This was quickly followed with the writings and (re)drafts of Darkling, my poetry/hybrid collection published in October 2024.
After this 2025 has been a period of extended rest and refusal.
But something has been niggling me. The desire to create with paint again. the desire to play without expectations and outcomes/ products.
I’ve just scratched the itch through scrolling through Pinterest. Adding another abstract or landscape painting to a board that I’ll probably not look at again.
But it satisfied this niggling feeling. Until it didn’t.
It was going back into the classroom. Completing a few days of supply that pushed me over the edge.
The time I gave away for money. The time I’d lost pursuing my own pursuits. And realising that I wasn’t pursuing all the pursuits I wanted to pursue in the time I had/have.
So out came a creative sketchbook, inspired by the 30 days sketchbook challenge created by Cheryl Taves over at Insight Creative.
This is as much as I’m willing to share for now about the challenge, my creative sketchbook, processes and insights.
One of my rules is that it’s just for my eyes only. I want to see how this rule changes my practice. I want to create without fear but with curiosity. I want to give myself all the freedom without worrying about what others will think or say or comment on.
It’s not like I’m hanging on other people’s responses and reactions but I have gotten into a habit of just sharing anything and everything on my blog and I’m curious to see what happens when I keep things to myself.
Just for my eyes, heart, and soul only.
So far I’m enjoying the process of the challenge and I’m reflecting and paying attention to what makes my heart sing, what’s my creative vocabulary, what pushes my energies.
Do doubt whatever I explore within my creative sketchbook will be showing up in everything that I create. In everything who I {BE}. For sure.
I second guess myself around race and the way I’m being treated. Or think I am. The vibe I’m sensing from other people. And if I always have to bring it back to race. Why I’m always seeing the gaps and having to speak up.
I’m judging myself as wrong on the ‘i ain’t smiling’ stuff. How I’m doing this to individuals who have probably not done anything to me. It was someone else who looked like them who did me wrong.
And I’m treating them in a way I don’t want them to treat me. Like lumping them all together and not seeing them as individuals. Judging than as all the same and not giving them the benefit of the doubt. Not giving them a chance. This individual might be different. Might be doing the work. Might see me. Might smile.
I think I’m tired. I’ve been living that way for so long now. Smiling into the faces of strangers. Smiling with hope without much in return. Without much connection and now I’m just not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because I’m not given the same curtesy.
We see in the US, the Republicans are in office, have control of both houses, Congress and the Senate. They have all the power and are shutting down the government peddling lies that it’s the Democrats fault. But instead of the Democrats stopping smiling and taking the gloves off, they’re reaching across the aisle, holding out their hands and hoping that some Republicans will join them and vote against the shut down.
Now I’m not dissing hope. I still have hope. Hope is a wonderful thing. We have to have hope. Hope is a practice. But the uselessness of the Democrats hope is around where it’s placed.
Even when the Republicans know they are wrong, doing wrong and being dishonest, they will not admit it, take responsibility and change. Act differently, no. Something about keeping face. Winning an argument and keeping power is the mission. Not giving anything away out of fear and greed. Keeping power.
This is how I see my situation. I’ve been appeasing monsters. I’ve been holding out hope for change and I still do. But I’m just choosing to place this hope elsewhere. Holding hope within my community ( village, Dal!), for and by us.
Smiling into the faces of the comrades and friends as they have not let me down. They see me. They respect me. They listen to me. They’re with me not against me.
I don’t need to perform any convincing, or prove my credentials as a human being. They love me as me. And there’s the rub. They love me. And I love them.
when the world is burning, what can we do? we can make fucking art. that’s what we can do!
“You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.”
― Nina Simone
sometimes i feel so small and insignificant. and what can i do that would make a difference? the world is burning. people are being exterminated. genocide over and over around the world, not just Gaza.Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo. genocide is history repeating itself. just in the last few days, a landmark Aboriginal-led inquiry has found that british colonists committed genocide against australia’s Indigenous population in victoria in the 1830s. why has it taken so long for this to be vindicated when the people themselves know when they have been dehumanised and persecuted? nations/ governments commit genocide because they think they can get away with it. no one seems to hold them to account.
what can I do when, as an artist, when the world has gone to shit? make art. that’s what i can do and that’s what were supposed to do.
it’s out duty to reflect the times. but the world is making it really hard for us not to do this. the world is working really hard to silence us. to suppress us. to keep us operating on fear and to box us in. all these social media platforms are owned by oligarchs who own and control us. we are discouraged from telling the truth. and when we tell the truth is is filtered, distorted and manipulated.
and yet. i remember. we need art. people need art. art helps use process our feelings and emotions. through art we can learn, heal and feel. art helps us to be in touch with ourselves and each other. art connects. art helps us reflect.
art gives me the words or the language for the things i didn’t know i needed to express to process to reflect to share. here in my little space on tin-ternet, i’m not bought or controlled. i’m not silenced or afraid. i embrace my duty as an artist to make art by any means necessary.
i hope you will join me in creating and reflecting the times. let’s not sit in our fears but connect in our strengths.
Resistance, Steve McQueen, National Galleries of Scotland, 2025
the undercurrent has always been present, simmering like lava just below the surface ready to rise up at weak points, at moment of disarray and hopelessness. hate shimmers like jewels to those who have little but promised more. clinging to the sharp edges of hate because it’s something to feel, to use as a weapon against others instead of the self. hate with fear, a lethal concoction corroding within as well as without.
1936. October. With a chill in the air, the blackshirts ruffled through the East End of London, snaking their territory, their Ayran rights. With Police fronting, they still couldn’t take the streets. Jews, Irish, Communists, Blacks, Labour activists, workers unite. Stand firm. Shoulder to shoulder, they shall not pass. Blackshirts, angry scrunched up faces, hearts riddled with hate and fear, shall not pass.
You know I love the movie, Sinners. I’m onto my fifth watching of it.
One of my favourite songs within the movie is this one Dangerous sung by Hailee Steinfeld. I could rage on for hours about this song; it’s melody and words and underlining beat. But for now, I’m taking the word dangerous and running with it.
Within Sinners, what can be seen as dangerous is the invasion of vampires, a life or death situation. What could also be seen as dangerous is a community of sharecroppers having a safe space to listen to music and dance and eat and drink on their own terms. To be free. This could be seen as dangerous by the white supremacy culture they are living under.
For me what I see as dangerous are the white men who are still running around in their white hoods, calling themselves the brotherhood, the protectors of white women and democracy and who do whatever is takes to keep the black people( they do not use this nice a term for such people) in line even if it means killing them all.
These white men in hoods, the Ku Klux Klan, deal out justice as they see fit, creating terror as the deterrent to black people thinking of stepping out of line. And that could be just breathing.
These white men could meet you on the street one day and be burning down your house the very next day. But you wouldn’t know who they be. You know the enemy is a white man but it could be the smiling face neighbour who hides behind the hood, concealing their identity and cause havoc with no repercussions or justice or revenge on them. To live in this sense of fear is unimaginable.
Today these Federal Officials and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) marshals who are abusing their power, gifted by the Trump administration, to take people, children as well, from their homes, schools, work, off the streets and detain them, saying they are illegal, deport them, torture them for no reason except being seen as an ‘alien’ because they are brown and black are no better than the KKK. They wear the masks. They cover their faces. Conceal their identities and commit the crimes. The brown and black citizens of these communities are not committing any crimes except attempting to survive and thrive, living their lives.
Why cover your faces if you believe in what you are doing? Why conceal your identity if you are doing what is right, following the law? Why hide if you are proud of your actions?
This is dangerous. White men or white baby-men again have been emboldened and empowered to run havoc through our communities in the name of the law. Believing that they are doing what’s right in terms of some warped sense of superiority and the belief that they have a right to do so.
This is dangerous and has to be stopped. How? That is what we have to work out.
This is the message sweeping across countries at the moment, around the world, as we continue to move further to the right in terms of politics and governing people. Suppressing people and voices.
Thinking about my weekend in London at the Defeating Narratives of Division conference hosted by the Ella Baker School of Organising, and coming home to see peaceful protests in L.A. around the over stretching arms of Federal Officials and illegal immigration raids on communities being portrayed as chaos and unruly and needs to be stopped with military force. Trump, man!
What the fuck is happening right now? What false narratives fuelled by fear and intimidation are catching like wildfire and are taking hold? What is happening to democracy and fairness and justice?
I too am scared. I’ve been told by some to have fear and anxiety and start panicking in order to take action. Time is running out. Passing on this narrative of fear is making us on the so-called left no better than those on the right whose fuel is fear.
We have to be pushing back against these fears. Not disallowing them but acknowledging them and choosing to fuel our movement with love and solidarity and joy. We can come together as we have the power and spread a message of love and welcome and togetherness and there is no way that message can be twisted or used against us.
It is plain to see that communities who stand together, even if from different cultures and races and heritages, are powerful and those who are crooked and authoritarian are scared of this. Scared of us taking back our power and saying no, enough!
I’ll be writing more on this in the weeks to come. But for now I just had to mark this moment of disgust at what is happening around the world but how there is much to be celebrating and reinforcing and elevating. Stories of love and solidarity and people taking back their agency and power. Thinking of Burkina Faso here and other African nations who are standing up and saying enough is enough.
But all in good time, and for me ‘good’ time is slow time. Taking the time to bring about lasting change on our own terms.
I’ve been thinking of moving to the Highlands, buying a small cottage by a loch and swim every morning.
There’s a river too, that haunts the glen, between my cottage and the mountains. I feel it, breathing within the shadow of mountains.
I know this is not just a pipe dream. I know someone who’s done it, made the move across the border, living a blessed life.
I’ve been thinking of an open fire where I’d bake bread with the sun rise and when ready sit sit out on the porch with thick slices, warm and buttered. Dripping butter and the air smelling like home.
My home.
I’m thinking there’s one village store miles away. I walk every other day for exercise. On the way, I bird spot. Blackbird, moorhen, blue tit, eagle.
Small talk with the store owner might be difficult after long moments of silence in my cottage by the loch. In the silence I can hear myself better.
Being a water woman and a mountain woman, I will welcome the solitude and the haunting rolling out before me as nothing would hold me back.
This piece originally was published over on Medium with Binderful. I’m drawing this piece into the Living Wild Studios archives. Because I can!
Image credit — Donovan Valdivia
“How difficult is it for one body to feel the injustice wheeled at another? Are the tensions, the recognition, the disappointments, and the failures that exploded in the riots too foreign?”
Claudia Rankin
In August 2014, there’s a summer of “hands up, don’t shoot” protests, in Ferguson, Missouri, in response to the unlawful shooting of Michael Brown Jr.. In November, Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson police officer responsible for Brown’s murder isn’t indicted. In December, filled with rage and helplessness, I organise the first ‘Black Lives Matter’ protest in the North of England; a political poetry reading at our city centre library. Together artists and writers, cram into a hot room on the top floor of a building made of glass, and pour out our rage and pain through our writings. Black people’s words. Our ancestors’ words.
I’m criticised by one Black woman, in particular, because I invite white poets to read. They could only read the words of Black people as this event is centring our lives. Black lives. A white people’s presence is not what this Black woman wants. She wants a safe Black only space. I respect and understand her views. We all want a safe space for Black people. But I feel we can achieve so much more when we work together, Black and white, to solve our society’s problems. I know where she’s coming from though; a place of pain and suffering and hatred. As Black people, for so long, we have endured so much hate and violence from the hands of white people. For far too long, we have been excluded from a share in the economic wealth our ancestors paid for with their lives to create. We’re sick and tired of being excluded from the abundantly spread societal table which our ancestors give the skins off their backs to forge. And this hurts.
In March 2017, there’s a ‘Stand Up to Racism’ demonstration in London, Miss Ella, my seven year old daughter, and I dance behind the sound system truck, towards Trafalgar Square. Crowds behind metal barricades line our route, with the Metropolitan Police shepherding us along. We shout, ‘Refugees are welcome here.’ Miss Ella, dressed as her superhero, Black Widow, looks as if she’s just stepped out of a Black Panther’s meeting. With her long brown hair blowing in the wind and her peachy fist punching the air, she’s learning long before I did how to use her voice to bring about change. She carries her homemade banner stating, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ high with pride and courage. Along the way, a white woman with screwed up face screams at us to shut up and go back home to where we come from. Disallowing our protests, devaluing our presence here.
I recognise where she’s coming from; a place of her ignorance and pain and hatred. As white working class, for so long, she’s been fed the lies that Black people and immigrants come over here and take their homes and jobs. For so long, the poverty they’re experiencing is down to these Black illegal criminal and not a capitalist system rigged in favour of a few priviledged people. We’re just as sick and tired of this too. And we know it hurts.
In May 2020, there’s ‘Black Lives Matter’, protests around the world. In response to the recent killings of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, to name just a few, the streets are talking through fire and smoke. Thousands take to the streets, Black and white, to demand justice for all our Black brothers and sisters who have been and continue to be murdered by state sanctioned violence.
I’ve grateful for their voices and bodies. This time, I protest through my words and art. As the Covid-19 pandemic still poses a real threat here in my part of the world. I’m a Black, fat woman carrying yet another target on my back. While protesting, the odds of getting molested and arrested, and not surviving the experience is higher for me than any white person. Just as the odds are greater for me of dying from the Coronavirus than a white person.
Black, Asian, and ethnic minorities in the Western world are dying at a disproportionately higher rate and number than white people during this pandemic. Many explanations for this reality have been voiced with the blame thrown at the feet of Black people. That it is our unhealthy bodies and behaviours which are spreading this disease, conveniently not addressing the inherent racism and systematic inequalities that have operated for over 400 years that has brought about this dis-ease, making our weathered bodies more susceptible to this virus.
‘We rather die on our feet than keep livin’ on our knees,’ taken from the James Brown song, ‘I’m black and I’m proud’, I feel this as we see thousands of Black people (and white people) take to the streets, even though there’s a greater risk to their lives than ever before. But I recognise where’s they’re coming from. We’ve had enough. We’ve endured enough. We’re not prepared to accept Black lives being devalued anymore.
Living Wild Studios 