Blog: THE COLD BOAT 0.1- Tracy Gillman and Joanne Clement

The first Cold Boat/Poetry of Witness pop-up event was held in the Percy Building at Newcastle University on the 27th of May this year, as a responsive action to continue the conversation begun by Carolyn Forché and Shami Chakrabarti for a Newcastle Centre of the Literary Arts (NCLA) event about poetry and human rights.

This first Cold Boat pop-up event was curated by Joanne Clement and Tracy Gillman and pulled together in a matter of days - orchestrated via Facebook and Twitter. Poets and collaborators were invited to write and read a poem of their own responding to #poetryofwitness and to bring along and share a poem from the wider archive.

Carolyn Forché read a very new work in progress, which she is going to name 'The Cold Boat' in honour of the event.

She said events like this are a camp fire spreading its light to the participants and beyond, and that it is not just the writing of poetry of witness which has meaning, but also the act of listening is a testimony. This metaphor put me in mind of a fire constructed from cardboard and damp wood on the edge of a motorway somewhere on a contested border by refugees fleeing war and and persecution in Syria, Afghanistan and countless other lands where conflict and poverty hold sway.

We presented Carolyn with a set of sea glass earrings from Seaham, Co Durham - testimony to our post-industrial and conflicted landscape.

As a Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at Newcastle University Carolyn will be back in May 2017 and we very much look forward to spending more time with her. and we eagerly anticipate sharing and collaborating with you all out there on forthcoming events, workshops and podcasts. For a running selection of the poetry shared see our Poetry of Witness page.