Poetry is what gets lost in translation (Robert Frost)

Welcome to The Poet's Place.

My name is Victoria Bennett. Most people call me Vik. I am a poet on a journey.

I have set up this blog to keep an online journal of my Residency at Beaumont College, Lancaster, UK. Over the next 7 months, I will be exploring the nature and creation of poetry with staff and students, as well as reflecting on my own creative practice and role.

First, a little bit about the placement. Beaumont College is run by the charity, Scope, and is a college for the creative arts. It was founded in 1977 in Lancaster and offers both residential and day programmes to students aged between 18 and 25 with a broad range of physical and
learning disabilities. The college offers an extended curriculum with a strong emphasis on creative arts, communication and self expression, with the overall aim being to empower students to take responsibility for their own lives.

In the beginning, the college focused more on the traditional routes towards independent living, but as the college developed, so did the awareness of the role of the creative arts in encouraging and empowering this independence. Recently, the college curriculum expanded to provide courses in 6 creative art subjects, offering a 3 year timetable similar in structure to a mainstream combined creative arts course, as well as other skills and personal development programmes. Students at Beaumont can study, for example, units in film, dance, music, fine art, environmental art, performance and creative writing. It is encouraged that students experiment with various creative experiences throughout the 3 years.

I first heard about Beaumont at a Spoken Word conference in Kendal, Cumbria, where I met 2 members of staff from the college. As they spoke about their interest in finding ways of making poetry accessible to students with a range of capacities in language, I was interested to
find out more. A few weeks later, the college contacted me and invited me to come in to meet with the staff and discuss my approaches and their wishes for a Poetry Residency. This was a very interesting and lively meeting, with the exchange of many ideas and much inspiration. My
immediate impression was that Beaumont was a vibrant, creative space and that the staff were dedicated to their commitment to empower through creativity - a belief very close to my own heart.

After some ironing out of details, I was invited to take a residency at Beaumont, taking place from December 2006 until July 2007. The end of the residency coincides with a 3 week Arts & Film Festival being held by the college, and taking place in venues around Lancaster city. It is
hoped that by that time, there will be poetry from students and staff to share that has been developed during this time.

Though the college has a rolling programme of resident artists, this is to be the first time they have invited a poet in. This is interesting and leads me to ask the obvious question:

why?

In my experience, poetry is often overlooked or rejected as a means to empowerment of voice, largely because people feel it is inaccessible, not expressive enough, too 'difficult'. Yet, it is a hugely powerful vehicle for the development of individual voice and the articulation of personal and cultural experience. This has been proved in many situations, yet people are still wary of it.

Add this to the fact that poetry is an art form with its root in language, and we start to see the challenge.

So, we begin with the six key questions I have identified:

1. is poetry accessible as an expressive art form for those with limited or no language capacity?


2. does poetry rely on language as we know it, or are there other ways of accessing and creating poetry that expand our understanding of what poetry, language and communication are?


3. what, if any, is the value of poetry within an environment such as Beaumont College - for students and for staff and for the community as a whole?


4. what is poetry?


5. what is the value of poetry in our lives (if indeed it has any?)


6. what role does the poet play within a community like Beaumont (as a visiting artist) and in the wider community?


Over the next 7 months, I will be exploring these questions through my work and also with those I will be working with - staff and students. I hope to find some answers. No doubt I will discover more questions and unfold into new understandings and embrace unforeseen challenges. I really don't know how this will take shape, but that is the beauty of a residency - we can all discover together.

My expertise lets me know that poetry empowers those who access it within themselves and share it with others. My experience tells me that I have the skills and knowledge to
facilitate creative exploration in poetry and also creative personal development. My heart and everything about what I understand under my skin reassures me that poetry is within us all, the heartbeat of the world, just as music and mark making and storytelling, and that
creativity is part of being human, even if our understanding of what it IS is somewhat affected by our cultural and social understanding.

Beyond that, I don't know. It is an exciting place to be as an artist. I invite you to join me in as we explore the questions, and if you have anything to bring to the journey, perhaps your own experiences or discoveries, please leave a comment at the Poet's Place.


Contact details for Beaumont College/Scope:

Beaumont College, Slyne Road, Lancaster, LA2 6AP.
Switchboard Tel: (01524) 541400

The proprietor of Beaumont College is Scope.
Scope is a registered charity, number 208231. 6 Market Road, London N7 9PW.

Website at http://www.scope.org.uk