north west england – Sarah Hymas

November 25, 2024December 22, 2024

Lessons from the Lighthouse

The theme for the 2024 Being Human Festival – Landmarks –got Madzine researcher, Jill Anderson, thinking of how the landmark of a lighthouse might be a restorative object. From this point, she came upon my cabinet project, and thoughts on Lancaster’s local Plover Scar lighthouse being hit (in 2016) and having to be restored . She approached me and fellow collaborator, visual artist and printer, Charlotte Done, to see if we’d like to cook up a project idea for the 2024 festival.

Cue many emails and conversations and expanding then whittling of ideas and we came up with Lessons from the Lighthouse, a series of linked events funded by PACT at UCLAN, the Madzines Project to form part of the nationwide Being Human festival. Our focus was on the ways it means to be human, how we might explain and share those ways to a non human (the lighthouse), as well as other humans. We also decided to push the notion of humanity a bit further and explore what the lighthouse might have learnt from the experience. For this we needed a mobile version of the lighthouse, and commissioned Revamp Raccoon.

Our conversations revolved around the idea that lighthouses offered both comfort to the homeward bound sailor and warned of dangers in the vicinity. We were curious as to how the two sides of the metaphor would play out for in the conversations through the project.

As we discussed the plans, we realised Light up Lancaster coincided with the Being Human Festival. It seemed too good a coincidence to ignore. And added a second, drop-in workshop to the events, to solicit more ideas on what it means to be human – from the perspective of younger people. And so we had a five-staged project:

1. A walk to meet Plover Scar, the lighthouse at the mouth of the River Lune, in Morecambe Bay, to consider the elemental home of the lighthouse. How it felt being out on the limb, out of a human comfort zone.

In July we led a small group of hardy walkers out to Plover Scar, eight miles towards the bay from Lancaster. Incidentally this was towards the end of my 14 years of living in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage. I didn’t go out to the light very often, not wanting to disturb the birds who fed and roosted there. It was a big deal. A saying goodbye to the light who I’ seen every day for the past fourteen years. To celebrate the occasion, I dressed as Beatrice Parkinson, the last keeper of the light, to channel her spirit to guide us out there

Low water was at 1015, which so happened to be between great squalls of rain. It was a springs low, which gave us plenty of time to get there, be there with no fear of being under threat. We made a slow walk out across the pebbled mud and muscle beds, befitting the pilgrimage it felt. Some silence some chat.

2. A zine-making workshop to process that experience, exploring the difference between being a lighthouse and being human.

That afternoon’s zine-making workshop, complete with seaweed bread, at the Good Things Collective in Morecambe, captured some of discoveries made during the morning.

3. A drop-in creative workshop, sharing what it means to be human with the lighthouse.

The next workshop had over 150 people dropping in as part of the Light Up Lancaster Explore Week. Wendy’s mobile version of Plover Scar drew plenty of people into the workshop.

Here we asked people to share their thoughts on what made them human rather than a light, writing them on pre-made illuminations to give to the lighthouse (who was now in town in readiness for their nighttime wanderings during the Light Up Festival). We were totally unprepared for the enthusiasm people brought to the task.

A short video of the event and more illuminations is here on Charlotte Done’s IG

Virtually everyone donated their wisdom to the lighthouse’s education rather than take their illuminations away with them. The giving of these illuminations to the lighthouse was definitely one of the highlights of the workshop.

4. Plover Scar distributed these illuminations from people with other people, discussing what they provoked in others

A week later during one night at the Light Up Festival, Plover Scar not only attracted much curiosity, but also conversations with a lighthouse keeper, a port authority manager and someone whose research was in metaphor. People delighted in receiving the messages from unknown others, taking them as either a comfort or a warning, depending on their perspective. It was reminiscent of the pleasure in penpals from childhood. This might also have been stirred in the obviously craftiness and nonplastic nature of the light, compared to much of what else was being handed out on the festival streets. The homespun, tactility, the evidence that it came from somone else’s hand into another added to the spirit of the evening.

5. Conversations with Plover Scar on what they’d learnt from the whole experience, alongside more zine making.

To round the series off, we conducted conversations between one of the team and the lighthouse, talking through the whole experience, discussing with the workshop attendees what they made of lighthouses.

The project exceed our expectations for connection with others and for the unpacking of what people felt it was to be human, for people to open up with their dreams, challenges and joys to the lighthouse . The lighthouse as a beacon to make those connections was palpable – on the streets and in the drop-in workshops. It reminded me of the power of puppets, of how in animating things we connect to their and our life force, the force that brings us all to life togther.

It was a project that evolved and developed as we went through, from July to November. We took a leap of faith in how our ideas could connect and inspire others as they unfolded. The hybrid nature of the project – eco-phenomenological participation, madzine research, creative community workshopping, spontaneous interactions – was risky and at times nerve-wracking. Ultimately a wonderful collaboration that held, for me, many of the wonders of collaboration: uncertainty, connectivity, spontaneity, collective participation, trust, fun, joy and generosity.

Imaginarium

Imaginariums offer a structured space to support your thinking, writing and experimentation. They rise out of my own creative practice and respond to other artforms and across genres in their aim to widen, stimulate and flex our imaginations. The creative sessions are reciprocal, sparking off what I am reading, writing and thinking and what participants are. No two sessions or programmes are the same, as they depend on how the projects of all involved chime with each other. This is what I love about them. A Writer’s Imaginarium is a community in which to share live ideas, processes and questions that feel current, of the moment.

To riff off what Richard Powers wrote in The Overstory: ‘liking and not liking [are] the rod and staff of commodity culture’: Imaginarums are not about writer feedback and creative criticism. They are places of incubation, a quiet resistance to rushing towards an end product, while holding a sense of momentum towards something, be that a particular form or aspiration for the completion of a piece of work.

Imaginarum Change is a six month online programme based on the classic format of working around a project, with the added focus on writing as change-maker. Info here

Imaginarum Solo is for those of you who’d rather work alone at your own pace. It’s a pdf with guided provocations in online audio recordings. More info here

Imaginarum Half and Half is a short, intensive burst of inspiration, working across two sessions with interim provocations and play. Info here

Imaginarium by Not Writing is a nontutored month-long laboratory into the art of writing without writing*. Provocations and inspirations are sent to you through a single month, with a blog forum for discussion, and a one to one at a time of your choosing. Even if you are based in the southern hemisphere, the intention is to spread some warm sunshine ease through your writing process. More info here

That is the true magnificence – if you can live in a culture that is so destructive as ours is, one that keeps you down and discouraged and broken-hearted and if you can still sing your song, dance your dance, cook your food and speak your mind, then you’ve won. — Alice Walker

The Spirit of the Imaginarium

Each Imaginarium, whatever its form, explores how writing isn’t necessarily fast acting: either in its creation or in how it is received. Imagining operates on different timescales to our daily work/life, home/office, inside/outside worlds. It resists our consumerist culture and refuses to be commodified. It does not follow expected narratives. Imaginariums relish the joy, struggle and complexity of creation. They share a love of communication, expression, bewilderment, confusion, chaos, disruption and whatever else you unearth. Each Imaginarium is provocative: changing one thing into another, or at least how we see one thing into another (which might be the same thing).

Who might come to a Writer’s Imaginarium?

Any one who is writing, or wants to write, something, short story, novel, creative prose, poetry or something more hybrid, is welcome to participate. You do not need to have much experience of writing , or you could have three novels under your belt. Imaginariums are for the curious; writers who are interested in how they might develop their writing and thinking around writing .

Imaginariums are tailor for those who already have an idea, half-fledged, in scribbles in notebooks, an image lodged in your memory. It needn’t be fully formed or fleshed out, just an itch you want to scratch.
I do ask that you commit to all the online group sessions (whilst being aware life happens).

I have an application process to ensure each Imaginarium contains writers of different genres, at similar stages in a project, if not their writing life. So you can learn from each other and how our work, ideas and interests may cross-fertilise. It is an open space in which to discover what can happen where different imaginations meet.

The applications are not looking for any particular style of writing or seeking to impose a qualitative stamp on your work.

What previous participants have to say

A Writer’s Imaginarium was an incredibly powerful structure that enabled me to explore a new creative question with depth, nuance and openness. That Sarah managed to continue and grow an incredibly meaningful creative course during a uniquely challenging time (early pandemic) speaks volumes about her skill and knowledge as a facilitator, and also her integrity and heart. I strongly recommend the Imaginarium course to anyone considering a writing project that looks impossible, that feels overwhelming, or that appears to be hidden from view. Sarah is is a wonderful guide. She will provoke you and support you as you unearth your creative work.

A safe space to be an unsafe writer – to push beyond your comfort zone, write stuff that doesn’t matter, chop it up, turn it round and then realise it’s like nothing you’ve written before, and that that does matter. What it entails – better trusting the innate potency of the intangible to assist with your writing – writing, re-thinking time, colour, shape, ownership, associations, triggers. It allows you to write as your synapses actually fire, more than as society wishes your mind to work. Uncolonised writing.

It made me think about writing in a more physical way.

Such a generous and kind tutor … love your bubblin joyousness and playfulness…so infectious.

It opens up what process is … taking you outside of your usual or imagined self. I wouldn’t say out of your comfort zone because it felt like a very safe and supportive space, but perhaps that, in terms of what you imagine your writing or practice to be.

I liked the inputs and reading you give us and the crazy exercises, not just writing and reading out. A group on imagination has to be imaginative after all

A melting pot of thoughts, discussions, ideas, views and useful writing exercises for all genres.

I found the one-to-one to be invaluable. Talking to someone about it and some of the problems I’m facing with it helped me to see it more clearly and gave me something of a different viewpoint on it, which was good.

This is very different from more conventional writing workshops and might particularly suit people who are not so much wanting very specific writing support but more interested in exploring their own and others’ creative process.

Pulls you out of your writing and into yourself, then pushes you out of yourself and into your writing.

*The Art of Writing without Writing acknowledges its debt to Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and the ethics of nonviolence and nonseparation.

About my workshop practice

I have been creating spaces in which to think, write and experiment across the community for over thirty years. I draw on my practice as a poet, performer, artistbook maker and collaborator. I devise the sessions from my own writing processes which have resulted in work for print – in books, journals, and artistbooks – multimedia exhibits, dance videos, lyrics, pyrotechnical installations, on stage and radio. I have written books: Host, my first poetry collection, was published by Waterloo Press (2010), and melt came out December 2020. Between the two collections I have also co-written site-specific immersive stories, told through geocaching, augmented reality, micro-print & performance. I also work as a coach, mentor and editor.

My collaborations and interactions with the visual, digital and sound artists, musicians, scientists, writers and makers all play a part in influencing the creative and fluid space of my workshops.

Have a rootle around the website to find out more about me.

How can writers of different genres learn from each other? How might the work, ideas and interests cross-fertilize? What happens in that space where different imaginations meet? Read more about my thinking of the imaginarium here

If you have any questions, then get in touch sehymas [at] gmail [dot] com

Writing a Migration

Writing a Migration

Wednesday 16th March, 7-9pm
The Gallery, Storey Institute, Lancaster LA1 1TH.

Using sculptures and prints featured in Catriona Stamp‘s Where Are We Going? exhibition as departure points, this writing workshop will explore what migration means to us and how we’re connected to current and historical migrations. We will explore themes of home, alienation and change.

This is a session for play, investigation, art and imagery, open to all, however experienced you are as a writer and whatever form you usually write in.

Full £10
Concessions £5

To book use the contact form below

Where Are We Going?
Paper sculpture | prints | artistsbooks | film by Catriona Stamp
Featuring new work on human migration alongside a retrospective
The Gallery, Storey Institute, Lancaster LA1 1TH
Fri 4 March – Tues 22 March. Noon – 6pm Monday – Fridays.

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Funerals and End of Life Celebrations

Any ceremony that accompanies a funeral or burial is as flexible as your imagination.

I’ve been honoured to work both with people on planning their own funerals and with the recently bereaved looking to celebrate the life of a beloved. In either case I offer the space for people to explore what living and dying means in a spiritually fulfilling way, and how they would like to celebrate their end of life, or the life of their loved one.

To discuss that rite of passage, in advance, offers a chance to step consciously towards death, prepare how you want your life to be celebrated, how to mark your departure for those left behind. It can be a point of coming to terms with the end of an illness or old-age.

It can also alleviate the stress for others who have to plan and prepare at the disorientating time of grief.

I can write anything for the ceremony, help you to write something, read it or merely orchestrate the ceremony while others read and speak.

My years of coaching give me the skills and depth of experience to ensure we will plan the ceremony you want. My interest lies in you expressing your life and anticipation of death. How you want to do this and who you want involved is the focus of our meetings. I would hope to meet any family or friends you would want to participate to ensure the smoothest experience for us all.

I have offiated at natural burials and cremations.

In 2025 I completed the foundation course towards becoming an End of Life Doula, with Living Well, Dyding Well. This means I am supported as an End of Life Doula in Training, offering support, guidance, advocacy and / or companionship, in your preparation for your end of life.

The Dalton Woodlands Burial Ground, near Burton-in-Kendal Cumbria UK, is a 30 acre mature woodland, a quiet and restful place to be buried. Francis Mason-Hornby, the registrar there, is a straight talking, compassionate man, open-minded and accommodating to what people want.

Natural burials are a growing alternative to cremations in offering a non religious burials. If you love the idea of returning smoothly to the world that made you, a woodland burial is the chance to take a quiet embrace at the end of your life.

Cost

My basic fee for planning and delivering an event is £200.
This includes ther writing of a short script or eulogy.
More requirements, then the cost rises accordingly.
I am also happy to work with tighter budgets.
Let’s have a chat and see what you want and what I can offer

Celebrant

I am an independent celebrant, based in north west England. I work with people to create authentic ceremonies to celebrate and mark their rites of passage in life.

I devise and deliver Commitment Ceremonies, Funerals and Memorials, Namings, Vow Renewals, Birthdays and Launches. More details on my ceremony making are here.

I travel to Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire. I’m also able to travel farther, depending on the occasion. Get in touch and ask.

My work as a creative practitioner and coach underpins my approach to being a celebrant. I am an active listener and aim to clarify exactly what you want for the ceremony. The dynamic between me and you lays the foundation for making your ceremony. The process will be creative, engaging and energising, as enriching as the event itself.

I was trained in 2013 by Sue Gill and Gilly Adams, of the Dead Good Guides. They are both well-respected secular celebrants who promote the artistry and creative element of ceremony.

In 2025 I undertook the foundation course to begin the process of becoming an End of Life Doula , with Living Well Dying Well. This means I am currently a registered End of Life Companion.

I have devised and delivered events and ceremonies for over twenty years, for festivals and community events. Becoming a celebrant fuses my love for words, occasion and collaboration.

“Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.”
John Cage

Poems

Recovery

However much your body disturbs you
it needs to be loved

like this beach
you mine for bottles

filled with sour congealment,
screwed grit and fish scales.

Where fork prongs and splintered cups
strewn across grass and shells

are called confetti
which you collect and bin

because in the deep
nothing breaks down to nothing.

from melt

The Census of Seamounts

Everything is falling
silent
in a deep history
where plains are noduled with shipwrecks,
upended submarines
and skeletons.

Canisters, chains, tanks and bullets falling
at the same speed the sea falls from the sky

to a bed lined with silver, gold, nickel
visible only in someone’s dream.

Another dreamer swims through a rerun
of themselves discovering
a sunken truth in Planet of the Apes.

Elsewhere a hermit crab
takes an aspirin bottle for its shell.

Not newborn, not dead, there’s life unaware
of the wind above pressing these currents

this way, that, they fall
a slow synthesis into dark, sucked closer to the vents
where heat crushes
the last flecks of sun from memory.

featured in Sea-Creatures

If You were Walney Lighthouse and I Cockersands
At dusk we break open the loneliness of night,
hold steady on each muddied tide
and fix ourselves; keepers of light.

The gulls and boats of dawn blot you from sight:
you’re far further than the Bay’s northside.
But at dusk we break open the loneliness of night.

All I do, you reflect back at me, at times too bright;
a warning sign, you stand a quiet guide,
fix me, keep my light.

My wood, your stone; as such, we’re unalike,
cut by this channel that keeps us tied.
At dusk we break open the loneliness of night.

Closer when water’s at its height,
a flooding shoal of silt as shores collide
we fix ourselves; keeping our lights.

Throughout the long dark, we transit white,
our worlds made one: two-eyed
at dusk we break open the loneliness of night
and fix ourselves; keepers of light.

Published in The Rialto

Hold Fast

In readiness for the rising seas
he roped all his fears into one final tattoo, a bicep piece
of lightning forks astride a girl whose flesh he’ll never touch,
a dagger through the blossoming rose of Lancashire
a compass with no marked cardinals.

His skin disappeared in the blur of rain,
low wind. The propellers on his back,
the shoulder scrolls of lovers and family,
protected him from anonymity.

Shrinking as the Atlantic swelled, he couldn’t resist
and ink-anchored both feet,
insured the buoyancy of his left knee with a pig,
a rooster on his right.

Then hung another coil
on the LoveLoveLove necklace about his throat.

Published in issue 32 of the Ofi Press

Hammock

swings
— the outdoors in
——– oceans dry
—- latitude a spine
———- shoulders to wings
—–tomorrow today
———– an open shroud
— cumulus low
that pause before

published as part of the Burns Night Celebrations in Dumfries, Windaes Project, 2012

Migration

— Compressed between chalky light and sea,
— the lowest island is glacial but
— for the dimple of footprints.

—- Elsewhere bladderwrack redefines a land drifting east.
—- Children’s eyes wink from the shale.

– The channel cutting that and a third
– slips so slowly
– granite is doubled, reflected block cut below block.
– A library of stones, lettered in algae.

—- A shoreline of limestone pleats.
—- Here, birds are white,
—- and skin flakes like ash from a volcano.

Two miles south, and chimneys unbrick gradually.
Clay exposed where potatoes once grew.
At low tide fossils swim another cove.

— A different, although equally treeless, skyline churns,
— lumpy as the bedbound, facing dawn.

— Across the thinnest sound,
— slowly widening,
— a kelp causeway foams,
— knitted by eddies and fish into empty Sunday suits.

– The long dead, buried under firs on a windward shore,
– wrapped in oilcloth, reel with landslides,
– dipping closer to each tide.

Published in Poetry Wales 2013

Lost, with all hands

Winched pewter and perry at Archangel,
hauled flax and hemp onboard,
weighed anchor, hoisted sails (crew);
tilted sextant over Hammerfest (Captain);
pumped bilges, hitched rigging, oiled mast,
tarred the hull, grasped at whisky (crew);
plucked poultry, cut cheese (cabin boy);
stroked thighs, sealed lips, clenched at floggings (crew);
gripped helm, plotted past Shetland (mate);
scrubbed on deck (crew), filthed (Capn’s wife);
snatched at sheets, slackened sails (crew);
dropped the lead (mate), prayed for once (crew);
jabbed at Seldom Seen (all),
shifted cargo (crew), clung to rigging (wife and kids),
tore at railings (crew), slung the whisky (Captain),
combed the tide, kneaded mud (all).

Published in Under the Radar

You can read other poems in the Modernist Review, And Other Poems, The Island Review and Stride

Vow Renewals

A wedding anniversary is an opportunity to renew vows made – five or fifty – years previously. A ceremony acknowledges the time you’ve shared and your commitment to a joint future.

If you married abroad, a Vow Renewal Ceremony can provide a
opportunity for you to celebrate with your family and friends.
Email: sehymas at a gmail dot com

Birthdays

Birthdays, especially the big 0s, are worth marking. Either for a handful or hundreds of loved ones, I will devise, with you, a unique ceremony that will celebrate you and embrace your past and future.

Once devised I can hold the space, run proceedings and keep an eye on timings so you fully enjoy your party.

Or I can help you devise your own personalised ceremony and once it’s decided upon, provide you with a script and other prompts for a friend or family member to run.

Example A 50th
Outset
The Birthday Girl had booked the venue and was now wondering if she actually did want a party. It all seemed rather daunting. Although she knew she wanted to mark her birthday somehow. We talked about what was important to her: her friends, celebrating the spiritual and creative elements in her life, her connection with the environment and her philosophy of recycling. We also established she wanted a small ritual that had a discreet place to the evening, that, on further investigation, would involve everyone and focus on her. And a poem to convey growth. By the end of our conversation she announced how much she was looking forward to the night.
Outcome
I made small planters, filled with soil, and topped with a cardboard leaf, found seeds that would grow from that time of year and took enough candles and lighters etc.
On the night I welcomed people by inviting them to light a candle and decorate the path to the venue with them in candle bags. At the designated time, I drew the crowd together, introduced the ceremony, explained what we were going to do. Everyone was given a seed to plant in their planter and asked to write a wish on the leaf for the Bday Girl. Those that wanted read out their wishes as the Bday Girl glowed and growed from the goodwill. The poem was read out – by her oldest friend there – and she responded to the crowd with a few beautiful, heartfelt words she’d prepared. And then there was cake.
She took the wishes and seeds home, to read again and watch as the seeds germinated over the following weeks.
Simple, authentic, inclusive and long-lasting.

I understand the ceremony has to be absolutely right for you and am happy to meet or talk over the phone for you get to a feel of my style before booking me. Please don’t hesitate to ask any questions without any obligation to continue.

Fees will vary depending on the nature of your event, beginning at £50 for consultancy & devising only.
Email: sehymas at a gmail dot com

Launches

Within my role as celebrant, I make launches with other people, for their projects and books.

Whether launching a book, building, art exhibition or other project, the moment of making it public signifies both the end and beginning of two momentous journeys. A launch is the hinge of the creation’s existence. It is the bridge between the private and public life of what has been made.

I have launched, if not a thousand, many many books – of fiction,
poetry and anthologies – print and electronic.

These events have taken place in art galleries, libraries, a maritime museum, a judges’ lodgings and village halls. Each subtly took on the personality of the book, and proved, rightly, to be celebratory
affairs, whether among a few friends and colleagues or public events open to whoever is curious.

I also launch buildings, homes and art exhibitions, ensuring that the
essence of the work is reflected in the nature of the occasion.

As with all my ceremony work I am keen to collaborate as much as possible to define, design and deliver exactly what fits to purpose.

Fees will vary depending on the nature of your event, beginning at £50.
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Namings

Your child’s name will be the word they hear more regularly than any other. Its sound and rhythm will inform their identity.

The sound and rhythm of the naming ceremony will be present in the environment, rituals, words and music you choose for the occasion.

Welcoming this person into your life, and that of your family and community, can also include your hopes for them as well as for yourselves, your knowledge of them, other people’s understanding of you, and vows you may wish to make. Whatever you choose to focus on, we’ll create a loving event that truly reflects your feelings.

Fees start at £150.
Email: sehymas [at] gmail [dot] com for more info