Refuge and the Road Home, Canongate Kirk, Review

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Rating (out of 5)
5
Show info
Company
Sacred Arts Festival
Production
Home & Love (Robert Service); It is not (Gael Turnbull); Sorting Sonnett (Elspeth Murray); Homespun (Kathleen Jamie); Sunlight (Seamus Heaney); The Leveret (Michael Longley); Moments of Separation (Christine de Luca); Often I had Gone (Edward Thomas); Haemless (Christine de Luca); Home (Warsan Shire); Home is so Sad (Philip Larkin); Trespass (Christine de Luca); Home (Rupi Kapur); Plainsong (Carol Ann Duffy); Spell to bring the Lost Creatures Home (Kathleen Raine); I own a House (Mary Oliver); The Smell of Weather Turning & A Blessing (Elspeth Murray)
Performers
Christine de Luca & Elspeth Murray (poets); Katharine Wake (musician)
Running time
60mins

Centred around the theme of ‘home and homelessness’, this recital collected an encyclopaedic range of poems, but all linked to the idea of where we think of as home, and when we feel homeless.

We began with Service’s poem, his piece powerfully capturing what ‘home’ meant for him during the goldrush – home as the four-letter simple word, but devoid of any meaning when it exists without love. Thus Turnbull’s poem then took us the importance of love as the heart of the home, in sustaining the inward hearth and its fire.

An ingenious element of this recital was the interspersion of musical elements between the poems. The poems were all quite brief, as were the musical interludes – played on flutes/piccolo. These gave us time and space to absorb, digest and ponder what we’d heard – without getting bogged down in works too long. 

The next section invited us to reflect on thoughts of home, and generational love – those precious things (physical and emotional) that we forever cherish and treasure; the childhood memories – ingrained and indelible.

This made for a poignant introduction to a series of poems focusing on leaving home, and returning home – grappling with the emotions of separation and emptiness. Thomas’ work recalled the comfort of a returning to a familiar place (following his homecoming after WWI); then followed vivid and difficult links to the current refugee crisis – de Luca’s ‘Homeless’ was accompanied by a picture of a bronze sculpture on the programme’s front cover: ‘Homeless Jesus’. Shire’s subsequent work ‘Home’ made clear the connection with contemporary events: is home “but the mouth of a shark” or “the barrel of a gun”. One of the concluding sections of the poetry recital – looking at our all-encompassing home in nature -  drew together many of the previous themes, focusing passionately on belonging and solace.

There was something in this show that it seemed that all generations and cultures could connect with. Sometimes poetry recitals have something of the feel of a school leavers’ end-of-year performance about them – but the recital here was genuine, authentic and accomplished – shining shafts of light when the veneers are stripped away.

The event finished at 2.20pm.

Refuge and the Road Home, Wednesday 14th August, Canongate Kirk