XBorders: Accord - Session 2

On Saturday we had the second of our three XBorders: Accord project sessions, this one taking place in the Playhouse Theatre in Derry. 

One of the group, a writer called Sue Divin who is also a community development manager in the city, took us on a guided tour of the walls which certainly blew the cobwebs away and got me thinking about physical borders and changing perspectives. 

One of our other XBorder comrades, Rory Duffy, came up with a good name for us...a "puck" of writers...and this epic video to match!  

A snapshot of the XBorderlings on our day in Derry. @ACNIWriting @BorderIrish @IrishWritersCtr @XBordersAccord @LottoGoodCauses pic.twitter.com/jkXiWRffWV

— Rory Duffy (@rorymjduffy) 25 February 2018

We then had a seminar led by Michael Doherty, which touched lightly on his mediation work but delved into his personal history and the history of the city, and the set of historical, geo-political and personal circumstances that led him into this field of work in which he has had a long and distinguished career. 

After all that we were almost too wiped out to write (what am I saying, I am never too wiped out to write) but we had a great session with Maria McManus and Freya McClements on the shifting ways in which we are all starting to think about, write about and feel anxious about borders and barriers - political and otherwise. 

Then, after a long day, it was time for us to pile into the poetry-mobile and head homewards to Belfast, across a countryside sliding into dusk, the border between day and night, along roads crisscrossed with lines of communication.