Marradharma – you may have heard this phrase used in the North East, but what does it mean? Marradharma was a phrase coined by William Martin, the Silksworth-born poet. He was inspired by the Eastern spiritual traditions he encountered whilst working as a radio technician for the Royal Air Force in Karachi during the Second World War. As Jake Morris-Campbell describes in his 2019 article Marratide: William Martin’s Chorography of County Durham.
Marradharma combined William’s ‘ socialism, inculcated by virtue of his birth at or near the peak of carbon extraction from the Durham coalfield, with the all-encompassing notion of the ‘dharma’ (in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and other religious traditions, ‘dharma’ roughly means ‘the way’), Martin’s blend term became a tantric force used to underscore a poetic practice achieving the seemingly impossible task of both remaining firmly rooted in its own origin myths yet being supple enough to send out satellites, transmitting mantras, legends and political solidarities from elsewhere, re-coding, enmeshing and incorporating them into a discrete collage.
Jake Morris-Campbell
What is the Marratide Pilgrimage?
Sadly, William (Bill) Martin died in 2010 and to keep his legacy and memory alive, South Shield poet, Jake Morris Campbell has re-created an annual pilgrimage that William would make each summer solstice from his home in Sunderland to Durham Cathedral. Jake has recreated this pilgrimage every year since 2016, when he carried Bill’s ashes on the journey with him.
He followed the route made centuries ago by the Haliwerfolc (the people of County Durham). Each year he would set out with friends and family, fellow poets and artists in tow and discuss the changing landscape and days gone by.
Redhills trustees and CEO Nick Malyan joined William’s friends and family alongside Jake for the past few years’ pilgrimages.
For William Martin, the walk was always about returning. Each year he would set out with a troupe of friends and family, fellow poets and artists in tow, walking a route he had devised along grown-over railway lines. From the stone bridge at Framwellgate, the river Wear snakes around Durham, its great, Gothic cathedral looming above the compact city. The cathedral, then, is the hub, and the spokes are the former coal and steel towns making up the outlying communities: Horden, Peterlee, Consett.
Jake, who is one of the BBC’s 2021 New Generation Thinkers, has detailed the fascinating journey and work of Bill Martin through ‘The Essay’ series on BBC Radio 3. ‘Walking with the Ghosts of the Durham Coalfield’ can be found on Iplayer here for you to enjoy.