Freedom's kiss

Recently it’s been cold, cold, very cold,’ performance poet El Gruer intones in a poem recently posted on YouTube, An open letter to the government, an open heart to refugees. There’s an arresting poignancy in her voice; the space between words is as important as the words themselves. ‘The weather of our hearts has been dismal,’ she continues, ‘because it took the body of a young child to break the ice.’ (She was referring to the discovery of a child's body found face-down on a Turkish beach on 2nd September, on of a group of 12 Syrian migrants who drowned in an attempt to reach the Greek island of Kos.)

The young poet, originally from Inverness, aims to ‘take poetry into places where poetry doesn’t normally go’, performing in pubs, clubs, churches, homes, festivals. Like all her work, this latest poem displays both compassion for those who suffer, and hope. ‘There are many of us that want to bring rest to your distress, to learn your names and to give you an address.’

Compassion and hope are key themes in El’s recently-published first collection of poems The paper sky which combines serious subject matter with clever word-play, and a lightness of touch. She has an ability to empathise with people who are suffering, letting their voices be heard speaking out their pain, and thus giving birth to compassion in us.

Through El’s words we experience struggles with addiction; the pain of still-birth, miscarriage and the loss of a young child; the consequences of childhood trauma; the terrible sadness of seeing a beloved mother ‘camouflaged’ by dementia.

It sounds grim, and it is indeed painful to be confronted with the reality of other people’s pain. But, taken as a whole The paper sky is a book of hope. El has said that she aims ‘not to rant and rave about the issues of the day,’ but would rather ‘focus on nurturing words that will save.’ She has also told us ‘I believe in the power of brokenness. When we cry out, God meets us.’

In the very act of articulating our need we are met by God. The paper sky is not an explicitly religious book, and yet you sense that God is forever present. Thus the addict discovers that ‘freedom’s a kiss’; the girl with autism realises that she is ‘a work of art’; the woman burdened by distressing family circumstance and by world news ‘followed Google Maps to St Peter’s’ where, singing as the tears fell ‘in worship I raised my hand.’

I particularly appreciated the poem Trafficked. It begins with the insight ‘what people do is not so far apart from the condition of their hearts.’ It follows that people who cage, damage, enslave, hurt other people are those who have themselves been caged, damaged, enslaved, hurt. It then reflects that those who have been loved, honoured, healed, redeemed are best equipped to show love and honour to others, to heal and to redeem.

Trafficked then highlights a strange anomaly: that those who damage others are much more committed in their doing of damage than those who release others in their bringing of freedom. But ‘Freedom needs to be more than a word.’ And so this powerful poem ends with the plea that we who are free, must free others.

The poem reminded me of Jesus Christ. Wholly free, and secure in the Father’s love, Jesus is able, and proactively willing to free us wholly.

El Gruer has said  ‘Every piece I write is immersed in prayer before-hand,’ and it seems to me that there is another poetry which she aims to take into places where it isn’t normally welcomed – the poetry of Christian faith, so often dismissed as irrelevant, yesterday’s news. El speaks out this poetry with conviction: not a performance this, but an expression of who she is.

Another poem I loved was one of the specifically Christian ones, Sunday School. The speaker remembers her five-year-old self hearing the name ‘Jesus’ in Sunday School. That word ‘Jesus’ resonated in her, and, glimpsing the reality behind those two syllables she felt like running to Jesus across sunlit fields, gathering flower for him as she went.

But instead, she had to sit cross-legged in a dismal hall, patient listening rewarded by juice in a tawdry polystyrene cup. What an indictment of us as Christians, I thought, taking something beyond wonder and presenting it in a drab, unimaginative context. But then I reflected – isn’t the poem really saying that the power of Jesus is such that he meets us in the drab ordinariness of our lives, and sets us free? Can diluted juice in a polystyrene cup become a Eucharist?

The key thought lying behind El Gruer’s work is this. The ice in our hearts is broken by a son, dead not on a Mediterranean beach, but on a cross near Jerusalem; and by the same son alive on that resurrection Sunday when the poetry of God burst free.

The Paper Sky by El Gruer is published by Canterbury Press. ISBN 9781848257672.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 1st October 2015)