Writing destitution: some ideas

Posted on | February 25, 2010 | No Comments

I’m involved in a new project to look at homelessness and destitution. The idea is to get a wide spectrum of writers either telling their own or retelling the stories of others, leading to a theatrical or film project, to update some of the ideas and emotions found in, say, Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London.

How do you write destitution? What approaches can be taken?

1. The personal
My father went missing — from us, perhaps from the rest of the word — about two years ago, following a break-up with his wife, my step-mother, after a final failed bid to kick alcoholism. The interest for me to get involved in the project is somewhere between the impetus to write, and the desire to understand, or even find, the motivations or situations that lead to people being destititute.

2. The thematic
I went into the first meeting of the group thinking about what I could contribute, and what I wanted to write about. I wrote a list, something along the lines of “destitution AND’ (trust/emotion/home/pointing/writing/words). I came out of the meeting thinking that destititution was not my story, and was not – as others in the group also expressed – not something that can be writtena about lightly.

Our group leader, Alan, was adamant on this: it is vital we are careful with people’s stories. Including our own.

3. The journalistic
One woman in the group had worked in a crisis centre in Indonesia for four years, but the stories she heard from some of the project facilitators from partner organisations were too much for her–and her questions was ‘how can we prepare for the stories we are going to hear?’ It was a fair question, and one I wanted to ask the guy from the charity that works with torture victims – how do you prepare for and work with those stories?

One idea is that creative writers could benefit from some journalistic training. Not that journalists are more emotionally balanced–far from it–but that having confidence in the practice of interviewing people can offer some balance in maintaining an emotional grip in those situations.

4. The philosophical
Destitution — to set away from, in etymological terms.There are incredibly complex and broad questions to ask about the nature of destitution–how we recognise the destitute, how we react to them; what we see of the destitute in ourselves. Do we think of the destititute as poets? Or do we see them as geographical markers only — street signatures for the cities we live in (that busker spot, that Big Issue seller). Do we only see the destititute when we want to see the gap between ourselves and that which we set away?

5. The historical
When did we begin to see the homeless as inhuman?

6. The advocating
Part of the project is to respond to and raise awareness of the UK’s asylum processes. Oxfam have a good summary of the difficulties asylum seekers face on arrival in the UK.

How do I want to write about destitution? How can I write about this — can I imagine the numbness at the bottom? ONe member of the group suggested a left/right page split written on the left by the writer and then on the other side by the homeless, destitute or the victim of torture – and yes, what interesting differences there would be.

Rather, then, the question is: what can I offer to the destitute through my writing?

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