black British history

Poem A Day – Reflections

| Sheree
New Visual Journal for May

April was National Poetry Month in the States. I attempted to complete and share a poem a day for the month.

On the whole, I just missed a few days towards the end of the month. Things went a bit off the boil, when things got a bit busy. What with birthday celebrations and friends visiting, my attentions were distracted and my energy levels were depleted.

But hey 20+ new poems which didn’t exist before this month is always a win in my book. I feel when I do these challenges, what I produce is hit and miss. Because of the necessity of creating something everyday, the time needed to go deep into a subject or issue is lacking. Surface shenanigans are usually the case.

Speed is needed rather than depth. But now, as May rolls along there is time to revisit and redraft and build upon what is already there.

It’s time to slow down the poetry creation process and spend some quality time going deep. Do some more research, collect some more stories and facts as inspiration and see what happens from there. Let the poems sit and fester and start to speak for themselves.

My poetry writing muscles have been flexed and they’re primed to continue lifting heavier weights of meaning and impact now.

I’m looking forward to see which pieces develop, which ones will fall by the way side and which ones will become pure steel.

PAD / 010 -trying to love your two mothers is a dangerous game if you have to put your life on the line in the name of justice

| Sheree
Black Britain: A Photographic History edited by Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy

PC Gumbs, London’s first black policeman
image 09/09/68

My mother says to rub vaseline into my neck
and the collar, to stop the rub; soften the wool.
They say make sure you wear the white bands on your arms,
otherwise they’ll only see ya teeth in the dark.
Only good enough to direct traffic, they roar with laughter.
Brillo pad hair. Toilet set lips.
I say nothing. I recognise the privilege
to wear serve Queen and country.

They say I’m a coconut, sell out, slave
to the white man and Babylon.
They do not spare their vitriol against me.
I survive in the liminal spaces, in the shades of grey.
No one admits the fight has to be from within.
The ranks have to unfiltered by difference.
My mother brought me up on wishes
from velvet green isle;

always with an eye and heart on the other mother.

My birth mother is proud even if this adopted mother
chooses to turn her back, allowing my brothers
in blue to kick the shit out of me too.

PAD/007 – History Repeating Itself

| Sheree

“There can be no repetition because the essence of that expression is insistence, and if you insist you must each time use emphasis and if you use emphasis it is not possible while anybody is alive that they should use exactly the same emphasis.”

“That is what makes life that the insistence is different, no matter how often you tell the same story if there is anything alive in the telling the emphasis is different.”

Gertrude Stein—from “Portraits and Repetition”

the sky feeds us continuous greys and harsh words from ugly white mouths, and yet we enter the frame

clasped hands in lap or right hand on chest, like in allegiance, mouth forced upwards as best clothes stiffen backs and resolve;

a practised pose, easy to send back home as proof of promises made good, mother country come good, it’s expected

the camera will point and lie for generations; the flash will blind us, to our naivety, to their hate and ungratefulness