A new version of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, reimagined by people who have experienced homelessness, is to go on display alongside the original.
A leather-bound copy of Refuge from the Ravens: New Lyrical Ballads for the 21st Century, will be presented this afternoon to the archive at Wordsworth Grasmere, a visitor attraction run by the Wordsworth Trust in the poet’s former home of Grasmere in the Lake District, by some of those who contributed to the book.
Their work is also part of the Refuge from the Ravens exhibition currently showing at Wordsworth Grasmere, which is a contemporary retelling of Lyrical Ballads through poetry, art and song. All the contributions have been made by those with experience of homelessness, and other vulnerable people.
The project was led by Julia Grime and poet Phil Davenport, who worked with approximately 100 people over the course of a series of workshops and on-the-street discussions in the north of England.
As well as workshops, about 30 people involved in the project also took part in four research trips to Wordsworth Grasmere, where they saw and handled original manuscripts of Lyrical Ballads.
The Lyrical Ballads were published anonymously by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798; four of the poems were by Coleridge while the rest were by Wordsworth. They featured the stories of regular people and addressed issues such as homelessness and poverty in poems such as The Female Vagrant, Goody Blake and Harry Gill and Old Man Travelling. A second volume of Lyrical Ballads was published by Wordsworth in 1800.
Jeff Cowton, principal curator and head of learning at Wordsworth Grasmere, said: “The poems in the Lyrical Ballads were to make human the people living around and about [Wordsworth].
“With the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth was saying everyone matters, and that’s what this exhibition says.”
Placing the new version of the poems alongside Wordsworth’s original was “privileging the work” created by homeless people, said Grime, who described the New Lyrical Ballads as a “remix” of the original.
Grime said that displaying the works alongside each other was “sort of to say, something’s really broken here and things are going to get really bad if we don’t actually stop and listen to the voices of everybody in society, rather than just pursuing whoever shouts loudest or whoever’s got the most money.”
One of the project’s participants, Dom, said that if Wordsworth was alive now, he would have talked “about the cost of living”, like in the poem Goody Blake and Harry Gill, which is about an old, impoverished woman who illegally harvests from a hedge belonging to a rich farmer.
Dom said it was “a given” that Wordsworth would have written about homelessness, and would have been “frustrated by the fact that there is so much public will to help people in poverty, and yet it’s never important in politics”.
Another participant, Ric, said taking part in the project felt as if they were “taking a famous poet’s work and redefining it for the 21st century to help people grasp the concept” of homelessness.
“Before I started writing, I was scared to go into my thoughts, my feelings,” said Ric. “Now I feel more comfortable with myself and I know I’ve touched people I’ve never met. I’ve reached them.”
Davenport said “poetry dissolves the barriers between people”, and he hoped the exhibition and the poetry would help rid people of “all those judgments we are all making and the negative stereotypes” about homeless people.
• The Refuge from the Ravens exhibition can be viewed at Wordsworth Grasmere until 31 December 31. Refuge from the Ravens: New Lyrical Ballads for the 21st Century (£7.95) is published by Oystercatcher press.
