ABOVE & BELOW
Wolfisms notebook pages by Liz Collini 2024
From original text by Davenport & others
— a thought diary 2023-4—
“We cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.”
Suella Braverman, MP. Statement on X, formerly Twitter. November 2023.
This poetry project, which involved collaborations with people experiencing homelessness, coincided with steep rises in the cost of living, numbers of people experiencing food poverty (@12 million) and a rise in homelessness in the UK. The project used the symbology of wolves to talk about “the wolf at the door” and also issues of outsidering and marginalisation, at at time when these things are highly contested and vilified, most famously by Suella Braverman.
Below is a series of diaristic pieces and poems describing the development of the project, followed by some notes showing my wider thinking-through of the implications.
My thanks to all at LDHAS (Lancaster District Homeless Action Service) and Red Rose Recovery in Lancaster who profoundly contributed to this project.
Last Wolf in England
If you stay out of the way the English
Leave you alone
But they’re busy bodies
And if you’re dangerous, they’ll send marksmen
With bows of burning gold.
It’s a privilege to see
The evolution of computers and to be
Part of them, a privilege to be
Homeless in town
Huddled around dogs.
It is a privilege to run wild
Light a joint, listen to their voices.
Litre bottle of pure cannabis smoke
DMT, extract of spirit juice
KY Jelly for the mind.
In the shopping centre, I’m screaming
And some idiot filming on their phone
But can’t read the body language
Learn by watching the last wolf.
“Avoiding humans is wise.”
The voices in your head are vying for attention
Music trips you out
You become a shaman creature
Telling people the truth
Twisting the noggin
Breaking shop windows round town
You bring glittering
The jewels of the city.
With bows of burning gold.
BJ & Philip
Crazy Dog
We were standing in the queue for some food and I asked him how he was doing. He was wearing pyjamas, with an anorak over the top. One of his wrists was bandaged. He said he was good. Said he was in rehab and he’d run away, but he was going back again that afternoon to get better, finally.
He died that weekend, haunted by life like an evil spirit. They took too many pills, him and his friend eating them like the proverbial Smarties, high after high. It’s weird to think about him trying to hold those tiny pills in his damaged hands with the missing fingers. He told me it was a punishment because he had blabbed, but never gave any more details. Wasn’t good on details. And meanwhile everything tumbling down.
Said he liked meeting me, as we talked in the queue. And he had really enjoyed writing the poems, but now wasn’t the time for writing.
He said was one of those people you can never trust, he warned me of it himself, like not eating rotten fruit. I kept feeling that there a subtext to the whole conversation but couldn’t figure it out and now he’s dead.
Who was it put him in rags? Who inserted the homeless heart? Lots of stories, from third parties. Like how he and his missus were so scared of their crazy dog they had to leave their flat and fed it meat through the letterbox until they were evicted. The flat full of shit, neighbours complaining, dog even more insane than before.
Now he’s dead and I wonder if anything could’ve stopped it happening, or if he’d gone too far astray from the pack.
Gravestone
I talk to BJ at the street homeless centre in Lancaster. He is a head taller than me, a beard that’s a huge thicket, eyes that hide in his face. As we talk he starts to test, to gauge if he can trust me a little — am I pitying him, do I disapprove of his drugs, of “scroungers”, of how he lives. We talk about judgement, talk about punishment and the destruction of the self by the self. All the things that he knows a great deal about.
He tells me right now his home is a gravestone.
“But the good thing is… You see the stars. See them properly.”
I noticed as we’re talking that quite often he jumps to “the good thing”. It’s a kind of wisdom poetry, I suppose. I describe the project and he agrees to help; he also suggests that I try working with sound as well as the written word, so that people with literacy issues (about 45% of people affected by homelessness) can access the work.
Later as I’m walking back up the hill to my house in rural darkness, I glance upward into a misty, black down of night sky. But these are only brief glimpses and glimmers; When I get to my house my eyes are dazzled by the brightness of the kitchen, calling me in.
Fear
We watch wind sprites make their fingerprints on the surface of Kentmere reservoir. Walking back in the dusk, braced against the end of the night. As we drive home, see a leveret in the road, trapped between hedges. Confused in the car headlights, it can use none of its speed. It dashes back and forth between the two sides of the road looking for a way out. Black tip ears, long legs quivering with fright. Finally it escapes.
Switch on the radio when we come into signal. There’s a news feature about rich people buying sanctuaries for themselves. Super yachts with armed security personnel. Second homes of course, in case of a new pandemic. Celebrity Panic rooms, especially in Holland Park where they’re proving very popular. But the real big sellers are bunkers. New Zealand has developed a whole industry providing post-nuclear bunkers for the super-rich. De-civilisation.
On the way back the headlights flash on the stars of occasional insects. There used to be so many more. Great seas of them and now they’re dying away.
Crown of Thorns
The Crown of Thorns is an ancient Welsh stone circle renamed in Christian times for its resemblance to the crown used to torture Christ in the last stages of his life. One religion laying its own symbolism over the remains of another, in salute to the exquisite cruelties that humans devise.
Walking towards the Neolithic stones, over a land soaked by last night’s rain. We see a runner up ahead; he gets to the stones long before we do and takes a picture with his mobile phone. Then he climbs atop the stones, wobbling on the Crown of Thorns, and takes a selfie, balanced up there held by the wind for another selfie and another.
At the entrance portal somebody has scattered eggshells on either side of the entrance. Is this a symbolic offering by modern pagans, or just picnic remains? Two people arrive with large dogs. We leave the stones and as I look back, the ellipse of their circle seems to make an eye between the sky and the underneath-world.
The dog people move away from the stones, the animals are set free and they run wildly, their shadows sliding down the hill before them.
Why do we love dogs? Companionship, loyalty, positivity – we crave these things but aren’t very good at giving them to one another as humans. Nature doesn’t mess up nurture, but humans lost their common touch for social nurture a long time ago, in exchange for social control. Perhaps dogs are the closest we come to our ancient group selves.
Why do we hate wolves? We don’t like aggression and things we don’t control. We punish the wolves for daring to remain themselves, rather than serving as our avatars.
Wolf DJ
For the last three times I’ve been into the street homeless centre LDHAS I’ve had long conversations with BJ about wolves and their meaning. BJ called himself a lone wolf and is living outside, teetering on the edge of everything, it seems.
He’s talked a lot about psychedelics and how they’ve open doors for him, made him see the world of shamans and possibilities beyond human patterns, a sunrise of the mind, the root and blossom of systems of thought. Last time we spoke he gave me a YouTube link to a recording of future sound of London, with a shamanic voice-over.
BJ is almost to head higher than I am and is about half as wide again as me. In his big bobble hat and his wraparound anorak he is a big bulk of a man. Sometimes he gets violent. But never with people, only objects. He’ll have a rampage around the town, smash some windows maybe...
That’s when the change is coming for him, the full moon beckons and what we’ve been calling the wolf side of himself comes out. These times are ended by him being sectioned and spending a while institutionalised. He fiercely holds his independence, it’s the thing he’s got most of all. Even now, living outside in a graveyard, under an archway with only the dead for neighbours, he is his own, his very own person.
And so we talk about wolves and he asks the question what are the lost jewels of our cities, our civilisation? Can some new shaman help us to find them? In old traditions, the shaman wears a wolf head to mark him out as the people’s guide.
My bright city of night
Show me all the things you like
Cars throw a rope of light
In the river take a hike.
Take off your bright dress
And get your feet wet
Here's a window, here's your breath.
What's the matter with your mate?
See stars when you intake
If you want I'll give a taste
Make a crystal of your face.
Here's a doorway you're a sleeper
Here's a key for your zookeeper
Here's a hope that they won't beat you.
Crystal river, make me shiver.
How's your little soul?
Sun is a big bright bowl
If the soup burns your hand
Just drink from the can.
Hope you have a pleasant flight
Up to see the gods of light
May you always burn this bright
Crystal river, make me shiver.
Once the world has run its course
And we've all turned to HP sauce
I will see your face before me
When the moon and stars ignore me.
Cole: Now that I see through the eyes of a wolf, my palm's getting sweaty, hot like the sands of the Gulf / When I'm in treatment I'm constantly evolving, when I'm in addiction I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing / 90 days sober, caring I'm holding I’m holding, plasticine in my mind I’m moulding / shut the front door stop letting the cold in / Flow like a river, but my banks are corroding...
Found poem by Philip; rap by Cole
Dogs & roses
Red Rose Recovery, a substance abuse recovery support agency, is the venue I’ve chosen for a sequence of poetry workshops. The writers gather each week, working to make poems themed around wolves. Some of these pieces will feed into the final sequence of sound poems and songs.
I was sitting around the corner clearing up after a session, filling out forms and getting bits of paper in order when I heard a voice I recognised instantly. I sat and listened, couldn’t hear the words but it sounded like somebody pouring their heart out.
I finished what I was doing, said my goodbyes to the staff. Then I went around the corner to the sofa space and he was there, with Titan the Red Rose dog on his lap. The dog is a big friendly lump, self-confident and sleek. Big enough to look after himself and to look after you too. If you sit on the sofa at Red Rose he will come to say hello. And if you want to tell him what is going on in your life, no holds barred he’ll listen and never walk away.
Foolishly, I said hello and it briefly broke the spell, my acquaintance nodded at me but didn’t say a word. He looked annoyed, perhaps I’d found him in his moment of vulnerability and that’s just not allowed in the scheme of things. I left them both there, the man holding the dog in his arms and telling stories of the street. A cheerful dreaming together in a strange place.
The Keeper of Heaven
Met the keeper of heaven one morning when I started this project. Didn’t know it was such an important individual at first. Just some homeless guy called BJ with a bobble hat and a beard, who keeps his rucksack stashed close at all times, someone who’s been sleeping in a church under stars, a collage of mind-stars.
The unusual thing about him I remembered later: his eyes were almost entirely white. I noticed only in retrospect how tiny and black his pupils were. We talked of visions, shamans wrecking the tower of knowledge. The wise shaman, who communes with the spirits of animals, wearing a wolf head.
Later, towards the end of the Last Wolf discussions and workshops I met another person who brought together the two ends of the project, by chance. He made a poem about the star Arcturus, which I learn is the Keeper of Heaven, the watchful sentinel that keeps all in order.
It gradually dawns, through misty thinking, that I’m in the company of those who have, in some senses at least, met the gods, or at least the deeper self. They’ve ventured far from the demarcated polite human environs, out under the night sky and encountered fear, delight, horror, death, and the intense rawness of simply being.
Later again that week on an ordinary, familiar countryside walk, I start seeing temples in the shapes of the old trees. Cluster of scotch pine with pink limbs, bark peeling and tucked like a baby among the leaves I see of all things a bobble hat, green with a white pompom.
Fox News
Call up the good weather
Don’t see foxes often, except
Of a Midsummer, under a nightsky
Deep almost as frost.
Look anywhere you like
There’s life.
And yet, look again:
The stars are going back in time
Midsummer’s Rainbow
Think about grasping it
Think I haven’t got it just yet.
And then.
Bright Kingfisher, Bullfinch and the
Thrush-speckled sky.
Stars on course, deep as frost
Call up the good weather
Midsummer Rainbow, the dust
Of Midsummer echoes shooting stars.
(Refrain: Call on me, the melody
Of wood and wind and water sweet
I made this dance for minstrelcy
For you and me
A touch of love and beauty.
Kingfisher, call up the good weather)
Francis & Phil / appropriation of ST Coleridge
LAST WOLF — THINKINGS
FEAR OF
Socio economic other
Ethnic other
Religious other
Fear of nature
Poverty, addiction, threat.
The wolf is FEAR. It is often the very first image of fear given to us in childhood. Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs, Peter and the Wolf... But the fear continues as we grow. Fear of ethnic others. Fear of Religious others eg. Islamophobia. Fear of the homeless and of homelessness, to be utterly without security. The Other… eats at food banks. Democracy begins with an acknowledgement of the world as full of difference.
How to find your spirit animal in a time of extinctions
I’m the last wild wolf in England
And my habitat is cold
Describe the deepest depth of hell
It fits me well
I’m the last wild wolf in England
In England’s damned woodlands
No eyes to see me
No worries to perceive me
They’re using torches to hunt for me
Between existence and memory.
Thoughts bristle in my eyes
Switching personalities from Jekyll to Hyde
Some humans fear me,
Some worship me
Embodied in their minds
Living rent free, our company.
I’m the last wild wolf in England
And my habitat is cold
Describe the deepest depth of hell
It fits me well
Red Rose group poem
February 2023
In Europe, fear of the wolf peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries with many werewolf trials, the victims were frequently exorcised to the point of death. The last such werewolf trial was in 1802, in Slovakia.
Fear of nature is always present in these adversarial Wolf encounters between the “Civilised” and “Nature”, because civilisation, especially modernity, has separated us from the outside. Creatures in the forest, the vagabonds, the green man, the banished, the warnings about the world beyond human enclosures, are passed on through myths and fairytale. The wolf is at the back of them, the antecedent of outsiders, often depicted in lurid horror, the stalker that’s coming for us.
Ironically as the wolf is erased in England, it rises up again. The more you ignore fear the more it builds. Building a wall to keep the other out also builds fear. Trump’s wall has already failed before it’s finished, or even begun.
The Last Wolf project explores contemporary fear, particularly fears around homelessness and poverty and the cost of living — like German theatre director Falk Richter making his play titled Fear about the rise of the New Right. How real is the fear? In the Wolf project, some people on the edge of society — rough sleepers, people with experience of homelessness and other vulnerable people — are invited to reflect on the roles of the wolf. Is it powerful, is it a victim? What is to be learned from it, what is to be avoided? What is our understanding of "wolf" -- a fragment the brokenness of which has now been perceived as a new whole.
This ambivalent metaphor is extended to include two poems about humans acting violently because of fear, and instrumentalising fear. The Drina Wolves were a military unit associated with the Srebrenica massacre; my poem of that name is based on my notes when attending the war crime trial of some of the perpetrators. September Wolves is a poem based on two moments of violence, both of which happened on September 11th – the 1973 takeover coup by the dictator Pinochet in Chile and the 2001 Twin Towers attack in New York.
We’ve not noticed the wolves are circling again, the international capitalists, the price hikers, the predators. The poor are being hunted.
And yet…
“Maybe we should make everyone homeless and then they’ll learn humility. There was a philosopher who said you aren’t born with a soul, but a soul comes to you from suffering. When you’re homeless, suffering is what you learn. And suffering is what the Economist lacks. People like that feel pity, but a soul is what gives you empathy.
“When I was younger I was a bit of an arsehole, I’m still an arsehole but I’ve got got a bit of soul now
“When there’s a wolf at the door it destabilises you. When you are homeless you don’t have a plan, don’t have stuff to nick, so what’s a wolf gonna take? The wolf makes you feel edgy, aggressive and scared. You don’t want to run cos you look a coward and you don’t want to stay because you’ll get your head kicked.
“But the wolves are scared too. We live in a world that has a life and we don’t control it, that applies to homeless man, or the king of England. There is no control, only the laws of life. In some ways I’m more secure than the king. I’ve not got anything to lose, sleeping bag and a passport that’s all. I’m a socialist, everything belongs to the universe and we pass it on, we all own nothing.
“I think we have a shadow government, I genuinely believe it. Boris Johnson – I liked the guy, he was charismatic, but he was ruled by chaos. Whoever gets in power, it doesn’t matter who we are ruled by shadows.
“Night has a mood to it, an edge. I love the colours, the blues of the moon, the serenity. At night you don’t see what’s coming to you. One of the good things about being homeless is you see the stars. I sleep on a gravestone at the moment, I live with stars. I’ve seen Jupiter, and Saturn too, they put you in a perfect perspective. You understand the real, tiny size of you.
“Your senses are dumbed down by the blackness and yet sharpened. When I do my physics thinking it’s always at night, that’s when I do my best contemplation. My area is relativity – time and space – it’s a benign subject to fill my mind. Like the ladder paradox, at one speed of light the ladder sits in your garden shed, and it another speed it doesn’t even get into the door.
“When I lived in a flat, I lived on my PC, on my GameBoy. If you don’t have those things, it frees your mind and you have processing time and you draw insights from those maturing ideas...”
Anonymous
The wolf can teach us, just as pack helps one another. Look into the fear and we’ll find benefits, insights that can help and maybe even save us. A wolf knows how to live outside our cities, is the other side of the mirror to our favourite domesticated pet, the dog.
Wolf myths that can bring understanding of the human condition cross centuries and civilisations. The poems in this project bring in old German wolf sayings, and myths of itinerants from the cold.
The Norse God Odin had wolves for companionship and as guards against giants. In Japan the Okami wolf protects souls and spirits in Shinto temples. The Celtic werewolf protects and guides, it brings you to the path you’ve lost and it’s a comforter in the wild places. First Nations in America have a creator god who is a wolf; traditionally tribespeople were co-dependent with wolves, hunting together. The Slavic wolf-headed creator god is a symbol of strength and unity. In Turkey, the spirit of ancestors is gathered in the wolves. In Greece, Apollo was raised by wolves, and wolves run messengs between gods. In Mongolia the wolf is good luck, as is the Nordic wolf, especially good luck on the battlefield where the wolf chooses souls for the afterlife. And of course Romulus and Remus were raised by another wolf and in turn founded the city of Rome and the Roman Empire.
But we can learn more from wolves than just our own myths about them. Wolfpacks are a highly functional social mechanism. From them we can learn effective group behaviours. We can learn group problem-solving, how to go through trauma together, how to equally value different social roles rather than hierarchy, how to raise our young with clearly-defined and attentive parenting and nurturing skills.
An inverted predator— humans are the ultimate planetary threat but we still fear wolves. Demonising nature, we project ourselves onto animals.
These layers of meaning and threat circle each other. Feet padding in circles, closing in, traces in snow.
[Italicised lines inserted throughout this account are fragments drawn from Jeffrey Robinson's original text Romantic Manifestos Manifest]
Silver Bullet
Stop and start again
Clear the footprints away
All that hasn’t worked
Try a different approach.
Stop and start again
A birch in the snow
Spreads silver wings
Get rid of preconceiving: try listening.
Harley & Philip
POSTSCRIPT
Matchless (in the dark)
She walks thru dark wet streets, broken shoes barely contain sore feet. Old woollen jumper sodden from rain and whatever people throw from their windows and balconies. A winter night, everyone huddled up inside and the city a perpetual wave. Little Match Girl, pale and gaunt, looking like an extra.
See her with the tray of matches, trying to get enough together for some bread, a bowl of something. Once a bloom, vibrant as she moved amongst us, now she’s monochrome dust. Stood on the corner, almost invisible in the bustle. Only I notice her wavering voice: “Matches! Matches, here!” Over and over, no break for breath. Little Match Girl, Little Match Girl, selling her wares. Whistling to passers by and not selling a thing, as though they were shy.
“No need love, I’ve a plentiful supply.”
Stumbles down the cobbled road and sits under the old railway bridge, a place no other children play, or dare to. The darkness in front of her is overwhelming. Only a tiny light in the distance, a match. Firefly Tinkerbelle light dances. Eclipsed now, her aspect as in life — alone. On my way home, see her again. I knew that lassie’s parents, before they were taken by the war. As I move towards her slowly, I hear a pack of dogs.
The pack on the hunt, the pat of their paws, the snuffling snouts. Angry growls, then silence — then the howls. And the call is strong. Muscle to muscle, tissue to tissue. Strikes one match, another, another, the light of the distance gets brighter. The ghosts other kids are scared of. She’s struck another. Sees eyes in the distance. The mercury touching minus one, an abysmal time. Lights three matches in unison, one, two three. She no longer sees or hears, matches no longer matter.
Somewhere familiar yet unfamiliar. Knows the smell of opium poppy, the life on a spoon. Wrapped in symmetry, the wolves on hind legs, chest and shoulders bulging, their faces furry masks, worn for anonymity. Sticky opium flower trips fantastic beasts.
They lick and nudge, mewling over her as if she’s a pup. Then one wolf takes a bite, but only to lift the girl by her ragged clothes. Gently, lovingly and carries her away. Her mouth hanging open, I see long, tapering canine teeth.
By the Red Rose group
The Last Wolf in England (2023-24) is a poetry/sound collaboration between Phil Davenport and people affected by homelessness and other vulnerable people in Lancaster, accompanied by various musicians. It addresses social justice issues in contemporary Britain and beyond -- unrest, massive financial inequality, erosion of democratic debate.
Interviews and poems were edited into soundscapes, working alongside producer Sophie Cooper, singer Christine Johnson, violinist Carolyn Francis, cellist Barbara Grunthal, guitarist Ric Lord (with engineer Steve Allen) and drummer Ian Davenport.
Further visual material was developed in collaboration with artist Liz Collini. Visual text works associated with this project can be found at Synapse International visual poetry website.
Many thanks to all involved including Caspar, Cole, Dom, Darren, David, Grahame, Hartley, Gerard, Leigh, Kerry, Madhuri, Nellie, Peter, Richard, Steve, Steve, Simon, Simon, Tony and the other participants whose names are withheld.
A big thank you to LDHAS and Red Rose Recovery and to FoN, where the poems were debuted. Thanks also due to Bron Szerszynski and Jeffrey Robinson for conversations which inspired the WOLFISMS.
1000 years ago the last wild wolf in England was killed in Cumbria. We still hunt down and torment outsiders, instead of wolves. In today's Britain 12 million people regularly go hungry and thousands homeless.
Red Rose Recovery
Group poem March 2023
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