Arkbound Foundation ran a series of workshops at the Community Newsroom, attended by writers from across Glasgow. Over the course of six sessions, writers respond creatively to the cost of living crisis – through poetry, short stories, and reflective prose, highlighting the power of literature to document their experiences.

*Participants getting stuck into writing*

Intro by Romy St John, project coordinator, Arkbound Foundation | Photos by giacinta frisillo

Earlier this year, Arkbound Foundation ran a series of six workshops at Greater Govanhill’s Community Newsroom, themed around creative writing and the cost of living crisis. Each workshop was led by a different facilitator and with six sessions on topics ranging from ‘what makes a writer’, to health inequalities and political poetry.

Participants were a diverse group of Glasgow-based writers with varying levels of writing experience but who all embraced the sessions and writing exercises with enthusiasm and curiosity.

Arkbound is a charity that aims to empower people through writing and improve diversity within publishing. We run creative writing workshops and mentorship programmes aimed at writers who might otherwise have difficulty accessing such opportunities. We also publish books by the authors from disadvantaged and diverse backgrounds and we run a crowdfunding platform, Crowdbound, to raise funds for publishing books or for social or environmental projects.

I asked each of our participants to produce a short piece of writing for these pages that related to something they’d learned from the sessions or their experience of attending the workshops. The resulting pieces span poetry and prose, touch on the deeply personal as well as the societal, and generally point to the power of writing to help make sense of yourself and the world around you. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Eithne Gallagher

The Shape of Survival

PTSD rewires you.
It turns safety into suspicion, silence into a threat. Being neurodivergent means I already experience the world in high definition...
too bright,
too sharp,
too unpredictable.
Sometimes ordinary things feel impossible.
In the Arkbound workshop, I wrote through the static. I wrote about the exhaustion of masking, the weight of hypervigilance, the way trauma lives in the body long after it’s over. I wrote about trying to find a place in a world that doesn’t adjust its volume for me.
And in writing, I found a kind of freedom. Not a cure, not an escape, but a space where I could exist without apology.
I used to think survival was about shrinking, about enduring quietly. But maybe it’s about telling the truth...
messy,
unfiltered,
real.
And maybe, in that, I can take up space without fear.

Karmjit Badesha

Taped to the shutter is a short, tearful letter,

‘Due to rising costs…’ another local shop is

lost.

Stealthy taggers do their duty with colourful swagger,

overlaid with homemade posters, fading, outrage in tatters.

Then ‘We’ve made a start!’ captures curious online hearts

As windows washed white keeps the refit out of sight.

Countdown complete! Dogs, prams, friends crowd the street.

The buzz going around: ‘its a jewel in Govanhill’s crown.’

‘Wow, those pastries and buns look class! They’re going fast,

they won’t last the day. Almond croissant…£4.50!?’

Digging my fists deeper into my pockets I walk away.

Izah Bowes

“Free Spin”

When I write, I dance. My partner is rigid.
I will him to loosen up; to bend just so.

He is fickle, unflinching. He takes my feelings, my unfettered steps, and demands they’re fitted.
He makes ineffable life boil itself into words so narrow.

Our dance whirls us round the floor, the pen, the page. He steps on my toes; I compromise

every time.

The raw, rhythm of me is moulded to his choreography, forced to its pattern.

I am a raver, forced to spin waltz. I am a poet, born to scream, sweat, head bang;
to mosh and disappear into the rhythm. I am a poet, forced to sway and twirl and turn.

English is no step for the Irish song, but it’s the only dance I know.

Alastair Callander

The Dreamer

People say I’m a dreamer
But I’m scared and I’m sick of it
Scared of judgment
Scared of misunderstanding
Scared of the consequences
Writing unlocks the shackles
Of how I “should” be
When I’ve felt judgemental, bitter and angry
I find peace
In honesty, kindness and curiosity
It’s a testament to the human spirit
That people still care for community
In spite of what’s incentivised
I want to stop pointing fingers
Use evidence based behaviour change theory
To encourage action and express anger
Through honesty, kindness and curiosity
Please see me
See humans
See people
See caring
All behaviour makes sense
I’m scared
And I’m told “this is just how it is”
Although I can see through the bars of fear I’ll just have to keep dreaming
For now.

Em

Recently, I saw a wrecked man board my bus. He was awkwardly carrying an
older unboxed television. Momentarily, he couldn't figure out that held
width ways the entrance would not accommodate. A helpful stranger
offered to pay his fare, and they placed the TV haphazardly alongside
stored shopping bags and he stood swaying, eyes barely present, on guard
besides his prize, forever nervously checking the TV remote control
stored in his coat pocket.
Life was likely a struggle. But he'd scored a small victory.
Suddenly, it was his stop to get off, so grabbing the TV awkwardly,
desperately, and in his panic scratching it loudly across its screen as
he mismanaged the bus exit.

Up the hill backwards
Trying hard to make a dent
Everything hurts

Victory's defeat
Help up with a tender hand
Vulnerable us

Chris Park

Learning what Words Mean

I was the lamplit silhouette in the corner of the library. I wrote self-indulgently, and I wrote badly. Then, tentatively, I stepped outside, into Govanhill, and discovered a group to create and learn with. Each of us bound by words, passion, coffee and a city we all call home. Ideas like sparks pinging across the room while we embraced narratives of resilience, power, animals, wellbeing, resistance.

Language can help us weather the storm, navigate the permacrisis of planet Earth – a powerful tool for fighting back. I know now when stories are shared it gives us hope: courage to bring our truth into a reckless world.

Anton McLeod

Un-truths do trickle down

I used to think that I was the problem, the whole problem, and nothing but the problem. I loathed myself for having Bipolar-Disorder and I especially loathed myself for being on benefits. Until I learned Transcendental Meditation, which quieted, and continues to quiet, my mind. This enabled me to attend an Arkbound course, ostensibly focused upon the Cost-of-Living Crisis, but where I learned that the seeds of my self-loathing were likely sown by the divisive politics of the seventies. Divisive politics, that likely also play a role in why I had to pay a small fortune to learn an Eastern meditation technique not embraced by Western NHS decision makers.

Syeda Sadaf Anwar Zaidi

Blue Sky (نیلا آسمان)

Where will be the blue sky? کہاں ہوگا نیلا آسمان

Where will that house be found? کہاں ملے گا وہ گھر

Where they passed the night and day جہاں گزرے وہ رات دن

Where you and we met جہاں ملے تھے تم اور ہم

Where all was true جہاں سب سچ تھا

Where all was love جہاں سب سچ تھا

Where all the secrets were جہاں سب راز تھا

Where everyone was friends جہاں سب یار تھے

Where all the fields are golden جہاں وو سب کھیت سنہرے

Now all are dust اب سب خاک ہوئے

Now all are ashes جہاں سب پیار تھا

Where will that blue sky be found? کہاں ملے گا وو نیلا آسمان

Where will that house be found? کہاں ملے گا وہ گھر

Michelle Primrose

DYSLEXIC ME

It was Friday 3rd of February going out for the day, got in my car, and crashed it at the bottom of the hill on black ice.

What a start to my weekend.

Later on that day I checked my emails, it was from Arkbound I have been accepted onto the writing group at Govanhill.

Fantastic good news for a change.

I’m nervous the anticipation of meeting others that might be proper writers as I’m not.

It’s the first day.

Riddled with anxiety, my PTSD is here I’m first to arrive, I’ve met Romy she’s a really nice person.

One by one appear.

Everyone looked and sounded so well educated, I’m definitely not fitting in with them.

It’s now the last day.

I have made new friends and I have opened up over the past few weeks about having dyslexia it’s been hard but we have had some laughs and it’s been a blast.

I feel like one of them now, Somehow a writer