Steve Dearden's short stories have been published in magazines in England, Finland and Australia and he was recently Writer in Residence at Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent as part of Architexts. He runs The Writing Squad a development programme for writers aged 16-20 in Yorkshire and produced Foundland an exchange between UK and Canadian writers.
Source
I was very excited when, what seven, eight years ago now, reception at Yorkshire Arts rang up and said there was someone from Finland asking if I had a few moments to see them.
I'd been in Helsinki for 12 hours on a school trip to Leningrad and Moscow via Copenhagen and Helsinki in 1975. The year of Soyuz Apollo, somewhere I think I still have a pack of Russian Soyuz Apollo cigarettes. It was my first trip abroad without my family, but coincidently my parents and sister were in Helsinki a few days after me.
What I remember of their Helsinki experience was a story of them sitting eating their sandwiches parked in a multi-story car park, suddenly the area was swept of all people by secret service guys, all people except my family. They got out to see what was going on and watched first Ford then Breschnev go past in their motorcades.
What I remembered of Helsinki was the two cathedrals, the purist simplicity of the one and the breathtaking ornate orthodox. These memories along with other memories of family holidays in Sweden and Denmark ran through my mind as I went down to meet Carita.
Carita was in Yorkshire partly following up personal leads, partly as lead artist with the Ostrobothnian Arts Commission. She’d been given my name by several people and just caught me between my return from a break and the end of her trip. Everything we talked about left us with a feeling that we ought to create something of a collaboration between Yorkshire and Ostrobothnia.
Tributaries
Carita left her job as lead artist with the Ostrobothnian Arts Commission, Ralf Andtbacka was appointed and took up the relationship, coming to Leeds and inviting Kath, myself and Anthony Cropper to Vasa Littfest. It wasn’t a collaboration, but strengthened the link, and I got a story out of it.
Then Ralf instigated this project, three writers from each region meeting up and working on an anthology of work around a theme. I was delighted to be asked to be part of it.
Confluence
At first there was some misunderstanding, I thought we'd be going out to Finland in November for Littfest. It was summer here but I was so excited I pulled out my Tenson heavy duty going up glacier coat. Stood there, with it on, looking through the window at bikinis.
Instead Ralf came over again for a few days and the six of us agreed a starting point. I would say 50% of the work was written for our readings in Finland, 80% by the time we read in Yorkshire and the rest between then and our final editorial meeting in Copenhagen in August 2005.
Reach
Since starting the writing for this project I have been surprised by the way looking at water has forced me to look at my relationship with landscape, and with the airscape/flying, and how thinking about water and landscape has brought me full up square facing grief for my mother, Erica Dearden, who died in 1989. Perhaps, thinking back to those thoughts running downstairs to meet Carita for the first time, I shouldn't be surprised.
