Margaret Kenna & Esme Allman
Three decades – an eerie serendipity or a remarkable coincidence?
Esme
26 Connections was a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with a poet I wouldn’t have otherwise encountered. I held little trepidation about our creative encounter as John and Jacob had been enthused about the possibilities of these two poetry communities working together. Upon meeting Margaret, I was reassured that 26 connections was going to be a new and exciting way of working. Margaret expressed curiosity and generosity throughout our conversation. She was complimentary of my previous achievements and expressed great interest in our overall conversation. She shared her experiences with Bloomsbury Festival and 26, her writing practice, and quickly our conversation veered onto the important ordinariness of our lives – work, family, heritage – the beautiful fragments that make up a person. It was a strange delight to find there were exactly three decades between us. Was it an eerie serendipity or a remarkable coincidence? Either way, our thirty-year gap informed our subsequent conversation, and it became the crux of our poetics. There was a mutual respect for the integrity of our life experiences and genuine exchange between two poets. Margaret had the brilliant idea of reflecting this gap in our poems in the form of sestudes. Our sestudes were sixty-word poems, written in halves, with a two-word title. Through writing and editing our poems, I learned more about Margaret and her reflections on our conversation and saw the progression of our exchanges through poetic form.
Margaret
My initial response to the idea of being paired up with another person to work creatively was, well, no. Terrible idea.
I had just learnt to think of creative work as my way of relaxing, of tuning into myself, connecting with my higher power. Could I share that process? Wouldn’t it be too stressful? And pairing up with a “young poet”? Surely I was too old. And anyway, I had enough young people requiring my attention to at home?
But I also knew I felt better with a challenge. So, I said yes and bought a load of books about creative collaborations. Then I met my creative partner, Esme. And I was amazed. Exactly thirty years younger than me, so warm, clever, and thoughtful. I was glad I had said yes to the project.
We chose some word pairings to spark call and response sestudes. (Human/Inhuman, Kind/Unkind, Future/past)
To get started with Future/Past, I tried to remember what I was like at Esme’s age. Not nearly as impressive as she is, I thought. On reflection, I wanted to shout at my former self. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING! You who thought you knew everything, happily making life changing decisions! You knew nothing, absolutely nothing.
Then Esme sent back her first response. I was astounded by the power of the image she had created. It enabled me to think again, be a bit kinder to my young self, build on my idea and continue the story.
Creativity in action. Who knows where ideas come from? Definitely not from sitting comfortably and taking no risks!
The poems are being displayed as part of the 26 Connections exhibition during the Bloomsbury Festival and until mid-November. The exhibition features interpretations of the poetry by artists from the Lettering Arts Trust. The exhibition is free at the Building Centre, 26 Store Street, London WC1E 7BT