Our monthly reading and writing projects are open enterprises – anyone can join us! This month we were really pleased to receive this contribution from former HEA colleague Jenny Louise-Lawrence. She responds to a chapter by (another HEA colleague) Abbi Flint.

In her chapter, Space in the Margin, Abbi uses poetry to explore staff-student partnerships. It is fitting, then, that Jenny’s response takes the form of a poem…

Without Hope partnership becomes a transaction.
A mere response to national drivers, to policy instruments,
A rude ploy for over ambitious strivers, For over acheivers
To overwhelm all Others.

With Hope partnership is just.
It’s a transmission
A movement of power
Not from one to the Other,
(Though sometimes the One is the Other)
But a shared ignition of
Heart
And mind
And motivation
To imagine another way,
To choke, to stutter, to find some…. progress
Some
Kind
Of
Evolution Of the Heart.