Reflections of those who suffered

Mar 17 2010 by David Whetstone, The Journal

VICTIMS of torture worked with the poet Gillian Allnutt on a book of poems and prose, as DAVID WHETSTONE reports.

THERE are real-life tales so terrible that sometimes they can’t be told. They are survivors’ stories that defy the means of expression most of us take for granted.

Facing each other across City Road in Newcastle are the offices of New Writing North and the North East centre of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.

It was perhaps inevitable the twain should meet. But when the question of a writer-in-residence arose, Alan Brice, who runs the Medical Foundation, was nervous.

“Our clients are often very troubled,” he writes in the book which proves he overcame his fears. “And it is my responsibility to ensure they are safely cared for. They have been treated unthinkably, unspeakably. It is a challenge to work professionally, safely, sensitively and intensely with such destructive experiences.

“Many clients won’t, can’t speak about their lives and struggle to communicate at all, even with an interpreter.”

But funding for the residency was acquired and “some very good candidates from all over Britain” were interviewed.

The poet Gillian Allnutt, who lives in Esh Winning, County Durham, got the job. As Alan writes, there was “something magical in the room” when Gillian spoke of how she would encourage creative writing.

Officially, the six-month residency is done. The book will be launched today. In Alan’s office, he and Gillian reflect on the making of it.

Gillian says she had been going to Quaker meetings for more than a year before she saw the residency advertised. She had become “sick, sick, sick of the me-centredness of the world and the literary world”.