Rachel McCrum - IN RESIDENCE Poem #2
BBC Poem #2: 'In Residence'
Rachel McCrum, 12th October 2015
"It's 5am on a Wednesday morning and I've just been jolted awake by my alarm. It's telling me that I need to get up to get the 7am coach from Edinburgh to Cairnryan, from there the 1130am ferryboat and will eventually end in Belfast sometime this afternoon. I'm going home.
For week two of the BBC Scotland Poet in Residence post, I've been looking at ideas of home, of local community, of where we live and where we say we're from. Of the idea of residency itself, in a way. This week's workshop with the BBC LAB saw us go to Tollcross Primary School to work with the pupils on ideas of psychogeography. Psychogeography explores the impact the environment around us has on our emotional state. Starting with the closing of their front door in the morning, and ending up with their arrival at school, what do the children see, hear, smell, touch that makes their daily journey unique to them? They've been drawing a map with eight stops that they remember, and writing a haiku about each one. And then they made their own personal zine to map this, because why not throw in a little self publishing experience while we're at it?
I've got another reason for working with Tollcross Primary – this is my local community too and this week I have also been exploring themes of community and home for ‘In Residence,’ my second BBC Scotland Poet in Residence poem. The shops, cinemas, traffic lights and cafes of Tollcross are the ones that I see most often. Do these make Tollcross my home?
It is for the moment, but like most of my generation, I rent. My generation is often called 'Generation Precariat' and as I move into my mid 30s, this feels accurate.
There are also wider ideas of home, of nationality, of citizenship, of belonging to a place that I have been considering. Is home only ever the place where we come from, or can we build ourselves a new one somewhere else, take up residence, even if only for a while?
I don't have the answers to these questions, but I'm thinking about them a lot. This week's poem 'In Residence' makes a start, or at least aims to voice some of the concerns of my generation and of an increasingly mobile global population. Because everyone wants to be able to call somewhere home, right?"
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Who wants a home? Hands up!
Who wants a home? Head down!
Who wants a home? Don't look them in the eye!
Who wants a home?
We do.
Then do not have children. Please insulate yourselves against such leaks.
Who wants a home?
We do.
Then lower your chattering voices, and kindly do not take up too much space.
Who wants a home?
We do.
Then turnaround. We have no room here. Find your own.
Who wants a home?
We do.
Any old roof would do. If possible,
one that does not
billow
fold
falter
or get soggy
when it rains
would be nice.
But we'll take anything
we could call our own.
Who wants a home?
We do. We remember the houses we visited as children. Smells of crystal and dust, good china and palms in pots that had lived for jungle ages. Extra chairs for visiting aunts and oh! We thought we'd grow up in houses like this!
Who wants a home?
We do. We thought we'd grow up.
Where our paint swabs and permanence?
Where our trips to buy grout?
We do, we teetering ones,
we short sighted, feckless, reckless and callow.
Is this really our fault,
our squints that refuse to see
our greying hairs,
our failing energy,
our fear?
