work, had only recently been allowed to own any property (and in some places still could not), had no escape from their marriages and no say over the laws that bound them.

Working class women, meanwhile, might be forced to marry men with whom they had had what today would probably be considered non-consensual sex, must put up with whatever treatment their husbands meted out to them while working their fingers to the bone till they died of exhaustion or in childbirth – and likewise had no say over the laws that bound them.

Rebelling against those conditions was not something that could be undertaken lightly. Many of those who did rebel under Mrs Pankhurst’s banner paid a terrible price. Cat-and-mouse jail sentences in appalling conditions. Crude force feeding in a way that would now be classified as torture. (Read here about the treatment of Alice Paul and her colleagues in Virginia’s Occoquan Workhouse jail, news of which turned the tide of American opinion on women’s suffrage.)

Their lives were no better than...

And there’s the rub. What comparison do we make here?

I would suggest that what Mrs Pankhurst was doing - what many people still do when they use the word ‘slave’ - is conflating indentured servitude with chattel slavery. If you haven’t grown up with a visceral understanding of the depths of evil represented by chattel slavery, I suggest you start by reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved.

Daniel Jose Older said recently, in a different context, that slavery is an open wound. That we have been lying to ourselves about it for years. That people of colour don’t have the luxury of sugar coating it.

And that is why those t-shirts have been so hurtful to so many people.

The lives of these women were hard and constrained, but they cannot be compared to the lives of chattel slaves.

The risks they took should not be underestimated, but they are not commensurate of the risks of slave rebellions (like the Jamaican rebellion of 1831).

So is there a way of making the point that the film makers were trying to make without hurting those whose not-so-distant ancestors were chattel slaves? Without trivialising the issue of modern slavery?

And without losing the call to arms it represents for women like the Trinidadian mother and her daughter in Michelle Innis's She Called Me Mother, each snared by abusive marriages?

I’m going to suggest a change of wording. I can imagine the outcry from those who believe we shouldn't mess with the historical fact of Mrs Pankhurst’s words. But where should our first loyalty lie? To the past, or to the present? To quote scientist Jocelyn Bell Burnell on the Quaker concept of continual revelation – as you get more experience, you are supposed to revise your picture in the light of that new data.

If we come to understand that the words we choose can hurt others, we should change them.

So here goes. “I’d rather be a rebel than an indentured servant” doesn't make a very snappy slogan. So how about:

I’d rather be a rebel than a serf

Maybe that is no better. Maybe that just reveals another layer of my own tone-deafness that I am not aware of. And yes, I know, I am failing to address the other problem with Suffragette – that, like Stonewall, it whitewashes women of colour out of those rebel movements.

But perhaps it’s a start.

On the Man Booker and Marginalised Voices

It was very exciting, last night, to follow the Man Booker 2015 announcement on Twitter.

Unlike the Goldsmith's Prize, which has been much criticised this year for the lack of diversity its current shortlist, the Man Booker 2015 shortlist included a Nigerian author (Chigozie Obioma), a British Asian author (Sunjeev Sahota), an American author of Hawaiian ancestry (Hanya Yanagihara)  - and the eventual winner, Marlon James, who is from Jamaica.

I listened to James being interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning. He talked about his first manuscript being rejected 78 times - about giving up on writing so thoroughly that he not only destroyed the manuscript but went round all his friends' computers and deleted all the copies he could find there too.

I don't know how you come back from that, but luckily for us he did.

Unfortunately for me, the winning title, A Brief History of Seven Killings, is not brief. Nor is it a book you can take at a run. It's complex narrative with a cast of over 70 characters and multiple, disjointed points of view, some written in heavy dialect and all more or less as streams of consciousness, needs to be digested slowly. Right now, I am roughly halfway through, but I am inevitably going to be behind the curve reviewing it.

Update: my review of A Brief History of Seven Killings now published on BookMuse.

In the meantime, in honour of James's struggle to get his extraordinary voice heard, here are a sample of a diverse and sometimes marginalised voices I have recently reviewed for Book Muse UK. Follow the links to read the full reviews.

My Name is Not Easy by Debby Dahl Edwardson

"Edwardson captures, at times with exquisite poetry, the experience of a handful of Alaskan Iñupiaq and Athabaskan children shipped off to one of the now infamous residential boarding schools."

If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth
"A book about negotiating friendship and trust from across a chasm of cultural differences, from the subtleties of telephone etiquette to the logistics of using a two-hole privy in sub-zero temperatures. It also brims over with a love of music – especially the Beatles, Wings and Queen."

Londonstani by Gautam Malkani

"As a portrayal of angsty teenage boyhood, this book belongs in the tradition of Josef Svorecki’sThe Cowards and JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye."

Finding Arun by Marisha Pink

"The novel blends a sweet tale of self-discovery and sibling love with the unfolding of a dark family secret, all set against the background of one of India’s most holy cities."

Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA, by Luis J Rodriquez

Rodriguez’s account of La Vida Loca is raw – his depictions of sex, violence and drug taking sometimes eye-wateringly graphic. It needs to be. The life he depicts is real, and the young people the book is aimed at are living it.

Pyschoraag by Suhayl Saadi
"An exhausting, fascinating, thought-provoking book. Not for the faint-hearted but for those willing to take on the challenge, definitely worth it."

Dear Infidel by Tamim Sadikali 

"Sadikali does what the media has so singularly failed to do - show us shades and variations within the British Muslim community. Not between extremists and others – but within one ordinary family."

Finding Takri by Palo Stickland 

"At its heart, a complex and tender love triangle, one that mixes friendship, loyalty, duty and the desire for independence."

Diversity, Authenticity and some thoughts on Gift of the Raven

The question of diversity and authenticity in literature is something that I am passionately interested in. But it is also a tricky question for me. I have written two books, both of which have major characters with a non-white heritage. I have regularly questioned whether I can write authentically about such characters and, indeed, whether I have a right to even try.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached two people campaigning for greater diversity in literature and publishing – Debbie Reese, who runs the widely respected blog ‘American Indians in Children’s Literature’ and Farhana Shaikh, MD of Dahlia Publishing, based in Leicester, which champions diverse and regional writing in the UK– in order to interview them for the August 2015 edition of Words with Jam.

You can read those interviews on the WWJ blog page. What I want to do here is reflect on the issues the interviews with Debbie Reese raised for me and for my authorship of the novella, Gift of the Raven.

Clearly I can’t do the sort of dispassionate, professional assessment of my own work that someone like Debbie Reese would do. But I hope what follows is a reasonably honest review – and not a piece of self-justification masquerading as self-flagellation.

Gift of the Raven – self-critique

(NOTE: if you haven’t read Gift of the Raven, this contains mild spoilers.)

As Reese says in her interview, "Native children see stereotypes of themselves in books. They rarely see themselves accurately portrayed. The damage that that does to your existence is significant."

At the start of Gift of the Raven, my protagonist Terry is completely isolated from his father's culture. He's pieced together an identity for himself from the negative, distorted and stereotypical images available to him. And it's been deeply damaging.

So far so good. But if I try and assess the book against some of the criteria set out by Reese, it doesn't fare so well.

Do I have a relationship of trust with the Haida people?

No. I’ve never even visited the Haida Gwaii. I’ve had no direct contact with any Haida people and as far as I am aware, no one from the Haida Gwaii has ever read the book.

I always knew I could never write a story about a Haida child. Terry is not that. He is an abuses child who has lost all sense of his own identity.

Be that as it may, the heritage I gave him is not just any heritage. I have chosen to make it Haida. There are significant Haida characters in the book (his father and grandfather), I talk about Haida culture, I use a Haida-derived image on the cover and I have called the book Gift of the Raven, after the Haida story of the Raven and the sun. I can’t escape from the responsibility that places on me.


Have I respected a tribe’s right to ‘own’ their stories.

I don’t try to retell the Haida story of the Raven and the sun, but I do reference it. I even use it in my title and on my cover. Reese makes it clear that those stories belong to individual tribes. Do I have the right to use it in that way, even peripherally?

In my blurb, I talk about the ‘real meaning’ of the gift of the Raven. What I meant is that, for Terry, the gift is the artistic talent handed down to him from his grandfather, who was of the Raven moiety. But the words could be seen to imply that I am claiming some special understanding of the story’s meaning.

Later I have Joseph say (about his father, the master carver)

‘He used to say the artist must be a Trickster, like the Raven. He has to trick the wood into giving up its secrets and play tricks in people’s minds to make them see the things he sees. If he’s lucky—once in a lifetime—he will bring the gift of light to the world.

This is largely my interpretation – a way of linking Terry’s artistic talent with the story of the Raven, but might that be perceived as presumptuous at best, and at worst as cultural hijacking?


Do I treat indigenous people as if they existed only ‘long ago and far away’:

Growing up in Canada in the 1970s, I was familiar, on the one hand, with modern indigenous artists like Bill Reid, Benjamin Chee Chee and Rhonda Franks, and aware, on the other, of bitter disputes that were brewing, especially in Quebec, over Native land rights. More recently, there have been the Healing Walks, led by indigenous people, protesting the environmental damage caused by the Alberta Tar Sands. And this year saw the culmination of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, examining the shaming and painful history of Canada’s Residential School system that tore children away from their families and their cultures in an attempt to ‘kill the Indian’ – a chilling phrase that was not always a metaphor.

So, no, I never thought of Native Canadians as existing only in the past. My story is set in 1971 and talks about Native land rights cases that were getting underway at that time.


Were my sources for the story authentic? Have I failed to differentiate the rich diversity of indigenous culture?


I wrote Gift of the Raven fifteen years ago. I was living eight thousand km from the Haida Gwaii and the Internet was comparatively in its infancy. I researched the background of Terry’s father and grandfather as far as I was able, but I can’t be sure, now, how reliable or authentic my sources were.

I did read The Raven's Cry, by Christie Harris. Harris is a non-native author, but the book was written with the cooperation of artist, Bill Reid, and other Haida people.

When I published my book less than three years ago, though,  I didn’t go back and check my sources. And Reese is right – that was, in part, because I didn’t have a Native audience in mind. I was assuming that is would be read primarily by a white, British audience, and it was ‘good enough’ for them.

I’ve tried now to go back and looked at some websites that, as far as I can tell, are authoritative and specific to the Haida (e.g. http://www.haidanation.ca/ https://haidatlingit.wordpress.com )


So what do I think I may have got wrong?

At least some of Joseph tells Terry about Haida art seems to stand up (e.g. that the intent of those that carved the totem poles was that they should gently decay over time. Likewise, some of what Kate tells Terry seems to stand up (e.g. the cutting of hair as a sign of mourning.) But not everything.

For example:

Kate said the Indians believed that the dead didn’t go away. The ancestor spirits lived all around us in trees and birds and animals and stuff. I kind of liked the idea that Dad might be watching me.

I suspect this is exactly the sort of lazy, inaccurate generalisation that Reese deplores. A more accurate representation of Haida beliefs regarding ancestors can be found here:

http://www.repatriation.ca/index.html

And of the relationship with the natural world here:

http://www.afn.ca/index.php/en/honoring-earth 

Another thing I may well have misunderstood is the role of the eagle and raven divisions within the Haida. When Terry meets Joseph, Joseph tells him:

“The Haida are all members of two clans—the Ravens and the Eagles. You always married outside your own clan. And the children belonged to the clan of the mother ... Your grandfather was of the Raven clan. I am an Eagle, like my mother. And you—if you were part of the tribe, you would be a Raven too.”

Going back and looking at this question again, it would be more accurate to say there are many clans, each of which as an Eagle and a Raven ‘moiety.’ And yes, a man from the Eagle moiety would marry a Raven woman, and their children would be of the Raven moiety.

The important point that I missed was that this is a matrilineal descent. So Terry, having a non-Haida mother, would not necessarily be Haida, or a Raven, at all.

[Note that, according to the Constitution of the Haida Nation, ‘all people of Haida Ancestry are Haida citizens,’ but it also notes that they are a matrilineal society and that ‘heredity is an internal matter formalised through the ancient clan customs of the Haida Nation.’]

If this is the case, it could also impact on Joseph’s decision to marry, and have a child with, a non-Native woman. It seems likely that this would be something his own family, as well as his wife’s, would be concerned about, but I never touch on that.

Another critical point I ignore is that Terry’s father and grandfather are of the generations affected by the residential school system. How would that have affected the ability of someone of those generations to become a master carver? Or for that matter, a lawyer?

Even in 1971, would Mohawk boys from the reserve have attended the same elementary school as Terry?

Do I use loaded or inappropriate terms?

At the start of the book I use some fairly appalling language to refer to native Canadians – e.g. Terry seeing himself (and thinking of his father) as a warrior; references to scalping; referring to the Mohawk steelworkers as spidermen. That’s deliberate. I am trying to show what effect that language has on Terry’s own self image. But would it pass Reese’s “would you read this out loud to my daughter” test? I don’t know.

I also have the Mohawk boys in the playground refer to Terry as ‘little brave.’ That’s intended to be ironic. Once he has failed to answer the most basic questions about his heritage, they see him as just another white wannabe. But would they do use that sort of language?


Do I have a white person as the hero or ‘rescuer’ of Native people?

Kate is a white woman, and if she is not his saviour, then she is certainly the bridge to his salvation – the one who connects him with his father.

More problematically, she is the one who begins to tell him Native stories.

It would be good in many ways to make Kate an indigenous woman. The main thing that militates against this is that I think it is important Terry’s meeting with his father is his first encounter with an indigenous person he can respect –indeed, the first time it occurs to him that an indigenous person can be worthy of respect.


So what am I going to do about all this?

I am an indie author. I have no publisher to persuade or to answer to. If I recognise flaws in my own work, I have little excuse for not trying to fix them.

What's more this whole exercise started because I was planning to relaunch Gift of the Raven to give it a new lease of life, three years after publication. All the more reason to ensure that it is the best it can be before I put it out there again.

It would be easy enough to correct factual errors, or to alter the blurb. But what about use of the Haida Raven in the title, on my cover and more generally as a metaphor? Hard to imagine my story without those things, but if I have used them improperly, then perhaps it’s time to think again.

And what about my right to tell Terry’s story at all? That, at least, I hope I can defend.

Look out for the launch of a revised version of Gift of the Raven in the coming months!

You can read my review of Eric Gansworth's If I Ever Get Out of Here on Book Muse. This YA novel opens in the fall of 1975, just as I was leaving Canada. It is set on and around the Tuscarora reservation, on the American side of the Niagara River, less than a hundred miles from where I grew up. And his hero, Lewis, is around the same age as Terry. So the book, which is highly recommended by Reese, had profound resonances for me.

And you can read my overview of Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward's excellent book Writing the Other, about writing from perspectives different from your own,  in the Triskele Toolbox

Grand Indie Author Fair Giveaway

FANTASTIC PRIZES! Paperbacks, Ebooks, Swag. 

Enter Rafflecopter to Win!

Forty books up for grabs!

On Friday 17 April, Triskele Books and Foyles Bookshop welcome a myriad of authors to the 2015 Indie Author Fair. Here’s your chance to sample what’s on offer! Whatever your taste, we’ve got something special for you. 

Entry is easy and free for a chance to win one of FORTY different ebooks, paperbacks or swag bag prizes.

The Fair is part of the Indie Author Fringe Festival, run by The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi)/Indie ReCon, in association with The London Book Fair’s Book and Screen Week.

 ENTER BELOW TO WIN THESE FANTASTIC PRIZES!

Please Note: Paperbacks will only be posted to UK winners unless otherwise stated - but there are plenty of great ebooks available for everyone.

Click on the little circles to view all the different prizes on offer.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

List of Prizes - some paperbacks, some ebooks. 
A Time and Place Boxset - Triskele Books
Spirit of Lost Angels by Liza Perrat
Wolfsangel -  by Liza Perrat
Behind Closed Doors - by JJ Marsh
Cold Pressed - by JJ Marsh
Gift of the Raven - by Catriona Troth
Ghost Town - by Catriona Troth
Tristan & Iseult - by JD Smith
Rise of Zenobia - by JD Smith
Bookmuse Journal - Triskele Books
Delirium: The Rimbaud Delusion - Barbara Scott Emmett
Rats - by JW Hicks
Crimson Shore - by Gillian Hamer
Zappa’s Mam’s a Slapper - by John Lynch
Sharon Wright: Butterfly - by John Lynch
A Just and Upright Man - by John Lynch
A Shadow in Yucatan - by Philippa Rees
Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God
Social Engineer - by Ian Richardson
Invasion of Privacy - by Ian Richardson
Kurinji Flowers - by Clare Flynn
A Greater World by Clare Flynn
Through the Whirlpool - by Kevin Booth
A Sense of Occasion - the Chelmsford Stories
London Calling - by Clare Lydon
The Long Weekend - by Clare Lydon
Quick Change - by Debbie Young
Sell Your Books! - by Debbie Young
King's Crusade (A Seventeen Series Novel: Book 2) - by AD Starrling
Becoming Human (Book 1, Exilon 5 Trilogy) - by Eliza Green
Callum Fox & the Mousehole Ghost - by Amanda Hatter
The Changing Room; A British Comedy of Love, Loss and Laughter (UK only) - by Jane Turley
A Modern Life; sweet and salty short stories (UK reader) - by Jane Turley
Quantum Confessions - by Stephen Oram
Victoria's War - by Fenella Miller
Barbara's War - by Fenella Miller
God's Triangle - by Ian Richardson
Outside the Box: Women Writing Women

A Time and A Place

A few questions for you:

Question 1
I say “black and white”. You think:

A: Ebony and Ivory

B: 101 Dalmatians

C: The Specials

Image courtesy Creative Commons: The Specials by Chris Worden

Question 2

Time: 10 November, 1891. Place: Marseilles, France. What happened?

Question 3

If society breaks down and Wales goes feral, what do you want in your pocket?

A: A gun

B: A rat

C: A ferret

Image courtesy Creative Commons: Roman inside a hat by schadenfreude

Question 4

Place: Anglesey, North Wales. Time: 25/26 October 1859. What happened?

Question 5

All’s fair in love and war. But when both collide, where does loyalty lie?

A: With your country, family and pride

B: With your lover and your heart

C: With yourself

Image courtesy Creative Commons: Suite Française by Eric Huybrechts

Question 6

Time: AD267. Place: Palmyra, Syria. What happened?

Question 7

You uncover white-collar malpractice. Do you:

A: Turn a blind eye

B: Blow the whistle

C: Pull the trigger

Image courtesy Creative Commons: caution: itchy trigger finger by Flood G.

Intrigued? Answered mostly Cs? Think you know what happened?

Then we have just the thing for you:

A selection box filled with delicious tastes. Seven wickedly indulgent novels, all wrapped up in one box.

On sale exclusively from Amazon for a limited time from 3rd April 2015, but available to PRE-ORDER now. 

A Time & A Place – The Box Set.

Treat yourself to some Easter indulgence.
Who knows when and where you’ll discover…

My Debt to Klee Wick

The Dulwich Gallery in south east London is currently hosting to an exhibition called From the Forest to the Sea, the art of Emily Carr.

Carr is a Canadian artist who, from the late 19th to her death in 1945, constantly invented and reinvented new ways of depicting the spectacular landscapes and forests of the Northwest Pacific and of capturing the art of the indigenous people that the arrival of the colonists had all but wiped out.

To see so many of her painting all together in one place is extraordinary. You see the careful realism of her early work transform into experiments with impressionism after time spent in Paris. And then, after a hiatus when her work was rejected by critics and the public, comes her first encounter with Group of Seven, artists from eastern Canada, and Lauren Harris in particular. From that point on, she is experiments freely with style. Some have a solidity that borders on cubism, others a wild movement that have led to her being called ‘Canada’s van Gogh.’

Alongside her paintings, the Gallery is displaying other objects that put her work into context. Contemporary photographs of the totem poles that were among her favourite subjects. Her own drawings and sketches that reveal what an incredible draftswoman she was. A diary made during her first trip to Alaska with her sister, full of comic sketches and self-parodying stories. Examples of the indigenous art she loved – the bentwood boxes and woven hats and baskets, decorated with the Raven, Eagle, Heron, Whale...

Early on in her career, she acquired the nickname Klee Wick, or Laughing One from the Noo-cha-Noolth people of Vancouver island, with whom she communicated largely by way of smiles and gestures.

“Indian art broadened my seeing” she wrote. “I had been taught to see outsides only, not struggle to pierce ... The Indian caught first the inner intensity of his subject and worked outward to the surface.”

This is an exhibition I can recommend anyone to see. But for me it had a special poignancy. I grew up visiting the McMichael gallery in southern Ontario, seeing examples of indigenous art and the work of Emily Carr and the group of seven. I knew that there was a direct line from those experiences to my writing Gift of the Raven. But perhaps my debt to Emily Carr went even deeper than I realised.

In later life, when she could no longer travel up the coat to paint, Carr turned to writing, capturing her experiences in words almost as vividly as she did in paint. Take this description of Cumshawa on the Haida Gwaii:

“Cumshawa always seems to drip, aways to be blurred with mist, its foliage always to hang wet heavy. Cumshawa rain soaked my paper. Cumshawa rain trickled among my paints.”

Thirty years after I first read those words in her collections of sketches, Klee Wick, and with no direct memory of them, I wrote about Terry’s first trip to Haida Gwaii.

My grandfather’s totem loomed ahead, its Raven flying clear of the trees at the edge of the old village. It wasn’t alone. Five or six other poles stood in a loose semicircle, a little to one side. Their paint had worn away. I touched one of them and my finger left a dent in the soft cedar wood. One of them leaned crazily, its base rotted to pulp. One more lay at an angle on the ground, half covered in moss—held in shape by force of habit, I guess.

I felt in my rucksack for the sketch pad and the box of Conte crayons that Kate had given me. The thick watercolour paper was growing damp in the fog. When I started to draw, it changed the look of the pastilles. The crayon went on smooth, leaving a deeper colour. I wet my finger and rubbed at it, and the line softened. One colour bled into the next.

I worked on, letting the fog change the surface of the paper, trying things out, experimenting. Once or twice I dragged the crayon too hard and damaged the surface of the paper. But Kate’s big block of paper gave me freedom. I could make mistakes, start over. I wasn’t going to run out for a long time.

The debt I owe to Klee Wick runs very deep indeed. It was a joy to be reminded of it and a pleasure to acknowledge it.

From the Forest to the Sea runs from 1st Nov to 8th March at the Dulwich Gallery. Gallery Road, London, SE21 7AD

You can explore more about the art of Emily Carr here.

And you can learn about Lawren Harris and the Group of Seven here.

Make Your Own Indie Author Fair

“What about a fair? For indie authors.”
“There’s a thought. We could have a pop-up bookshop.”
“Yes, that should be easy enough to organise.”

Seven months later, we’re kneeling in the mud trying to attach a banner to the railings, before lugging boxes of books down a slippery flight of steps, setting up the pop-up media centre, meeting our sponsors, directing authors to their stalls, answering media enquiries and posing for photographs.

Forty authors, hundreds of books in a pop-up bookshop, eighteen readings, five sponsors, a thousand catalogues and hours of buzzing activity on a Sunday afternoon at the end of a London Underground line. All organised by Triskele Books, with the support of The Alliance of Independent Authors(ALLi) and Chorleywood bookshop.

At five o’clock, we celebrated with a well-deserved glass of wine and listened to the feedback. Our first ever Indie Author Fair had been a huge success.

But easy to organise? Not so much.

So what if we could seed the idea for a pop-up bookshop for indie authors around the world, so they become they become a regular part of the literary landscape?

Here we present our beginners’ guide.

Instructions for Your Own Indie Author Fair

• Start a long way in advance. It takes a lot of organising. We started planning this back in March and we were only just ready in November.

• Think about what you and your authors most want out of the event. Book sales? Recognition for indies? Creative display? A chance to share ideas and experiences? The answer will affect the kind of venue you look for.

• Don’t underestimate the response. Indie authors are starved of opportunities like this, and they will flock to join in! Plan the space you are going to need and find the right venue.

• Cultivate a relationship with a local indie bookstore or Lit Fest. They can share the load of booking and promotion – and it gives your event a certain recognition factor to the general public.

• Ask for a booking fee from authors, to encourage commitment, but keep it low, especially for a new, untried event.

• Expenses will creep up, so find sponsorship early on and budget carefully. We found that self-publishing service providers were eager to be involved – in return for a presence at the Fair.

• Think creatively about how best to promote the event to the public. We opted for a print catalogue featuring all of the authors. An expensive option but a great way to engage with readers. (You can read it online here.) We also ran a daily ‘meet the author’ feature. Promote on all channels – local media, libraries, book clubs, online. If you are including children’s authors, remember that you may need to promote that in a different way – focusing on local parents and schools.

• Create a community among your authors, so they are keen to support and promote one another. We created a Facebook group to keep participants up to date with the latest news.

• Put on a show. Readers love author events at bookstores. So include space for author readings and children’s story time. But think, too, about how to integrate that with time and space for visitors to browse, ask questions and chat to authors.

• See what added extras you can offer, to give the event even more of an edge. Can you provide opportunities for studio photographs? Recorded interviews? Press?

• Communicate clearly. Authors will have lots of questions, and you need to make sure that, even before the doors open to the public, everything behind the scenes runs as smoothly as possible.

Finally, let Triskele Books know how it went! We love hearing success stories from other indie authors.

admin@triskelebooks.co.uk

Good luck!

Indie Picks

As part of bringing the world of Indie Publishing to the Indie Author Fair at the Chorleywood Lit Fest, this autumn, we are encouraging everyone to send us their 'Indie Picks' - your recommendations of best indie books you have read.

So to get the ball rolling - here are my three Indie Picks:

Feral Youth by Polly Courtney

Lit Fic / Contemporary Fiction  

Unquestionably my book of 2013. Set during London's summer of riots, the story unfolds in the voice of 14 year old Alesha - homeless, disenfranchised, lost in the cracks of the system. Seen through her eyes, the riots are a rolling juggernaut of inevitability. A book to open your eyes and break your heart.


Read my full review here.

The Gift of Looking Closely by Al Brookes

Lit Fic / Psychological Thriller

Winner of the Guardian Self-Publishing Book of the Month, July 2014, this novel is the embodiment of what the self-pub revolution is all about. Written in the second person, addressing the impact of assisted suicide on those it leaves behind - this book is bold and challenging. But it is also an exquisitely written psychological thriller. Whether in the physical world or the psychological, Brookes has the gift of looking closely.

Read my full review here.

The Hurricane Lover by Joni Rodgers

Crime Thriller

Texan author, Joni Rodgers describes this book as her 'soul project'. This tense thriller is set in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina sweeps through the city and a sexually predatory serial killer takes advantage of the ensuing chaos. The disastrous politics of the failed clean-up operation and the almost equally disastrous chemistry between the two lead characters add depth to the story without ever overwhelming it.

Read my full review here.

Please send your Indie Picks to catriona.troth [at]gmail.com

Two Tone Remembered

I was already in the early stages of researching the background to my novel Ghost Town in 2000 when Bob Eaton’s Three Minute Heroes first came to the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. But the Internet was still a moody teenager back then, and Social Media barely a glint in a Harvard student’s eye, so by the time I stumbled on the existence of the Two-Tone musical, I’d missed both its original run and its short revival the following year.

model of set for Three Minute Heroes

I was delighted, just before Ghost Town came out, to interview Bob Eaton, here on this blog, about the genesis of his musical – and even more pleased a few weeks ago to hear that it was being revived for the new studio stage at the Belgrade.

The news came with the announcement of an appeal for people to bring their Ska memorabilia to the Belgrade on Saturday 26th July. The play’s producers were hoping to find rare footage of Ska gigs and Coventry ‘rude boys’ that they could project onto Patrick Connellan’s stripped down set. I decided to
go along to capture some of those memories.

The first treat of the day was to find Pauline Black and Gaps Hendrickson of The Selecter, and Neville Staple and Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers of The Specials there – looking cool and very 2-Tone! (The fact that I got to shake hands with Pauline Black almost made up for my appalling failure to catch her at the Penn Festival, just down the road from where I now live, only the week before!)

The second treat was to meet not only Pete Chambers, authority on all things to do with the Coventry music scene and the driving force behind 2-Tone Village and the Coventry Music Museum, but also Suky (Sukhbender) Singh, who as well as running a Ska Memorabilia shop at 2-Tone Village is the author of Concrete Jungle, a radio play that deals with the impact on young Asians of both 2-Tone and the racial tensions of 1981.

I was bowled over by the warmth of the reception I got from these guys. They actually took a copy of Ghost Town and put it in pride of place among the memorabilia they had on display. The story of that summer, so little known outside the city, is still something woven into the fabric of Coventry’s consciousness – and anything that touches on it is given a reception there unlike it would meet anywhere else. It made me feel proud to be a part of it.

Coventry still has its share of idiots like any other. But the city has a way of seeing them off, just as they did in 1981. Patrick Connellan told me that a few weeks back, a far-right group called Britain First tried to hold a demo not far from the Belgrade Theatre. Another group that happened to be protesting about the war in Gaza got wind of it and managed to keep them pinned down in a pub so they never made it onto the street.

Now that’s the city I remember!

Turn out for 2-Tone Remembered was not as good as the theatre might have hoped. So if you have any memorabilia from that era, then you can email the Belgrade with your photos and other memories at: 2Toneremembered@belgrade.co.uk. Mark the subject line ‘Ska’d For Life’. You can also share your memories via Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Belgradetheatre or via Twitter @BelgradeTheatre using the hashtag #2ToneRemembered

Exploring Human Rights Through Poetry

I first met Laila Sumpton at a poetry slam that took place in one of the oldest pubs in Buckinghamshire. In the course of the evening, we discovered a mutual interest in Human Rights issues, and in particular in the use of creative writing both therapeutically, to help those who have suffered trauma, and as a means of raising awareness of Human Rights issues.

After that slam, we kept in touch, and last year I interviewed Laila about the launch of In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights.

This unique anthology, rooted in an open call for submissions brings together poets from 18 countries, representing a total 38 different heritages. They range from established poets like Carol Ann Duffy and Ruth Padel to those who had never written a poem before – human rights lawyers, workers from NGOs and those for whom the issues raised are all too personal. It covers issues from the past – like the slave trade – and those – like the war in Syria – that are unfolding under our eyes today.

 (You can read my full interview with Laila here: http://www.wordswithjam.co.uk/2013/12/in-protest-150-poems-for-human-rights.html)

When I learnt that Laila was running Human Rights themed poetry workshops, I knew it was a perfect for my Quaker writer’s group – Q Writers, which meets once a month at High Wycombe Meeting House. Thus, last Tuesday, a dozen of us sat down, not knowing quite what to expect, to a workshop on the theme of Censorship and Freedom of Speech.

After introductions, we began in groups of four, brainstorming words and ideas we associated with censorship. We then each had ten minutes to produce a haiku (three lines of five, seven and five syllables respectively.)

Censorship makes us
Watch the words that pass our lips,
Stifling what offends.

Our second exercise was a look at a selection of definitions of Censorship, together with articles 18 and 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Laila asked us to highlight words and phrases that  struck us and then use them to create a ‘found poem.’

The words I underlined suggested to me the way that, in a repressive society, ordinary people may become complicit with the censors.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought,
But do not threaten my security by expressing your opinions,
Do not disturb me with your obscenities.
Suppress your ideas lest they emerge in my consciousness

Next, after a break for coffee, we divided a piece of paper into four columns.  Three were headed 

Silence is...               Censorship is...               Freedom is...

In the fourth column, we were given a list of descriptors: a place, a material, a type of weather, an object, a bird etc. For each of them, we had to create an association. We then chose one column that appealed to us and used our list of associations to create another poem.  

The words I found myself associating with ‘censorship’ conjured images of places such as Iran’s notorious Evin prison.

Censorship is...

A prison cell.
Arms wrapped round my body,
Hemp smothering mouth and nose,
The taste of dust choking me.
The sound of a key turning in a lock
A guard, black as a raven in his dirty uniform,
Returning to reinforce my silence.

Lastly, Laila read a poem from ‘In Protest’ written by David Ravello, a human rights lawyer imprisoned in La Picota prison in South America on trumped up murder charges. In the poem, Firmament, Ravello’s sense of isolation is distilled in the idea that, for long periods, he cannot even see the sky.

We were asked to write a poem in the form of a letter replying to Ravello.

Censorship has locked a ceiling
Over your head
Blocking out the sky.
Together, we will smash that ceiling with our protests.

The sun, the moon and the stars
Will shine again,
Warming your skin,
Lighting your way.

Right from the start, it was fascinating what a range of material came out of these exercises. From a shared starting point, we branched out in an entirely different direction.  We had poems that were written from the point of view of the censors, poems that looked at historic instances of censorship (such as the Welsh Not, forbidding children to speak in their mother tongue at school), beautiful poems that reflected on freedom and the positive aspects of silence and others that plunged right into the darkest sides of censorship.

Laila’s workshops usually run a little longer than the two and a half hours we have for Q Writers, so the time we had to work on each poem was compressed. Some people found this challenging, but for me it was liberating.  I have never been a poet, and never will be (as you can probably tell).  But with no time for the dreaded editor in my head to kick in, I surprised myself with what I managed to produce. 

If you would like to book a workshop with Laila for your own group, you can contact her via the Human Rights Consortium at London University:  hrc@sas.ac.uk