Conference feedback and reflections

A poem from Finty Royle - one of our Student Conveners

I took the long way to the train

Told myself I needed fresh air,

A walk before a long evening,

I was not ready

to leave just yet.

Inside, I had counted.

The people who care -

a number, a room,

bodies in chairs,

warm and improbable.

Because you don't usually see it.

Care disperses.

It happens in corridors,

in the two-minute gap

before the lecture starts,

in an email

sent first thing in the morning 

that says "I noticed."

But here 

It had gathered.

And sat still

On the eating disorders day

I sat on a panel

and spoke.

Eleven years, to the day.

I didn't focus on this 

I said other things 

useful things,

true things 

but underneath the words

I was holding a date

like a stone,

turning it over,

feeling how smooth

it had become.

Someone said:

if you don't support students

you won't have students.

Not tenderness.

Pragmatics.

And yet 

underneath the pragmatics

the oldest truth,

the one we keep

re-learning in new language:

people need to be seen

before they can do anything at all.

Ask twice.

Mean it the second time.

The gap between those two questions

is significant 

And then I left.

Turned away from the lifts,

away from the underground,

and walked out

Towards the river.

The Thames does not rush. 

It forces me to slow down

Engulfed by the crowds

It has been here longer

than the buildings,

longer than the bridges

that stitch its banks together

like a wound

that learned to hold.

I thought about erosion 

how the river does not fight the stone.

How it simply

returns.

Again

And again

How what looks like loss

is also

a kind of making.

There is a bridge.

I stopped on it.

Below me the water

was moving without agenda,

carrying everything,

releasing everything,

making no distinction

between what is heavy

and what is not.

I had been in a room

full of people

trying to build a bridge

like this.

Trying to say:

you can cross here.

We will hold you.

---

Eleven years.

I am still crossing.

I am also

already

on the other side.

Both of these are true.

--

The walk did something.

The water did something.

Not resolution 

Still ragged,

Still real.

But something

loosened.

The way a river

loosens

even the oldest stone 

not breaking it,

just softening it

Changing the shape

To something more natural 

Carrying it

On its journey 

---

We had prepared for weeks.

A group of us,

building toward something,

not knowing the shape of it yet

but trusting

the way you trust a bridge

you did not build yourself.

---

I took the long way.

The city kept going.

A barge. A seagull.

Somewhere a student

not yet knowing

that support exists 

that people are in it,

that they are countable,

that someone

will ask them twice.

The station swallowed me.

The train moved on.

And I thought of the student

who is in a room somewhere,

who does not know

that for a few days in June

a room full of people

sat and showed they cared

A small number of people 

Passionate enough 

To change the world 

The river does not wait

to be thanked

for what it carries.

It just carries.

So do we.

Visual reflection on the conference from Tiffany Luxford - a student convenor