I was gathering together my dozen or so readers for a poetry recital in aid of Amnesty International, when I hit a snag. I needed an immigrant! Well at least one!! Many of the poems I had chosen came from a collection of writings presented by ex-hostage John McCarthy. They are written by victims of torture and state oppression around the world, and the last one I had chosen was titled ‘The Good Immigrant.’ It’s sad, but true, that virtually all the members of my Anglican congregation are white and middle-class, and Horsham in Sussex where I live, is much the same. The poem details the painstaking and often soul destroying process for the refugee of gaining admittance to a country, and it would sound wrong with home-counties vowels! Then Rachel blurted out, 'what about Bartek, Rosemary’s Polish lodger.' At first, Bartek was extremely nervous about the idea. His English is somewhat halting, and the poem is longish. We chatted, and I assured him he would be fine. Rosemary, a teacher, promised to give him all the coaching he needed. I had my immigrant! The day of the recital came, and the readers filed into the church hall for a rehearsal. Fourteen art installations, illustrating the poems, had been erected in the church and hall, rather like The Stations of the Cross. Card board boxes weighted down with bricks and draped with black satin were used to create a plinth, and upon them were placed sculptures crafted by members of the congregation. Some were deliberately basic like a Starbuck's Coffee carton and empty sandwich wrapper placed haphazardly on a copy of The Big Issue. Others were more elaborate or aesthetic, such as a large church candle swathed in chains, reflecting the Amnesty Inernational symbol. The poems were pinned to the satin drapes, so that once they had been read, the audience could wander around the installations and reflect more deeply on their meaning. Many of the readers had not met before so there was a slight tension at having to stand and deliver to one another, as they were summoned to the stage. After all, strange as it seems, public speaking is, with snakes and spiders, one of our great phobias. It probably comes from the intense exposure of being in the spotlight, especially when you are called upon to express strong emotions. It’s fine if you’re used to it, but if your not, something as organic as breathing, or holding a piece of paper, becomes strangely troublesome. As I said Bartek’s poem was the last one, which probably didn’t help his nerves. However this fine figure of a man in his late twenties strode bravely onto the platform and began to speak. No one had met Bartek before apart from me, and Rosemary who had come as chaperone, so when he announced the title of the poem in his thick eastern European brogue, you could sense a strange intensification of mood, as folk looked up from their own readings with anticipation. There had been some excellent recitals by highly accomplished performers, and here was a lad who was struggling a little to get his words out, and find a fluency and rhythm in his voice. Somehow that added even greater poignancy to the poem, especially for lines such as: ‘You have to blend in/ with your surroundings/ To fit in your place/ To lower your eyes/ Or if you can’t do that/ Then learn to lower your expectations. ' The poem concludes with the ironic sentence: 'If you can manage this/ There is a good chance of you being accepted/ But there is also a danger/ You won’t want in. ' After Bartek had read these lines with a gentle but firm tone, there was a silence, and then a spontaneous round of applause from his fellow readers. Not bad for a first rehearsal! I had given most of the readers some kind of encouragement or constructive criticism after their rehearsal, but time had run out and the readers were scuttling away for a bite of supper. As he left, Bartek admitted he had felt stressed, since he had done so little of this before, certainly not in this country. I guess it probably felt a bit like being up before a tribunal to argue your right for citizenship. Bartek confided that he could identify with many of the sentiments of the poet Maria Jastrzebska, from his early days arriving in Britain some years ago. In the hour or so break before the recital, Bartek had gone through the poem on his doorstep while Rosemary had made his supper. She occasionally shouted through the door, ‘I can’t hear you,’ to get him to really release the power of the verse. It certainly did the trick! That evening Bartek was in total control on stage. When he got to the lines ‘You must cover up your strength/ As well as your exhaustion/Except for when it shows your working/ Twice as hard as anyone else,’ his voice cracked slightly, and afterwards he admitted that he had felt a deep connection reading the poem in front of our audience. He had brought some friends, older immigrants along with him, and we all oohed and aaahed about the impact he had made as we celebrated his success. One of the ladies said in an accent like Bartek’s. 'You have to experience, it to express it. ' Perhaps so, perhaps not. Another reader who made a powerful impression on us all, read Ariel Dorfman’s poem, ‘Hope,’ about a father whose son has been taken and tortured by the state and whose ‘…greatest/ Hope Will be to find out/ Next year/That they’re still torturing him/Eight months later/ And he may might could be/ Still alive.’ Davie, a Scot who works as a G. P. at Forde Open Prison, recited these lines with such intensity that it made me wonder about the anguished stories he may have heard in the course of duty, that perhaps subconsciously aroused such passion in him now. The point is, that however they do it, poems inspire empathy. They establish a bond between the poet, his subject, and the reader and then by extension their audience. It is a great gift to pass on, because without it we are left ‘comfortably numb’ and to be pitied, perhaps even more than the victims of torture who are far form comfortable or numb!!! The installations were left up for church the next morning, for the benefit of those who hadn’t managed to make it to the recital. A well meaning warden had initially removed them to the side, to clear a path to the communion rail. I restored them as tactfully as I could to their prominent position at the front, and it seemed to me a fitting symbol that communicants had to negotiate their way through this obstruction on their way to share in the body and blood of yet another victim of state oppression. I hope we got the point. £250 was raised in any case for Amnesty International ,thanks to Bartek, Davie and the rest of us. Rosemary tells me that Bartek is keen to ask his Priest to let him read The Lesson in church occasionally, from now on. I'm sure that would warm God's heart greatly.
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