DIALOGUE NOW
A WEEK OF ONE-TO-ONE DIALOGUES AT TATE MODERN (Bankside, London, SE1 9TG)
23rd - 26th of October, 2012
Next week (23 - 26 October) I’m going to be meditating in a ‘Tank’ at Tate Modern in order to recreate a Juan Downey performance piece called Plato Now which involves an exciting mix of Plato’s Dialogues, alpha-wave-triggering audio, ECG machines, and what Downey called ‘invisible
A lot of this feeds very deeply into my work as a psychotherapist, but also I think it’s what I’m trying to create with my online project Read Me Something You Love. Both of which compel me to think and feel as much as I can into questions like: What is a dialogue or conversation? Are there any “rules” to dialogue? Does dialogue need rules? How is the dialogue that one has with oneself (in meditation, but also just sitting on the tube, or lying in bed worrying about stuff) different to the dialogues we have with others? Why do certain kinds of dialogues with other people seem to have more potential to “heal” than those we have with ourselves in our heads?
In order to do this, I’m inviting you to come along to the Tate and have a one hour (though it will probably be 50 minutes once I’ve emerged from my Tank) private dialogue with me. Some dialogues will be in the Tate Modern Cafe, but most I envisage Bankside, us walking and talking.
There are two ways we can go about this:
1) Read Me Something You Love: You bring along a poem, or a piece of prose that you feel compelled to share. You read it aloud to me, and then for the next 50 minutes we talk about it in a way that feels most “alive” and congruent to ourselves and the piece.
2) “Freestyle”: You come without a text and simply just talk to me for 50 minutes. You can treat it (if you so desire) as a kind of “free” hour of coaching-counselling-therapy dialogue. Or we can just focus on having a really good conversation, but based primarily around what you would like to talk about (sky’s the limit), and I’ll interact with that. My job is to bring myself “with all my ears alive” to the dialogue and let us take it from there.
For the duration of our Dialogue (the 50 minutes we agree to meet and talk) I will be abiding by theBACP Ethical Framework which sets out the personal and moral qualities that you should expect me to bring to the dialogue, and is absolutely explicit and clear about how I will be respecting privacy and confidentiality. This very safe and boundaried framework will hopefully allows us to be quite free, creative, and in some very important way “ourselves”.
If this sounds like something that you’d enjoy, please sign up for a Dialogue session on this online form:
https://docs.google.com/
Looking forward to our dialogue!
Poems By Heart
An evening of Poetry Recited by Heart for National Poetry Day (4 October 2012)
@ Abney Park Chapel, London
THE SETTING: Just ten minutes by train from Liverpool Street lies the unique, non-denominational garden cemetery of Abney Park with its A to Z arboretum, Egyptian Revival entranceway, and soaring neo-Gothic Chapel.
For the last 30 years the chapel has been closed after a fire gutted its interior.
On October 4th (National Poetry Day) within the vestiges of this beautiful and evocative space, poetry learnt by heart will fill the building and natural surroundings with words and emotion.
THE EVENING: The evening will be a celebration of poems learnt by heart. Those involved will be reciting poems they love, poems that mean so much to them that the words have become, through the process of memorisation, “written on their bones”.
Something magical happens in this poem-embodying process as can be seen by reading about the experiences of our By-Hearters. We hope this will be also be conveyed on the evening itself.
We also have a fund-raising agenda. Each line of poetry will be sponsored through this Fundraising Page to raise money for The Reader Organisation‘s Care Leaver Apprenticeship programme, a cause very close to our hearts.
The Reader Organisation is a national charity and social enterprise that works to bring about social change by sharing great literature with people of all ages, from all backgrounds. Here are some of the things they do in London.
TIME: Ticket holders will need to be at the main gates of Abney Park which can be found on Stoke Newington High Street (Google Map) by 7:15 pm.
They will then be escorted through the park to the Chapel where the performance will start at 7:30 pm.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED: If you would like to recite a piece of poetry on the evening to help raise funds for The Reader Organisation, please get in touch with Steve who will add your name to our Fundraising Page and give you some assistance in preparing for your by-heart recital.
We’d love to have as many By-Hearters on the evening as possible.
COST: Tickets can only be purchased online. Tickets cost £3 each and can be purchased via the PayPal Donate button below. Two pounds from each ticket sold will go to the Abney Park Trust, with the Trust very generously donating the third pound to The Reader’s Apprenticeship Programme.
TICKETS: SOLD OUT
(But if you would still like to come please get in touch with Steve and he can put you on the waiting list. For those who have booked but don’t think they might be able to make it, likewise.)
If you are able to, please do still consider sponsoring our By-Heart Reciters through this Fundraising Page.
Absolutely every penny raised will go to The Reader’s Apprenticeship Programme.
Want to recite a poem you love? Join us!
Audience members under 16 years of age need to be accompanied by an adult. Tickets are non-refundable. The performance will take place under cover, but we are slightly open to the elements. Please wrap up warmly and/or bring a blanket!
