The Meeting Pool Mission Statement

The Meeting Pool. By Mervyn Skipper (1929).

Each night, beside the meeting pool, where no animal was allowed to kill, the animals of the jungle gathered to discuss how they could stop the White Man from chopping down the trees and destroying their home. Many were the ideas, and many were the stories told to illustrate them. These folk-tales from Borneo are the real strength of the animals, and in the end, the White Man comes to the meeting pool and also tells a story, and the jungle is saved.

(adapted from the frontispiece to the Penguin edition.)

The Meeting Pool. By Isabel Adonis (2002).

Many of us at times feel threatened by political correctness, global capitalism, national identity, etc. - the mono-culture of the White Man's rubber plantation. Society overwhelms the individual when there is a lack of community, and community grows out of communication. This means speaking and listening, creating and observing, from the heart, freely, and it requires an atmosphere of acceptance and security. Clearly, no plan, organisation, or system can provide this; what is required in each case is a unique response to the individual. From this, community can grow; it cannot be imposed.

Post-Colonial literature inherits the language, categories, and institutions of the colonising culture. As a woman of Welsh and Caribbean descent, I find that my writing does not quite 'fit' in Welsh, English, Caribbean, or Feminist magazines. Most discussion of cultural diversity takes the form of a sociological or inter-personal negotiation; people are assumed to have a unitary, fixed, clear and absolute cultural identity with which to negotiate. In fact, however, there are many people - perhaps even a majority - who, like me, embody cultural diversity. I may be Welsh, I might be very Welsh, but I cannot be wholly Welsh - I wonder if anyone can, but this is a question that is not generally asked, and there is no forum, no country, no cultural context to raise it in.

I find myself alone and fragmented, and yet this seems to be the modern human condition, especially for anyone who rejects the lowest common denominators of mass culture and is looking for personal expression of a meaningful kind. It is perhaps only in the field of the creative arts that this negotiation between personal and cultural identity can occur, and my project is to create a forum and bring together people who are interested in exploring these matters.

Our identity is the story we live; I want to tell my own stories and the stories of others who cannot speak publicly for themselves, and encourage those who can to tell their own stories. I want to develop a space in the wider culture for these 'other' voices to challenge the mass identities of nationality, race, religion, politics and psychology.

To be creative is always to be an outsider; what is new is outside culture, beyond categories. But assimilation occurs, movements and schools are quickly formed, and so the culture grows. To attempt to create a movement, however, is putting the cart before the horse, and that is not my intention. On the contrary I seek to resist categorisation, and for that reason do not seek to start an organisation at this stage, but to begin with the personal, with relationship. I begin with my stories, which are and are not Welsh, multicultural, feminist, etc. I am therefore interested in developing dialogue and relationship with others who find themselves also in a 'unique' position. This excludes no one except those who wish to identify themselves entirely within one culture or category, although there may be many who do not wish to explore and expose the contradictions of their identity, a process that can be painful and frightening. Very often though, I find that my own story, and the contact that is made in the telling, allows others to speak also from those aspects of themselves that cannot find expression within the limitations of group identities and roles.