The Guest Book is a collection of writing – poems, prose pieces – entirely written by homeless people. It’s a mixture of humour, heartbreaking honesty and hope. Visitors to the Gatehouse café for homeless people in St Michael’s Street, Oxford, recorded their thoughts with the help of Wendy Hill, a tutor from the Adult and Community Education Department. The book also contains a dozen photographs of Gatehouse “guests”, all captured in a single afternoon by photographer Philip Holmuth, which will form an exhibition later this year. The black-and-white portraits sit alongside grim confessions – “I have no veins… my daughter calls another man Daddy, and my life is hell” and expressions of hope: “Imagine the room with just the one light, a central illumination to bring people right.” The Gatehouse is that central illumination for so many of Oxford’s homeless citizens. It’s also the place where the book was created. In the words of Andrew Smith, the Gatehouse director: “The book got people talking about themselves. It’s the first step on the road to learning, but also a wonderful achievement in itself.”
Copies of the book are available from the Gatehouse, 18 St Michael’s Street, Oxford, or from www.oxfordgatehouse.org
Kate Griffin
