An article in The Conversation explains how Chaucer's Tales are the perfect model for a 9 day walk in solidarity with refugees and detainees
The article by Professor David Herd describes the similarity between Refugee Tales, a 80-mile nine-day walk (13-19 June) from Dover to Crawley via Canterbury, and Chaucer’s poem.
The walk, which was co-organised by Professor Herd, Head of the University’s School of English, follows the route of the old Pilgrim’s Way.
Participants include Professor Herd and School of English colleagues Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah and Dragan Todorovic, alongside Ali Smith, Avaes Mohammed, Carol Watts, Denise Riley, Hubert Moore, Patience Agbabi, Iain Sinclair, Jade Amoli-Jackson, Chris Cleave, Marina Lewycka, Michael Zand, Steve Collis and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
In his article Professor Herd writes:
‘The key similarity between our project and Chaucer’s poem is that at every stopping point writers help to tell other people’s tales: The Migrant’s Tale, The Unaccompanied Minor’s Tale, The Lawyer’s Tale, The Detainee’s Tale, among others. In each case, a novelist or poet has collaborated with the person whose tale is being told to help communicate the experience of coming to or living in the UK. The tales are clear in their articulation of the journeys undertaken, of the deeply damaging effects of indefinite immigration detention and also of the bare life that follows detention that is the experience of tens of thousands of people currently living in the UK.’
His full article can be read here.