Freedom Weekend (1 of 2)

The first weekend of the release from Lockdown restrictions was finally here and I turned up to the Northern Publishing Fair at the Central Library on the morning of Saturday 24^th July with the intention of sticking to my book budget, but found that pretty much impossible when I laid eyes on all the books. I could use the excuse that I had had a 2am adventure in Rusholme with a friend and didn’t get to bed until 3am only to wake up at 6am so my defences were weak or I can just be honest and admit I’m a book addict. Since moving, poetry has become the love of my life.

I attended the fair because a writing friend had suggested I check out David Hartley’s work and since I’m always looking for excuses to visit the Central Library (I will delve into my relationship with the Central Library at a later date) and I wanted to free my local post officers from a delivery I signed up to attend faster than I could blink.

Publishers/vendors there included: Bluemoose Books, Route Publishing,  Saraband Books , The Poetry Business (who I bought from), Vertebrate Publishing, Pen Fight Distro (my second reason for wanting to attend the fair), Stairwell Books , Manchester Poetry Library (A new poetry library is opening later this year  as part of Manchester Metropolitan University and yes I will be nosing around when it does), Verve Poetry Press and  Fly on the Wall Press (my main reason for going to the fair.)

I specifically went there with the hopes of buying books from Fly On The Wall Press and Pen Fight Distro because I am starting the journey of building my personal library and I’m trying to make it as colourful and diverse as I possibly can.

I ended up meeting one of the published poets; poet and activist Tina Tamsho-Thomas and while getting into a conversation about the healing abilities of writing poetry, we witnessed St Peter’s Square getting assuaged by a sea of protesters and marcher as they called for the end of a myriad of different issues including violence specifically against women and girls, racism and the ripple effect  of the currant circus that is the government’s handling of the pandemic and its treatment of the NHS.

In a nutshell, it was a mob of pissed off mostly white people stopping traffic on a Saturday afternoon.

If I sound bitter, I’m not. I’m just exhausted and desensitized. As a black woman I’m constantly dealing with these issues, and yes it’s nice to see so many people wanting things to change, but I know it won’t come in my lifetime and I don’t have the energy to be that angry all the time.  For the first time in my life I’m exploring what it actually means to have a voice and an opinion.

I also met one of my fellow Sea Change participant Maggie Joan Haggas and we ended up getting a coffee at Costo and then Maggie spent four hours showing me around Manchester. As someone who’s a lot younger than Maggie I marvelled at how much faster she was at walking than me. We discussed ageism and the discrimination we face as single, independent women who have no plans for marriage or children in our futures; politics, places we’d travelled and, of course, I loved listening to Maggie tell me about many of her adventures including starting up the first backpackers hostel in the city in the 90s (which unfortunately got shut down), studying massage therapy, psychotherapy and any sort of field that ended with a y and the racism she’s faced from her neighbours (because racism isn’t simply a white privilege).

Maggie was extremely patience with me on our walkabout ( I had to rest a couple of times plus I was taking a lot of picture). And so I ended up having a lot of “joy bubbles” that afternoon, especially when we found a bee sculpture (I adore them and refuse to google their locations because I love finding them in unexpected places), and Maggie took me to one of the Copeland Buildings and The Rutherford Building. Standing in the space where so much world-changing history took place was very humbling for me.

 Alan Touring remains one of my many heroes, and how he was treated is also one of the biggest reasons why I struggle to be proud to be British (one of many reasons actually) and so to be standing in the place where he worked was a slightly melancholy feeling for me. I have a deep love of maths and science partly due to its stability…there is always an answer; you just have to find it. Hiding in a world where you know that eventually you will discover a solution is a comforting alternative to the social world. The formulas and structures that make up designs and equations are always impartial, non-judgemental and substantial. They can be found all around us, be it on a microscopic scale or a cosmic one, and I’ve always marvelled at the mathematical precision that I find in nature (bee hives and wasps nests anyone?) so knowing that Alan and millions of others are unable to find that peace, and wonder, when it comes to interacting with other people is something that always breaks my heart, while knowing that maths (and Joan Clarke, in the instances that she could be ) were there for him comforts me.

By the end of our walkabout I was a little sad to part ways with Maggie, especially since I had no way to tell her how much spending the afternoon with her meant to me. She’s one of those sturdy spirits that always seems to follow the flow of things and I hope to be like her when I reach her age.

I’ve been fortunate to engage with all sorts of people since I moved but I find that if I don’t engage in intelligent conversation I tend to become slightly stilted. I’m not the sharpest knife in the draw so I learn by doing and seeing and I love exploring so having a full day of it thrilled me to bits but me day wasn’t over yet…….