Homeless take charge through the written word

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An attractively printed little book of poems and short stories written by participants in the Native Men's Residence Creative Writing Program has just been published with that organization's support in Toronto. The contributors are Native homeless people and volunteer workshop facilitators.

The 42-page paperback booklet is called Healing Journey. The reason it is important is that it gives a voice to people who are too seldom heard.

The $5 a copy generated from sales of the little book will be donated to a 52-bed youth shelter called Tumivut, meaning Our Footprints, which is operated by the Native Men's Residence and which opened in December.

The idea for the writing project, according to Na-Ma-Res Executive Director Greg Rogers, came from one of the facilitators, Lawrence Hill, an award winning writer who had pitched the idea during a talk with the shelter residents. Rogers subsequently wrote the proposal, but handed the program over to Project Co-ordinator Shallen Murray to run.

Murray, he said, met with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal writers on a weekly basis and "handled 95 per cent of it."

The red rose on the cover of Healing Journey has special significance for Murray. The late artist Jason Southwind once drew it as a token of their friendship.

Workshop facilitators came from all walks of life, and included First Nations, Jewish and one Inuit man, Rogers added.

He said he was "proud" of what the writing group had accomplished.

"There was at least 50 people that attended at least one workshop, and there was about seven that attended all of the workshops, and I think there was about 24 workshops in total." He said a core group of 12 to 15 kept the project alive.

Twenty-three-year-old Murray was credited by the others for organizing the writing project, maintaining interest among the eclectic group week after week, bringing in facilitators and keeping everyone on schedule.

"Shallen has been one of my sources of inspiration when my motivation wanes toward sloth," Gordon Pelletier said. Pelletier contributed a short poem, Black Robes, and a story called Cats on One Side of the Fence, Dogs on the Other.

Marc Nadjiwan was one of the writing workshop facilitators.

"It was great to see a large number of participants and even better to hear and read some of their compositions. There are certainly quite a few talented writers at Na-Me-Res," he said. "In fact, even though I was the facilitator of the workshop, I walked away learning a great deal."

The value of this community project, as Nadjiwan sees it, is that "Creative writing and story-telling is such a vital part of our culture. It's good to see we are keeping up with traditions, as well as exploring other options of relaying our thoughts either through words or paper."

Sixteen names are listed as writing program volunteers and facilitators and some of those are among the 18 authors whose work is included in Healing Journey.

Not everyone who participated in the Tuesday night writing project wanted their stories and poems to be published, and that was respected, Murray said. The Na-Ma-Res board selected the pieces that were published.

Rogers said the number of project participants is impressive, considering, "writing would be fairly down their list of priorities . . . you know what the homeless situation is like.

"It turned out better than I thought it would. At first I thought it was one of those nice ideas, but it grew a strength of its own.

"And with Tumivut, when we open it, one of the things we've learned through that booklet and through the process of getting to that booklet, is besides all the basic life skills, addictions programming and so forth that we'll be doing at the shelter, we're going to do creative programming. We're going to have music, art, writing, and encourage dreaming."

It's possible, Rogers speculates, that especially with youth, "the odd one, all of a sudden besides the therapeutic value of it, and besides the fun of i, maybe some will actually find they do have a talent and move towards careers in the arts or journalism."

The actual writing was done either with pen and paper or in the computer lab that forms part of the housing and employment office area within Na-Me-Res' outreach centre.

Na-Me-Res also completed an expansion of its third floor in mid-December, increasing available beds from 38 to 61. While the 10 bedrooms and two bathrooms were under construction, they had to downsize lifeskills programs and most outreach activities, because of "lack of money, power, time," the director said.

Rogers says he suspects the writing project will reappear in the future, as a number of people who were published in the booklet "hang around here. We're certainly open to if they want to take ownership of it, we'll just provide the space."

Financial sponsors of the writing project were Toronto Public Health, the United Way and an organization called Ve'ahavta.