Note: The identities of participants in a songwriting workshop I describe in this piece have been made anonymous. It’s been a long time since Sarah and I have been able to work together in person to offer poetry and songwriting from stories. The other day, I realized that it has now been more than two…
Category: songwriting
I am a story
Two years into the Covid pandemic, it is difficult to imagine a time before when Sarah and I could visit the Fedasil Arrival Centre each Monday and interact with people from all over the world. I met Sarah on my very first visit to the center in January 2017, and we met on Mondays until…
Give me a chance
Sarah and I are thrilled to have been chosen as one of five finalists for the 2021 Amateo Award for volunteer projects promoting arts and participation in communities in Europe. We are so grateful to Amateo for recognizing our project, “On the Move: Poems and Songs of Migration.” We are honored to be among five…
Mondays On the Move: I am the change
For our fourth installment of our new “Mondays On the Move” project to promote freedom of movement for all people, Sarah and I share a song we wrote with an asylum seeker from Gaza, who we met at the Fedasil Arrival Centre in 2017. With him, we wrote many songs. This song is called “I…
Pandemic Publishing
The last time I shared an update on all things songwriting in my life was January 23, 2020. At the time, I had no idea the larger world and my own circle within it would literally come to a halt in the middle of March. At the start of 2020, I was feeling inspired…
Magic carpet of music
Sarah and I spent two hours yesterday afternoon at the Fedasil Arrival Centre in Brussels, taping together page after page of poetry and songs into an enormous magic carpet of hope. Upon these pages were words from the hearts and minds of people from many places, all having traveled to Belgium with the hope of…
From Africa it’s a long story
The sun shone over Brussels yesterday afternoon, and I experienced the rare occurrence of being too warm for my jacket, scarf, and hat at the tail end of December. I set them on the bench by our open “office” space at a corner of the covered corridor at the refugee asylum center known as Petit-Château…
Life is long
This Monday at Petit-Chateau was grey, rainy, dark, and dismal. The previous Friday evening, I had visited the center for the volunteer appreciation dinner and joined staff and volunteers on a tour of the arrival portion of the center. We walked from one station to the next, learning about the process whereby those seeking asylum…
She will walk again
With the recent very cold front that has swept over my little corner of Belgium, it’s difficult to imagine the warmth and sunshine that illuminated my November 25 Monday visit to Petit-Château was warm and sunny. As I sit and write from my kitchen table, a cup of coffee and big, white husky at…
What gives you hope?
Monday at the refugee center was hopping. When I first began volunteering in January 2017, it had been a residential center. There were residents who have been living there for years, waiting to hear if they would be able to stay in Belgium. Over the past nearly three years of volunteering, I have seen the…
Marieke is Guiding Song 