One of three films in collaboration with Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation and Poet in the City.
My poem, Miracles.
Half Written Love Letter
One of three in a series of films in collaboration with Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry and Poet in the City.
My poem, Half Written Love Letter.
Dangerous Things - Tiphanie Yanique
One of three films I collaborated on for the poetry series with the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation and Poet in the City. Here I’m reading Dangerous Things by Tiphanie Yanique, from her collection Wife, which I highly recommend!
Quiet Storm
How to write about the pandemic? Here’s me trying to make sense of how London has changed during lockdown with my poem Quiet Storm, a commission from DUCK
Who's Full?
A collection of poems after a year long residency with the Wellcome Trust and Free Word centre on food and how it links to issues of social justice, memory and wellbeing
Don't Shoot
Part of the commissioned series of poems on race, representation and fashion for Ace Hotel Shoreditch. You can find the full series here
A wrong for our fan base
A swagger
A not in line with our vision
A wrong face for this side of town
An, OK, but just one
A seasonal disaster
An ‘act ghetto’
An up to no good
An accessory
A hoody
A hold on to your wallet
A siren song
A ‘grab her around the waist’
A ‘put your hands where I can see them’
A ‘growl to camera’
A hunting
A once you go Black…
A strange fruit
A body hard
A body limp
A sharp focus
A cocked gun
A skewered light
A savage must be contained
A savage must be contained
A frame
An aim
An unfinished masterpiece
Don’t shoot
Don’t shoot
Don’t shoot
A Strange Kind of Beauty
Commissioned by A New Direction
Cuppa
Put the kettle on.
I’m not being funny but he’s well fit
no, you don’t understand
they’re all sinking in the Mediterranean sea
I’m actually speaking objectively here
our borders have become dense and long
it’s more an observation really
his face is near symmetrical
and their ships have burst into splints
it’s hypnotising
the sea is bloated with people’s limbs
it’s post attraction really
I’m appreciating him as a work of art
their memories did not make it either
well, of course I wouldn’t say no!
they’re all sinking in the Mediterranean sea
but that’s not the point
anyway, we still going out Friday?
watch how the bubbles float and pop.
Kettle’s boiled.
Before
Before
Before illegal
Before becoming the influx, the scar, the stain
Before finding my new name in a scuffed English novel
Before Jane
Before mastering the sturdy handshake
Before never using it
Before swallowing the lilts of my own tongue
Before forcing my mouth to e-nun-ci-ate
Before being misunderstood
Before dreaming of my mother’s songs
Before learning the spirals of British decorum
Before cup of tea, anyone?
Before yearning for a belonging I could name
Before the sound of my laugh began to decay
Before the grope of polyester
Before my prayers mocked me
Before Go Home ricocheted from mouths to vans
Before dreaming of going home
Before each footstep became an apology
Before how destitute exactly?
Before not destitute enough
Before application refused
Before temporary
Before knowing
Before the stain, the scar, the influx
Before illegal
Before
Foreign
We are becoming foreign languages to one another
and the joy you get from kissing me is fading.
So when your lips make out shapes
that say it’s not working
I watch the life we would have had
lose itself like sand in an egg timer.
Home is a Hostile Lover
We have everything we need
Commissioned by the RSA for their Climate Change poetry series
We have each become a small world,
spinning from one collision to another.
We scrub cities off our skins
and watch its roads leave tracks in the bath.
Damp rises, rent rises, high-rises.
Look how the cities silhouettes grow new forests for us.
What new constellation of stars guides us home?
We are tower block light flickers come evening
crammed into shoe boxes, basements,
living room-come-bedrooms.
Stretch out our feet to turn the TV on.
Reach out for our phones,
our faces made radiant by its birdsong.
Mining happening somewhere, but we can’t be sure.
We are compassion in 140 characters.
We are lying lonely next to each other
between paper thin walls.
We know our neighbour’s shouts and moans.
She sounds like a redhead, I think.
Rent rises, heat rises, sea rises.
Put the kettle on, scald dinner in microwaves.
Droughts happening somewhere, but we can’t be sure.
Tesco Metro fluorescence lives on.
I wonder what will this all look like in 50 years’ time.
How will our cities will exhale then?
How will we wear our loss?
How will we sleep when we cannot turn our alarm clocks off?
We have each become a small world,
spinning from one collision to another.
Our Parents' Children
All immigrants are artists – re-creating your entire life is a form of reinvention on par with the greatest works of literature.
Edwidge Danticat
Theirs was the first gamble.
Hopes stitched into suitcase linings
before being searched at customs.
An airport poster:
We cannot assume responsibility for lost belongings.
Many will not speak of what was lost and found.
How tectonic plates shift the roots of home,
how their cracks give birth to:
border control
the smack of periphery
a dangerous refuge.
They will not speak of this,
of the daily artistry needed to survive,
of how home is hard to grow
on barren ground.
But we carry this journey through our veins.
Their footsteps are woven into our birthmarks;
their struggles, the skin under our nails.
This is our inheritance,
passed down like guilt heirlooms
we carry this through to
the other side of reinvention.
They will not speak of this,
yet we know these truths through
the cracks on the ground we try not to walk on.
They will put their hopes into our hands,
the pain is in letting them go.
HAIKUS FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION 2015
Red, yellow and blue
primary colours collide
This art will not sell
Austerity cuts
Those without the knife to hold
Look who bleeds the most
‘Britain for the brits’
How many of us should
leave for a ‘fair’ nation?
We are deficits
Putting our hopes in ballots
And watching them rot
Politicians roar
Over future legacies
You all sound the same