My collection of poems, Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere explores what sanctuary is. In our time, the word is most readily associated with the search for a safe place to live and with migration undertaken by necessity or compulsion.
I am a Catholic from Northern Ireland. From childhood, “sanctuary”, to me, meant the holiest place in the church; the place where God lives, in the tabernacle on the altar; a place to be approached with reverence and awe. There was power in the sanctuary. It is from this sense of a place-where-God-is that the notion of an inviolate and protecting refuge arose. If you made it to the sanctuary you were under the protection of God himself and your enemies – faced with punishment that would endure into the afterlife – would not dare attack you. The sanctuary was a place where you would always be protected and championed; where you could catch your breath and be restored.
I suggest that whether we have had the migrant experience or not, each of us has some experience of sanctuary. Some of us are fortunate enough not to have been forced to experience the need for sanctuary in life-or-death situations. I am certainly not downplaying trauma when I assert that in the widespread experience of what sanctuary is lies a potential for bonding and compassion.
But, you might say, Britain is a safe place; its population don’t need to be thinking about sanctuary! I believe we do. In fact, I believe that the British know a great deal more about sanctuary than is commonly admitted. To know about sanctuary reveals that one must also have known vulnerability; known what it is like to need the help of others. One’s self-sufficiency has met its limit.
It was in 2020 that I decided to write a poetry collection on this theme because I felt that it was something that had become very much a part of contemporary life. Not only migration but the pandemic had made us acutely aware of safety and peril and shown us how inter-dependent we are. Furthermore, I wanted to embody the hosting aspect of sanctuary in the collection itself. I felt I could do this by inviting some other poets to join me in creating it. Since I live both in Northern Ireland and Wales, I looked for two poets in each place who have experience of some aspect of sanctuary.
In Northern Ireland I found Viviana Fiorentino. She is an economic migrant from Italy, a writer and lecturer, and a social activist who campaigns for migrants and prisoners of conscience. Csilla Toldy is a Hungarian film maker and writer who fled communist Hungary for ‘the free West’, before the fall of the Berlin wall. In Wales, Phil Cope is a photographer and writer who is an expert on holy wells and shrines of the British Isles and Mahyar is an Iranian who has made the country his home. In addition to the four poems that resulted, the poet, Glen Wilson, from Northern Ireland, acted as my mentor and he contributes a poem.
I asked each poet to write on any aspect of the theme of sanctuary (Glen’s poem had already been written and I asked him to allow me to include it). I didn’t set out with a fixed method in order to arrive at a finished poem since I believed that the method would arise from the individual and his or her circumstances. As each draft arrived, I talked with the poet, reflecting back what I saw to be there and having that accepted, refuted or corrected. It seems to me that an important part of my role was to take the poet back to something good in an earlier draft and put it forward for reconsideration. Judging what to let go of or retain is challenging. Ultimately, the poet decides what is most true to her or his intention yet that very intention is being discovered and deepened as the poem is composed, it isn’t unalterable from the start. So moulding a whole, finished piece involves something like maintaining a set of holding patterns and having the nerve to wait to see what holds true. I hope I helped in that process.
I encountered poetic formats which were new to me and two of the poems are sequences of poems – something I haven’t tried myself. These contributions vary the tone and scope of the book beyond what I could have achieved on my own.
In the book’s launch we benefitted from other talents the poets have. We saw a film Neither Here Nor There jointly made by Viviana and Csilla on the experience of arriving, as migrants, in Northern Ireland. We had a song, There Must Be Somewhere composed and performed by Glen and a series of Phil’s photographs accompanying his poem.
Emerging strongly from the poems in the book are five aspects of sanctuary:
in another person or persons
in the divine or numinous
in the planet, as a sanctuary for humanity
as the goal of major population shifts and in the hosting by receiving populations
as the hosting of the self within the body
Take that first one: each one of us knows what it is like to be welcomed or rebuffed by another person − access to the sanctuary is denied. And the last one: the body should be the safe place for the self. I should feel at home in my skin. When I don’t, I am ‘alienated’; that is, ‘othered’ in my most intimate self, and I feel very painfully displaced. And we all know that our planet, our ultimate safe place, is being violated.
Once we allow ourselves to explore the concept of sanctuary, we see how important it is for every person. Even the most ordinary interaction happens because the people involved open up to each other to allow it to take place. We ‘let each other in’ to one degree or another. We lock each other out; refusing to be a safe place for this person or that. Whole communities, whole nations can be sanctuary-minded, or not.
This book has shifted my understanding of sanctuary. I used to think of it as a place. Now I think of it as something I can be. I used to think it was about power. Now I see it is about love.
And, crucially, anyone can have the dignity of being a sanctuary for someone else.
This is the final poem in the book:
HOME
As I spoke, I realised that he was listening,
that he had opened up some room inside himself
and there was the hallway beckoning me
towards a door, giving onto a sunlit living space
that I could enter, my burden in my arms,
and when I’d placed it on his table
we would, together, loosen its bonds,
consider it… quietly.
What we were talking of I don’t remember now
but that he, on his threshold, stood aside to let me in
− that has never left me. He gave me living proof
that this is how we’re meant to be,
capable of choosing to welcome someone in,
and that when that person does the same for us
he is our shelter. We are a home for one another.
And this holds true for everyone.
‘Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere’ by Angela Graham with Phil Cope, Viviana Fiorentino, Mahyar, and Glen Wilson. is published by Seren £9.99 and available from Seren or via bookshops https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/sanctuary. A recording of the book’s online launch can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfiUOSPOeTc.
I am a Catholic from Northern Ireland. From childhood, “sanctuary”, to me, meant the holiest place in the church; the place where God lives, in the tabernacle on the altar; a place to be approached with reverence and awe. There was power in the sanctuary. It is from this sense of a place-where-God-is that the notion of an inviolate and protecting refuge arose. If you made it to the sanctuary you were under the protection of God himself and your enemies – faced with punishment that would endure into the afterlife – would not dare attack you. The sanctuary was a place where you would always be protected and championed; where you could catch your breath and be restored.
I suggest that whether we have had the migrant experience or not, each of us has some experience of sanctuary. Some of us are fortunate enough not to have been forced to experience the need for sanctuary in life-or-death situations. I am certainly not downplaying trauma when I assert that in the widespread experience of what sanctuary is lies a potential for bonding and compassion.
But, you might say, Britain is a safe place; its population don’t need to be thinking about sanctuary! I believe we do. In fact, I believe that the British know a great deal more about sanctuary than is commonly admitted. To know about sanctuary reveals that one must also have known vulnerability; known what it is like to need the help of others. One’s self-sufficiency has met its limit.
It was in 2020 that I decided to write a poetry collection on this theme because I felt that it was something that had become very much a part of contemporary life. Not only migration but the pandemic had made us acutely aware of safety and peril and shown us how inter-dependent we are. Furthermore, I wanted to embody the hosting aspect of sanctuary in the collection itself. I felt I could do this by inviting some other poets to join me in creating it. Since I live both in Northern Ireland and Wales, I looked for two poets in each place who have experience of some aspect of sanctuary.
In Northern Ireland I found Viviana Fiorentino. She is an economic migrant from Italy, a writer and lecturer, and a social activist who campaigns for migrants and prisoners of conscience. Csilla Toldy is a Hungarian film maker and writer who fled communist Hungary for ‘the free West’, before the fall of the Berlin wall. In Wales, Phil Cope is a photographer and writer who is an expert on holy wells and shrines of the British Isles and Mahyar is an Iranian who has made the country his home. In addition to the four poems that resulted, the poet, Glen Wilson, from Northern Ireland, acted as my mentor and he contributes a poem.
I asked each poet to write on any aspect of the theme of sanctuary (Glen’s poem had already been written and I asked him to allow me to include it). I didn’t set out with a fixed method in order to arrive at a finished poem since I believed that the method would arise from the individual and his or her circumstances. As each draft arrived, I talked with the poet, reflecting back what I saw to be there and having that accepted, refuted or corrected. It seems to me that an important part of my role was to take the poet back to something good in an earlier draft and put it forward for reconsideration. Judging what to let go of or retain is challenging. Ultimately, the poet decides what is most true to her or his intention yet that very intention is being discovered and deepened as the poem is composed, it isn’t unalterable from the start. So moulding a whole, finished piece involves something like maintaining a set of holding patterns and having the nerve to wait to see what holds true. I hope I helped in that process.
I encountered poetic formats which were new to me and two of the poems are sequences of poems – something I haven’t tried myself. These contributions vary the tone and scope of the book beyond what I could have achieved on my own.
In the book’s launch we benefitted from other talents the poets have. We saw a film Neither Here Nor There jointly made by Viviana and Csilla on the experience of arriving, as migrants, in Northern Ireland. We had a song, There Must Be Somewhere composed and performed by Glen and a series of Phil’s photographs accompanying his poem.
Emerging strongly from the poems in the book are five aspects of sanctuary:
in another person or persons
in the divine or numinous
in the planet, as a sanctuary for humanity
as the goal of major population shifts and in the hosting by receiving populations
as the hosting of the self within the body
Take that first one: each one of us knows what it is like to be welcomed or rebuffed by another person − access to the sanctuary is denied. And the last one: the body should be the safe place for the self. I should feel at home in my skin. When I don’t, I am ‘alienated’; that is, ‘othered’ in my most intimate self, and I feel very painfully displaced. And we all know that our planet, our ultimate safe place, is being violated.
Once we allow ourselves to explore the concept of sanctuary, we see how important it is for every person. Even the most ordinary interaction happens because the people involved open up to each other to allow it to take place. We ‘let each other in’ to one degree or another. We lock each other out; refusing to be a safe place for this person or that. Whole communities, whole nations can be sanctuary-minded, or not.
This book has shifted my understanding of sanctuary. I used to think of it as a place. Now I think of it as something I can be. I used to think it was about power. Now I see it is about love.
And, crucially, anyone can have the dignity of being a sanctuary for someone else.
This is the final poem in the book:
HOME
As I spoke, I realised that he was listening,
that he had opened up some room inside himself
and there was the hallway beckoning me
towards a door, giving onto a sunlit living space
that I could enter, my burden in my arms,
and when I’d placed it on his table
we would, together, loosen its bonds,
consider it… quietly.
What we were talking of I don’t remember now
but that he, on his threshold, stood aside to let me in
− that has never left me. He gave me living proof
that this is how we’re meant to be,
capable of choosing to welcome someone in,
and that when that person does the same for us
he is our shelter. We are a home for one another.
And this holds true for everyone.
‘Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere’ by Angela Graham with Phil Cope, Viviana Fiorentino, Mahyar, and Glen Wilson. is published by Seren £9.99 and available from Seren or via bookshops https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/sanctuary. A recording of the book’s online launch can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfiUOSPOeTc.
Angela Graham is from Belfast and has had a long career in Wales. She now divides her time between both places. She is an award-winning tv producer and film maker. Seren Books published her poetry collection Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere in June 2022. Her debut collection of short stories A City Burning (Seren Books, 2020) was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize.
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