Stop the Coloured Invasion Protest Meeting, Trafalgar Square, London, 1959. Taken from Black Britain: A Photographic History, Ed’s. Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy
a white banner shifts against Nelson’s Column, ‘KEEP BRITAIN WHITE.’
a bright white suspension of unwelcome and hate
ladies and gentlemen with heads turned up as if taking direction from God himself, listen to the message
from a man, on the platform, with Union Jack legs
as if whiteness and rightness runs through him like quickening sap/
the threat is real murmurs through the crowd/ a gathering searching for answers to stop the invasion
let me enter the scene/ from the extreme right/
let me mingle at the back/ near the man in a flat cap
let me feel the heat of the air/
let me sense the crackle of fear in their white, wholesome bodies
my body would be one of those coloured they want to stop
my body would be one of those aliens they want to exterminate
but what they don’t care to know is that this body belongs to a love evangelist
who’s at pains to show them how love can save us all
I’m not sure when my love affair with cherry blossom came into being. I’m not sure where I was when my heart began to swell at the mere beginning buds of cherry blossom on the trees. Bradford, where I was born and stayed until I was 10? Or Newcastle, where I enjoyed my formative years before escaping to London for my degree?
I’m not really sure when or where my deep appreciation and joy at seeing these puff balls of pinks or white or cerise came to be part of my being. I just know that I experience a child-like delight when I come across a tree in full cherry blossom bloom. My heart skips a beat and I’m jumping with glee, inside and outside, when cherry blossom comes into view. And the blossom is never here long enough for my liking.
Using the delicate pinks of cherry blossom, collaging with the images of cherry blossom in my visual journal, is my way of keeping the blooms alive, in my eyes and in my heart. Not just the sight of cherry blossom in my journal keeps these fragile blooms alive, but the feelings of joy and delight that they bring to my heart is kept alive too.
I created a special spread of cherry blossom for the BALTIC commission last year, that ended up being blown up from an A3 spread in a journal to an A0 poster size on a gallery space wall. In the middle of that spread is a Black woman smiling, almost dancing between the blossom, exuberating lush joy. This is me sharing my jubilation and love of cherry blossom with others.
This is my love letter to cherry blossom as well as giving thanks for the beauty of nature and how we are connected. How we are one.
In pursuance of the powers vested in me by section 32 of the Police Act 1964, I, Right Honourable William Whitelaw, one of Her Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State, hereby appoint the Right Honourable Lord Scarman to inquire urgently into the serious disorder in Brixton on 10 to 12 April 1981 and to report, with the power to make recommendations. *
Stories keeps being told, this is a tolerant country. It’s official.
Britain is tolerant, fair and just. There isn’t a race problem. Never was.
People who are different are treated the same. Tolerated. As long as they don’t make a difference.
Small minorities are accepted as long as they stay small.
Get to ‘swamping’, and then these minorities become a threat.
They start to threaten the whole fabric of the superior British characteristics.
Tolerance, liberty and civic duty. Values out the window, when the nation’s anxieties are raised.
Fear. And the country’s doors are closed.
The drawbridge raised.
Their shields are driving them back.
* The Brixton Disorders, 10-12 April 1981, Report of an Inquiry, By the Rt. Hon. The Lord Scarman, O.B.E, November 1981
It’s the afternoon. And I’ve just finished another visual journaling spread. I might have been up at 7.30 and came to the page but again, remembering yesterday, I’m here to slow down. I’m here to savour these moments of light and joy.
I might have even shifted rooms in the process, moved from the bed to the couch. Exposure to more light and more bird sounds. Seagulls squawking and trees budding casting shadows on the living room floor.
The energies are quickening. There’s a fizzing of excitement in my stomach, my core. Who know’s what the day will bring?
The day has already gifted me time and space and colour and light and an immense feeling of peacefulness. Mindfulness. Kindness. Thank you.
April is National Poetry Month. Yes and as I’ve mentioned a good time to write poetry. But for me writing and reading/ reading and writing goes hand in hand.
Not only am I inspired by other people’s words, I’m invited into other worlds, internal and external worlds. Possibilities around structure, themes, ideas and voices are opened up for me.
Reading feeds my soul. Something I forget from time to time when things go awry ( I love that word ‘awry’. I first came to this word through Lucille Clifton’s poem, ‘Signs’).
You see what reading can do to my writing? Introduce new vocabulary. Expand my horizons. Make me smile.
So along with the writing this month, I’ll be reading poetry. I usual read at least one poem a day, after signing up to Poetry Daily , a few years ago now and not unsubscribing as I have in the past.
Add to that one poem a day, collections of poems, whole book collections and then you’ve got yourself a sweet honey pot of inspiration and ideas and joy.
So look out for the poetry I’ll be reading and sharing here over this coming month.
Today, I dive into Katie Marya’s debut collection, Sugar Work, which came to my notice through Poetry Daily, with her poem titled, ‘A Response to the 2018 IPCC Report’.What I loved about this poem was how issues about the environment through the report were being looked at from a slanted angle. Through our bodies and babies and families and friends. How in order to see what we are doing to the planet it has to come to our doorsteps, our bodies first. But of course we are all connected.
I’ll let you know what I think as I go on with Marya’s collection. I’m looking forward to diving in.
Straight forward writing on lined paper with a sticker here and there. I felt the need to get things out of me. I felt the need to get distractions out of the way and write from the heart.
Each day I turned up and completed three pages of long hand writing. Some days more. There was an outpouring. Leaning back into Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages helped.
This morning, the first day of April, this happened.
Altered book journal spread
My energies shifted. I wasn’t feeling the lined pages, black ink journaling this morning. I was feeling the need to slow down and wait for the paint to dry kind of feeling.
Yes Spring is here. And I’m embarking on a poetry challenge as well as my travels. But my body is saying there is wisdom to be gleamed if you take the time and space, now this morning, to slow down and listen.
So I listened. I have to slow down as I cover one page/ one spread at a time with paint to conceal the text underneath. Maybe still bleeding through in parts.
Altered book journal spreading drying!
While I wait for the paint to dry, I search for inspiration in images and texts. I don’t have any agenda and I don’t feel any frenzied feelings to get this done and done quick.
I’m taking my time because I have time to slow down, breathe, enjoying the grey light, the sweet vanilla latte, the birds making nests.
Thoughts come and go. Fleeting. And I don’t worry. If I need to capture them, they’ll come back around. The hairs on my forearm feel the draught coming in through the open curtains. Or is it from the open window in the kitchen?
My forefinger twists strands of hair into locks as I flick through a magazine, looking for images, text and colour. I take another sip of coffee, now cold because time has been slipping by.
Not away. As time spent in my creative process is time needed not wasted. It’s time I’m grateful for. But I can only mark this time, this gratitude, these feelings and sensations, when I slow down and be present.
Visual journaling, altered book or not, gifts me the luxury, no the necessity, of slowing down and {BEING}. Thank you x
Happy April. Time for showers, blossom and light. Oh and poetry.
Forsythia
As I mentioned last week, I’m honouring National Poetry Month with the challenge of writing a poem a day.
I’ve set myself this task many times over the years, and I’ve always been amazed at the creations along the way. Poems have emerged onto the page that I didn’t even know were in me and needed expressing.
So today I come to the page with an open heart and a rough idea of the themes or issues I want to explore. But who knows with the creative process. Anything could happen.
Anyway day 1 – PAD/ 001
Trying to understand “the difference between poetry and rhetoric”
After Audre Lorde
The contested site of black settlement in England
is shrouded a heavy fog of amnesia. The wrong colour,
the wrong body, the wrong sound.
Read the history books, you’d think we just landed
the day before last. 400 years of being here, lost
in the mire, weighted down with size 10, Dr. Martens.
Like transplanted birds of paradise, West Indians
struggled to put down roots. Alien soil. On corners,
skylarking and limin’, jobs, homes and a little bit of peace
denied; harsh whispers on the bitterly cold wind.
The contested site of black settlement in England
is captured in stills. Images speak for themselves.
Black faces filling the frame; black blooms pressed
against hothouse glass. But still an absent presence in failed memories.
Living Wild Studios 