A group of us were intending to meet on Monday at the Burnlaw Centre in Northumberland for a Spring Equinox Renga – part of our cycle through the year since last Summer Solstice at Bywell. In the light of everyone’s changed circumstances, I invited a wider group of people to write and share a few renga verses – single haiku-like three liners and two liners – as they tuned into Spring’s return over the weekend.
It was an experiment in connecting creatively across the new spaces between us and I didn’t know what would happen.
I felt very touched by all the verses people sent. There was a real sense of presence across the distance. Maybe not quite as much as if we were all in sitting in the Beautiful Room at Burnlaw together or on the benches round the fire pit in the field, with the curlews calling above our heads, but the form and focus of the renga held us all in a beautiful space of our own making – inside and out at the same time – at a safe distance – over the course of several days.
Several people mentioned that it was helpful at this strange time to open the senses to the world around them and be more aware of what was going on. It’s something anyone can do. Even just one verse a day works as a good gauge of your state of mind and a record of your activities, thoughts and feelings. The renga we made in this way, it seems to me, is an important document of what this unprecedented time has been like for twelve people in the North of England, alone and together, this past weekend.
As often happens when we sit together for a renga, it was interesting to see ideas and phrases shared, overlapping. I wanted to honour this very different context and way of working, as well as the sheer abundance of verses, and so created a new, longer than usual form, doubling the schema in a specular fashion – where the themes are mirrored around the silence between the two parts. I wanted to suggest a sense of flow, back and forth, like a wave, from the various links and shifts, and occasional repeats. I had to do a bit of cutting and stitching here and there to keep it supple, and as with traditional rengas not every verse I was sent appears.
Even remotely, a renga is greater than the sum of its parts, a strange alchemy occurs, sending out ripples of authentic connection. I hope that in reading it, as much as in the writing, people might feel the warmth and clarity of being brought in touch – with ourselves and each other – across our physical distance.
Landscape Without a Map
I
Spring Equinox:
I am a tilting cup
a tremulous star
frost bites land
slow to warm
beyond the garden hedge
the silence
of the empty playing field
some branches bear leaves
some are sticks against the sky
a lone runner, two dog walkers
woodpecker’s insistent tap
we move in a landscape without a map
a careful two metres apart
the neighbours share their stories
beneath the bay
melon seeds all taken by the mouse
green-petalled tulips
I stream old songs for comfort
dance me to the end of love
close the curtains
light the candles
evening begins
how quiet the air is
as we count our breaths
not so much
for what they say
just their voices
pearly strands of frog spawn
in the tractor ruts
our hectic decadence
more evident
as the pause lengthens
the sun is shining
on apple buds
a shower of blessings
over and over
the curlew weeps her song
sheets spread and billow
sweetening in the open
the moon
waning
follows the train
never has a daffodil
looked more beautiful
show me the point where
before ends
and after begins
I sow pea seeds in the earth
imagine tendrils twining
II
listen for what remains
when everything we rely on
is gone
in the old orchard
a haze of honey
along the verges
blackthorn and celandine
plastic bags
behind the wallflowers
a saucepan lid moon
across the rough fell
of our hands
the call of a new corvid
doing nothing
takes such a long time
underneath this map
ancient tracks whisper
bid you tread and seek
dead wood alive with lichen
white, yellow, red
on the Sele a girl hurries by
shouting into her mobile
BASICALLY, IT’S A FUCKING NIGHTMARE
before we were sandpaper to each other
we were silk
on me your voice falls
as they say love should
(Bechet’s ‘Black and Blue’)
a bumble bee, heavy, dozy
bangs on the sunlit window
scent of silage and cow dung
as we pass Peepy Farm
all lowing and milking inside
we are living and dying
through history
it is the song thrush
at dusk
that unstops her tears
if this is the first unknown
why is everything the same?
there are breaks here and there
but still a place to sit and feel
the vibrations of your voice
Venus suspended – a gift
for Mothering Sunday
frosted air polishes my skin
I walk in the small waking hours
a hushed world
in the silence you hear sunlight
unfurling leaves in the hedges.
A 20/20 Distance/Presence Renga
conducted remotely over the Spring Equinox
20th– 23rd March 2020
Participants:
Birtley Aris
Jo Aris
Deborah Buchan
Holly Clay
Linda France
Sharon Higginson
Geoff Jackson
Liz Kirsopp
Lesley Mountain
Ruth Quinn
Alex Reed
Tim Rubidge
Botanical 