Poet Laureates Gez Walsh and Joel Duncan want to use the power of poetry - and prose - to help heal the Calderdale communities devastated by Christmas flooding.
They’re hoping to compile a book of children’s verse and essays, written by youngsters from the stricken areas, and sell it to raise money for those whose possessions and homes were affected. But the book will do more than compensate victims, it is also intended as a way to commemorate the many acts of kindness from ordinary people who rose to the occasion and helped each other out.
Gez, who lives in Dalton and has been official Poet Laureate for Calderdale since 2014, says children may have quite different feelings about the floods and it’s these that they want to capture for posterity in Floods of Tears and Laughter.
As he explained: “Young people may have a different take on it. To them it may have been exciting, or even funny, because they don’t realise the more serious consequences. For them it was a moment in time that they will look back on in the future and will always remember.
“My father used to talk about the Holmfirth flood of the 1940s when a reservoir burst. For him as a child it was a big, exciting event.
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“Personally, I found the floods this Christmas quite emotional because it’s such a hopeless situation for people - knowing that the water is going to come into your house and not being able to do anything about it.”
Joel, 20, who is Calderdale’s Young Poet Laureate, says the events of Boxing Day will live in his memory for the way they brought out the best in communities. “I’ve already written one poem myself about seeing how much everyone helped each other,” he said.
“We live in a society where we don’t normally have much to do with each other, we don’t even make eye contact in the street. But when the floods happened people were donating clothes and helping people clean up. I thought ‘wow’ we have a great community.”
The plan is to publish Floods of Tears and Laughter by May this year and give all profits to the Calderdale Flood Relief Appeal launched by the Community Foundation for Calderdale, which has so far raised a staggering £1m.
More than 30 Calderdale schools have been contacted to see if they would like to take part in the project.
Gez and Joel are offering to visit participating schools to give youngsters tips on writing their poetry and prose. “It will be a competition,” said Gez, “and myself and Joel will judge the entries and choose the ones we like the best for the book. More than likely we will be submitting ourselves as well.”
This is not the first charitable literary project involving Gez. He has raised cash for the BBC Children in Need appeal by staging record-breaking poetry performances in Kirklees schools and compiling, in a single day, a book of poetry written by children.
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Poetry, he says, has a special power to bring people together and help them understand each other. Up to date his poetry has been written for children - his first anthology The Spot on My Bum was published in 1997 and went on to sell a million copies and has even been translated in Portuguese - but he’s now working on a collection for adults to be entitled 50 in Shades of Grey (about the ageing process), and has written four novels for the young adult market.
His latest, Death’s Door, is a supernatural tale of ‘walkers’ who help those who are about to die and is set on a grim Northern housing estate.
Gez’s children’s poetry was written initially to prompt his son Lee, who has dyslexia, to read, and his work is aimed at encouraging youngsters to acquire a love of written language.
However, he is the first to admit that he was not a good scholar at school and had no love of poetry at all. Joel also says he never ‘got’ poetry as a child but was interested in writing prose. He became a poet after joining the writing group Igniting the Spark, which is based at Dean Clough in Halifax.
“All the members were poets and I felt a bit left out, so I thought I should give it a go,” said Joel.
“I think there’s a problem with the way poetry is delivered in schools. Analysing old time stuff is difficult and it puts you off poetry. I didn’t like it until I went and found some spoken word poets on YouTube.”
His poetry explores issues faced by young people, including bullying and self-esteem and what it feels to be vulnerable.
When he became Young Poet Laureate in October 2014 Joel says he suffered from an almost crippling lack of confidence and fear of speaking in public.
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The problem was so great that he confesses to being so petrified during a school visit that he got on stage and forgot the words of his own poem. However, with help and mentoring from Gez, Joel will now stand up in front of a crowd of hundreds.
The poetry itself has helped in so many ways, says Joel. Through poems he can explain his innermost thoughts and feelings and come to understand them better. “I wrote a poem called Fear to Speak,” said Joel, “which is about how fear is just a story you make up inside your head. That’s something Gez has said to me.” The poem is in a collection of his work, My Last Everything, recently published by Huddersfield-based The King’s England Press.
Gez, who has spent nearly two decades as a poet, educator, comedian and broadcaster, is living proof that poetry can open doors. He travels both in the UK and around Europe giving poetry performances and visiting schools. But for the next few weeks he and Joel will be focused on matters much closer to home and hoping that their efforts will bring flood relief. Could this be the birth of Verse Aid?
My Last Everything by Joel Duncan is £7.95 and Death’s Door by Gez Walsh is £8.99 from www.kingsengland.com
