§        In April and May 2005, a six week season of John Berger's work in all media was held across multiple London venues. Titled ‘Here Is Where We Meet,’ after John’s then most recent novel—which was launched there—the festival was the culmination of three intense but joyous years, collaborating with John and numerous others to do full justice to his remarkable and necessary oeuvre. 
        Guided by what he considered was most ‘of use,’ the series featured numerous talks, screenings, performances, exhibitions, activist gatherings and more. I conceived and curated it, and Di Robson produced it. John was present and active for four of the six weeks. 
       On the 19th May, the morning after it finished, I went to say goodbye to him. He was returning to Paris that day, and we met in the tiny kitchen of the flat where he’d always stayed when in London (a part of a much larger house). There was too much to say and I knew I wouldn’t have the clarity to put it into spoken words. I had been wanting to write a poem for him, but its form and focus had not settled. I woke up very early that morning (as was usual then; my son Tom was 11 months old) and sat at our kitchen table. I wrote this poem by hand in that sitting and put it in an envelope along with several objects I had gathered for John, most notably some shards of Armenian pottery, just a few among thousands of pieces, freely available to pick up from the plain outside the capital Yerevan (I had travelled there in 2000). I gave him the envelope without drawing further attention to it and thanked him. We embraced, and he went to catch the train. 
        We were in touch regularly over the next couple of years and put on several events together whenever he was in London. He didn’t say anything about the poem or the package. However, in late 2007, I was emailed by Tom Penn, then Verso’s UK Publisher, who wanted to call me. He asked me if it was possible to publish my poem in John’s forthcoming edition of essays. I was, of course, amazed by this and said yes; whatever they wanted was fine by me. It was only when I received a proof copy of the volume that I realised he had titled the collection after my poem. I was speechless then, and, in a very real way, whenever I think of it, I am speechless again. 
        I had not developed plans for its publication; it was written to and for John. That said, because of this, the poem reached a far wider readership than it could ever have expected. As a result, it has inspired a dance work by Laila Diallo; a song by Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart and Mary Chapin Carpenter; and an accordion-style artist’s bookwork by Laurel McMehan.
       It has been read online by author Madeleine Thien (see here) and actor Samuel West. My warmest thanks go to all of them and, in his centenary year, to John. 
        As Simon McBurney of Complicite wrote, on the day that John died, 2nd January 2017: 

                   ‘Now you are everywhere.’

       —Gareth Evans, (August 2026).



*                *                *   



as the brick of the afternoon stores the rose
        heat of the journey

        as the rose buds a green room to breathe
and blossoms like the wind

       as the thinning birches whisper their silver stories of the
 wind to the urgent in the trucks

        as the leaves of the hedge store the light
that the moment thought it had lost

        as the nest of her wrist beats like the chest of a wren 
in the turning air

        as the chorus of the earth find their eyes in the sky
and unwrap them to each other in the teeming dark

hold everything dear

        the calligraphy of birds across the morning
the million hands of the axe, the soft hand of the earth
one step ahead of time
the broken teeth of tribes and their long place
steppe-scattered and together

        clay’s small, surviving handle, the near ghost of a jug
carrying itself towards us through the soil

        the pledge of offered arms,
the single sheet that is our common walking
the map of the palm held
in a knot
but given as a torch

hold everything dear

        the paths they make towards us and how far we open towards them

        the justice of a grass that unravels palaces but shelters the songs of the searching

        the vessel that names the waves, the jug of this life, as it fills with the days
as it sinks to become what it loves

       memory that grows into a shape the tree 
always knew as a seed

        the words
        the bread

        the child who reaches for the truths beyond the door

        the yearning to begin again together
animals keen inside the parliament of the world

        the people in the room the people in the street     the people

hold everything dear


(19th May 2005)

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Order the centenary edition of Berger’s Hold Everything Dear via Verso here.

For Verso’s Essential Berger’ series in full, see here.


Gareth Evans is a London-based writer, editor, film and event producer, creative consultant, host and presenter. He works on special projects for the London Review of Books and curates and hosts their ‘Screen at Home’ series.

(garethevans.org.uk)


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