Jerusalem without Jam
(A John Hewitt Summer School reflection)
John Hewitt has murdered my raspberry jam.
At the start of the week’s summer school, I say this with regret. I smile, lopsided. I offer up my back-garden raspberries - to the birds. Perhaps next year...
Day 1. ‘Narratives.’ The recording of victim’s and survivor’s narratives. The challenge in hearing unfamiliar narratives. How narratives shape what we believe about ourselves. Missing narratives. Who controls narratives? The Commissioner for Victims and Survivors begins by quoting Hewitt - ‘This ruptured country,’ our ‘poisoned memory.’ I sit straighter and ponder the ‘war of words’ around past and present harm. What if peace is harder than war? Am I sceptical or cynical? This place, I believe, is not yet irredeemably broken. In my head, Damian Gorman’s poem says, ‘If I was us, I wouldn’t start from here...’ and Heaney replies ‘A further shore is reachable from here.’ I ask, ‘What narrative do we wish to tell of here?’
Day 2. ‘Validity.’ Terence Brown describes Hewitt’s ‘Faith that artistic process has absolute validity.’ Poet Mona Arshi speaks of ‘The validity of littleness in big things.’ Ann Cleves speaks of ‘Writing the book you want to write.’ Tangling with thoughts feels like time well spent and I feel like I ought to read more and I’m validated with the comment that other writers too live with a third-party narrative running through their heads... Our short story workshop suggests ‘Begin by posing a ‘What If?’ question or by drawing on a memory... Create a shift in knowledge or moral authority.’ This resonates. This place lacks moral authority and is drunk with past memory and future what ifs.
Day 3. ‘Truth.’ Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi has me questioning cultural truths of agenting and publishing. Why does a Ugandan consciously not write the colonial era? Because Europe reads this and thinks about itself, not the Ugandans. Look what WE did... Yet if a book is ‘too African’ it can be rejected by an industry concentrated round a different latitude. What if my writing needs latitude? I’m wondering if this is why I refuse to write about The Troubles? Because it is expected? The story of now, that legacy, is where I am at. I want people to grasp the greys of it - that peace is not a simple thing, nor we who struggle for it. Susan McKay speaks of ‘A residue of sadness that is never entirely dispelled.’ Air conditioning whirs. People breathe through their noses. My eyes feel cold. There was one death every three days, too many murders for front pages, the saying of prayers in balaclavas and dog-collars, guns used in murders handed from authorities to kill again. Some victims groups perpetuate pain and others put it into perspective. All of these are truths. Can fiction write this?
Day 4. ‘Process.’ The writing process. The peace process. We write because? What Kevin Barry said... We write because we’re processing. At least as women, we are no-longer processed out of history, are we? I listen to the lecture, challenging the invisibility of women. I am reminded of the loss of my jam. Through a century of women ‘Those who were revolutionaries also made jam.’ And of women writers? Can we work, mother, care and write? Write for 20 years with no commercial success? Write 200,000 words and cut it to 40,000? Write first thing in the morning, talking to no-one? My world is different. Different is not impossible.
Day 5. ‘Voice.’ ‘England has always loomed much larger in the Irish consciousness than vice-versa.’ The jammed lecture hall at 9.45am on Friday to consider the border, witnesses to this truth - a pang of something unsettled but which must be voiced about current politics. Our researchers speak. Our writers write. Our singers sing. We give voice. Clear. Intelligent. Eloquent. Leadership is deaf. Selectively.
Can we collectively turn up the volume? A blank page and pen can write narrative, speak truths, give voice. Sitting in sunshine on the stone steps of the Marketplace Theatre, I receive a phone-call. Perhaps I will be given a voice. I close my eyes and try to understand the enormity of it. I begin to suspect this will be an annual pilgrimage. For me, the John Hewitt Summer School will always be the place, the moment, I agreed a publishing deal.
John Hewitt has murdered my raspberry jam. At the start of the week’s summer school, I said this with regret. Cry no more. I can live with strawberry. Unless the sun shines more in May, my neat rows of jam jars can grow dust. Blackbirds can gorge my garden. I won’t see. Nor care. I won’t be there.