Making the Quaker connection

Quaker writer and poet Sibyl Ruth reflects on her experience of making a recent BBC Radio 4 programme on Quakers and poetry.

‘Language bursts out of the silence.
Creation emerges out of the void.’

Quaker writer and poet Sibyl Ruth penned these words in her script for a recent BBC Radio 4 programme on Quakers and poetry. She reflects on her experience of making the programme.

I used to organise poetry readings. I’d put on slams, open mic nights, events where ranters shared the stage with stand-up comics. But on my days off, the poets I liked to read were less noisy and more subtle. Though they never advertised the fact, quite a few of them were Quakers.

I had already made one radio programme with Sara Davies from the BBC, so I suggested we make another, looking at the links between Quaker faith and the practice of writing poetry. Listen to Them Breathing – a line from Philip Gross’s poem ‘The Quakers of Pompeii’ – would be our title.

I set myself big challenges – such as wanting to look at the relationship between poetry and silence. Good poems, like good Meetings for Worship, are full of spaces. They leave us free to think about what’s between the lines. But how do you make silence live – and breathe – on the radio?

Phrases from my time as a teacher of creative writing kept coming back to me. Show not tell. Constraints liberate. Less is more.

My own poetic background was also useful. When I start a piece of writing I never know exactly what I want to say. It is more that there’s an overwhelming sense of something needing to be said. Similarly, I wasn’t sure what would emerge when I started talking to poets who were Quakers. Maybe there was some kind of special ‘Quaker’ sensibility which everyone had in common?

The poets

I decided not ask the poets to define their beliefs. Instead, I wanted to try to evoke a sense of what makes them tick. I would regard the short time we had to make the programme – and our limited budget – as blessings. Sara and I couldn’t afford to see many people, but we’d talk to all of them in depth.

We chose to interview Ann and Peter Sansom at the Poetry Business in Sheffield. Rosie Bailey agreed to tell us about UA Fanthorpe – and Dorothy Nimmo too. Philip Gross and Gerard Benson were also willing to contribute.

In addition, Sara said I should talk about myself. I’d rather have taken on the role of a historian or a critic. But she was right. Radio is a personal medium. There is this intimacy if you hear someone telling you their story. Essays and lectures are all very well on the printed page. On the radio, you have to appeal to the ear. To create rhythms and images that draw people in when they’re driving or busy with chores.

The process

During the recording days, I learned just how much – without being fully aware of it – we respond to sound. The places we recorded in turned out to be very ‘alive.’ Phones rang, flies buzzed, tables creaked and planes flew overhead.

Before each session I felt the same dry-mouthed anxiety one feels before getting up in Meeting for Worship. Maybe the poets and I would clam up, staring at one another blankly. I shouldn’t have worried. Quakers might value silence – but we are terrific talkers!

Playing back the recordings was an eye-opener. (Or an ear-opener?) As I transcribed the interviews I was struck – over and over again – by the mind’s inventiveness. We start a sentence. A new, and better, thought occurs. We change direction.

Some of us claim that we’re not creative. Except we are, every time we open our mouths.

I realised how unique, how precious, each voice is. The way we talk is shaped by the places we live in. Our speech may be marked by hesitation, the trace of a stammer. Some of us spin long threads of language. Others are more measured and precise.

Editing the hours of material down to thirty minutes was very tough. At times I felt more like a destroyer than a creator. I wanted to reveal how the poets had embarked on a search – with a destination that’s elusive. Yet the person who tries out a radio programme is like a visitor to a Quaker Meeting – they could do with a bit of clarity, some idea of what to expect.

The insights

The contributors all offered interesting personal insights into the subject. Rosie Bailey talked about the poetry of Dorothy Nimmo:

‘I think there is a tradition of strong independent-minded Quakers in the history of Quakerism and I think Dorothy was certainly one of them. She was not what you might imagine – the Quaker maiden in grey sitting at the feet of Quaker elders – far from it! And I think there is that side of fierce Quakerism which is great and energising and exciting and it comes out in her poetry… She’s good strong stuff.”

Rosie also talked about her late partner, the poet UA Fanthorpe:

‘There’s something about rebellion and Quakerism and poetry – definitely – that it all goes together. The subversive. UA was subversive all her life.’

Ann and Peter Sansom, who are publishers and run poetry workshops, discussed the links between Meeting for Worship and their creative writing days. Ann said: ‘We were doing this without realising the parallels. It seems odd now because it’s just so glaringly obvious that – you know the connections between the two things.’

Peter added: ‘We allow the poem to speak as fully as it can… allowing our own personality to be in abeyance a little and to speak out of… a pressure of something that needs to be said.’

Gerard Benson – one of the founders of the Poems on the Underground project – said of his first experience of Quaker Meeting:

‘I went and sat there in silence and – I just knew that I’d come home. That this was exactly the right place for me to be. There was a superb silence. It wasn’t empty. It was absolutely full.’

Philip Gross discussed the relationship between a Quaker Meeting for Worship and his poetry:

‘I spent twenty-odd years both seriously being a poet and being a Quaker and it had never dawned on me that they might be aspects of the same thing. It’s only in the past three or four years that I have said, tentatively, this out loud. What happens in Meeting is not in the first instance about creating words. It’s about holding a space with each other and I find more and more that I am thinking of a poem as a thing made out of words and silence. Almost as if it’s a space before there are any words in it.’

Many thanks

I am left with this sense of gratitude to Sara. She is an expert producer, and I’m a novice – yet she put her faith in me. I am also deeply grateful to all the poets – Philip, Rosie, Gerard, Ann and Peter – for speaking with such generosity and warmth.

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