I worry about my work. I worry about having enough work. I worry about having so much work I can’t do it all properly but because I’m worried about not having enough work three months down the line, because I’m worried about some prospective projects coming off at all due to grant based funding  so I have to accept it all and so from time to time it’s wall to wall insane. Such is the condition of self employment. Still I can’t complain and at least I have a part time steady wage from the University which helps considerably when I’m worrying. Worry and fear are also great driving forces - they make you innovative, they make you plan ahead and care about the quality of what you’re doing. Sometimes though also they put you in danger of compromise or put you into grey areas – one in particular that gives me pause for thought – when I’m working sometimes with groups who are in danger of being excluded or in difficult social circumstances – and the project isn’t one instigated by us, isnt fully connected with the outside world so its products don’t get to anyone except the funders and the immediate participants - it just feels like someone got some cash and is hitting some targets but not seeing the work as a path to anywhere for the participants – you’re just there giving them something to do, so they don’t shoot up, slash someone get wasted etc.

Both Captain James’ are on my mind this week  for various reasons as the Ek Zuban poetry ronin scoot round from project to project and try to get some editing in, in between.  Sat in the Captain Cook Museum in nearby Stewart Park today looking at the pdfs of a new mag written by young lasses from the Middlesbrough NACRO:Making Headway project in town and the latest schools mythical map of a green place for a project for Stockton Council called Storytrails. Both really involved focusing on place with some hard hitting stuff in the mag including a classic line from an exercise we call “I come from a place where…” based on an improvised live introduction I once saw by the explosive and magical Nigerian poet and playwright Esiaba Irobi at the Hydrogen Jukebox Cabaret which basically involves listing all the things that define your place and your relation to it just by telling your truths  – although its sobering in terms of how luxurious poetry can be in a liberal democray in that no one ever ends their poem in our workshops like Esiaba ended his introduction “I come from a place where these poems can get you killed!”  Some glad and sad stuff in these poems though that reflect the way this place or places around here are in a transitional state between the industrial age and whatever post state there’s going to be with the kids unsure if it’s got anything to offer them to keep them away from crime and hustling – one of them ends with the immortal line “I come from a place where the best thing that could happen would be for a big tank to come and blow it all to fucking pieces” which is heartbreaking for a 16 year old girl to be writing but on the other hand feels just right in its honesty like being 16 and listening to stiff little fingers all over again.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the way place and writing work so was glad to get asked to blog about my work in that context, both in the sense of the work I do in the community and educational settings, often with my fellow poet and compadre in Ek Zuban Literature development Bob Beagrie, and in my own creative work which is heavily influenced by my locale here near the iron drained Cleveland hills and by the travels I’ve been able to make because of my poetry; most intensely in recent years to Finland which gives you a different means of looking at home. Beyond considering the way place can mutate and split open your discourse, its interesting to draw on the kind of projects I work on with groups at the edge of society – in the last twelve months I’ve worked with refugees and asylum seekers, recovering addicts, substance abusers, young offenders, kids in care, young people in danger of sexual exploitation on the streets, young carers and young people in danger of exclusion and offending  – which prompts me often to consider how place can dictate your boundaries and your way of communicating to a large extent - how it can in fact help to tie your tongue and restrict your possibilities.