Movement Magazine Issue 163

REVIEWS
SAME BOAT:
POEMS ON
POVERTY AND
LOCKDOWN
Locally to me, there is a food waste café
called Rainbow Junktion. It is pay-asyou-feel,
which means anyone can go in
and get a delicious meal, for whatever
they can afford to pay, whether that is a
sizeable donation towards the work of
the project, or 20 minutes washing the
pots once they’ve finished eating. Those
with plenty and those with nothing
gather in solidarity over dinner to tackle
the juxtaposed problems of food waste
damaging our planet, and food poverty
damaging our communities. It is a
beautiful, holy space.
Same Boat for me captured the essence
of the café. It is a collection of poems
written through a collaboration between
experts in poetry and experts in poverty,
whether by experience, education, or
engagement. Church Action on Poverty
with their Poet in Digital Residence
Matt Sowerby ran workshops and online
gatherings during lockdown to explore
and capture the experiences of people
across the country, and Same Boat is the
resulting anthology, published during
Challenge Poverty Week 2020.
The anthology contains a variety of
styles, from blackout and found poetry,
to the more traditional rhyming
verses, and with each poem there is
some background to the imagery and
inspiration used by the author – useful
for those who, like me, appreciate poetry
but don’t always understand it too well! I
found it very powerful that a page is left
blank part way through the anthology
to mark the 10% of the UK who don’t
have access to the internet, and therefore
couldn’t contribute to the project due to
digital exclusion.
The introduction to the work discusses
how both positive and negative
narratives about poverty are harmful
– in our national consciousness either
people in poverty are ‘scroungers’,
selfishly taking benefits they don’t
deserve, or are poor helpless victims of
a system beyond their control. The aim
of this anthology is to take power back
Same Boat: Poems on
Poverty and Lockdown
ed. Barbara Adlerova, Ben
Pearson, Jayne Gosnall, Matt
Sowerby and Penny Walters
for Church Action on Poverty
Download at www.
church-poverty.org.uk/
sameboatdownload/
for those experiencing poverty, and to
remind us that their voices are necessary
to the creation of a just and more equal
society.
The project also features reflections on
lockdown, isolation, and mental health
challenges. Various contributions to
the anthology discuss mental health
funding, loneliness, addiction, and the
unexpected chaos we were thrown into
in March. Works like ‘Quarantine’
and ‘100 Days’ capture the mood
of the moment, and will serve as
a reminder in years to come of the
collective bewilderment we’ve all been
experiencing.
I would thoroughly recommend giving
this project a read – it is vital inspiration
for the continuing work of building a
better society, and a reminder of the
essential inclusion of everyone’s voices in
bringing that vision to life.
EMMA TEMPLE
42 MOVEMENT Issue 163