SAMMY WEAVER POET LAUREATE

By Steve Cooke

When a year ago it was announced that we had got a Poet Laureate many said: A Poet Laureate? Rochdale?

A year later and Sammy Weaver has not only emphatically answered the doubters but proved that a Poet Laureate should be a permanent fixture in Rochdale and in every town across the UK!

Through her workshops and performances she has both encouraged and enabled  people to find and use their voice and massively changed attitudes towards poetry from ‘don’t get it’ to ‘wow that’s amazing’.

In achieving this Sammy worked with people across the whole borough, from ten to eighty years old, from all our diverse communities and from the barely literate to established writers .Many of their  poems can be read alongside her own work and that of our young poets in residence  Sasha Mostafa, 18, and 25-year-old Alende Amisi in  published anthologies, Weaving Words and Poems to change the World.

I caught up with Sammy as her term as Poet Laureate came to its conclusion to get her take on her year in office.

What is undeniable is time spent in her company is always a rewarding and enjoyable experience. Her genuine warmth and enthusiasm light up her surroundings and the people in her presence, as experienced by many across our town.

Sammy started by sharing her personal highlights:

”I chose to go into HMP Buckley Hall, it wasn’t really part of the project, but I am passionate about rehabilitation and changing the tone of prisons. Following the workshops the guys went on to create their own creative writing group within the prison.”

 “The workshops with primary school children got  them into local  libraries, for many their first time! It felt like a magical session every time. We had whole year groups and classes so that it wasn’t just kids that like and were good at writing but those thought they were no good at all, low in confidence and that it wasn’t for them. Those who wanted to play football and not sit down and write. I worked one to one with some of them to get into their world and discover what gets them going which led them into writing their first ever poems.”

“Many of the poems written by people and children who thought they were no good or just had never written a poem before, had never expressed themselves in that way, getting into print in two anthologies Weaving Words and Poems to Change the World. Becoming published authors and some of them even performing their poems at the Rochdale in Rhyme public launch of Weaving Words.”

“Mentoring Sasha and Alende, two very different poets. Alende’s poems reach a wide audience with his tone and generous us of language , his poems really build compassion. Sasha can be very surprising, coming at things in oblique ways, making ordinary things extraordinary. Seeing them grow across the year has been really amazing. I had done lots of workshops before, but one-to-one mentoring was new for me “

What is difficult to convey in writing is just how enthusiastic and rightly proud she is of the outcomes and legacy of her year in and amongst the people of Rochdale.

I asked her what she had learned over her time as a vital cog in our year as GM Town of Culture.

“I already knew Rochdale quite well but Heywood and Middleton very little. I got to know each area and found that they are very different. It was fascinating, especially linking up with different community groups. I learned that the whole borough though has a real grass roots, caring feel, completely at odds with its portrayal in the media. When I mentioned Rochdale to family and friends, they tended to remember bad news stories which is not at all representative.”

“I felt that this whole project spoke to Rochdale’s rich history of pioneering and co-operation. I was struck again and again by ordinary people doing extraordinary things.’

“ Rochdale is on fire through this year as Town of Culture, every week bringing something new such as the mural festival an FAB, the kids festival and the family picnics in the park”

“ A local love of green spaces, reclaimed spaces linked to the industrial past, people taking loving care of little stretches of industrial land that in the past would have been spoils heaps or piles of rubble. I especially experienced this with a walking group in Middleton, not seeing rose gardens but beauty growing out of rubble.”

 “Seeing diversity celebrated such as in a workshop with the New Pioneers in Spotland , some of whom had English as their second or third language, with kids and babies in the room, we had a great session with a group of people many of whom had had troubled experiences who had built a home here but also had experience multiple homes on their journey.”

What next for Sammy?

I was delighted by the revelation that she is currently working on compiling a full collection of her poems  for the first time as well as working on themes for new poems.

Before rushing off to deliver her next workshop, this time in Huddersfield, she underlined ed the power of poetry.

“Poetry is a bridge, it builds compassion, metaphor itself builds compassion, a bridge linking two distinct things into a similarity, it’s not just for wedding and funerals but for every day. It is about expressing yourself, not about having perfect grammar or strict structure like rhyme or metre or sonnets, it is literally about expressing things as you see them! Poetry can create immense clarity and also hold immense confusion, the whole complexity of being human, a mirror to the emotions we all experience, expressing it so other people can feel that hurt as it puts into words what they have been feeling. . Language always falls short but the humbling attempt to do it is a bridge, a connector.”

I highly recommend following Sammy on https://www.instagram.com/sammyjweaver/

To keep in touch with the culture scene in Rochdale visit and follow: https://www.rochdalecreates.co.uk/  The central hub for the creative community in Rochdale borough.

And of course follow our AATA column in the Rochdale Observer, InYourArea, at allacrossthearts.com and across social media.

You can buy copies of the two anthologies, Weaving Words and Poems to Change the World in Rochdale Town Hall and Libraries across the borough.