Not in Our Name (a found poem)

There were mutterings that each day grew louder,
signs and portents that we refused to believe.
Local militia were organizing and drilling
getting ready to answer the call should it come.
Not that people thought that it would come.
They believed, as they hoped,
that something would be done to prevent war…….
As for those others who prophesied and prayed for it,
who wanted the vials of God's wrath uncorked,
they got what they wanted.
Their prayers were answered;
the land was drenched in blood.
But for the most of us
we did not.



Found poem from:A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865: Being a Record of the Actual Experiences of the Wife of a Confederate Officer: Ed. by Myrta Lockett Avary
 

I originally posted this found poem for Read Write Poem, many years ago now, but it still seems very relevant 

Hamada - screening at Edinburgh International Film Festival

 

Hamada: (h 'ma:d ) n. (geology) a desert terrain that consists of a flat and rocky area mainly devoid of sand. For Sahrawi people, hamada also refers to ‘emptiness’ or ‘lifelessness’. 
 
Hamada follows the lives of young friends living in a refugee camp in the Sahara. A minefield and the second largest military wall in the world separates this group from their homeland that they only know from their parent's stories. The Sahrawi people have lived here for 40 years since Morocco drove them out of Western Sahara.

These young people have the same interests as young people in more fortunate circumstances, they want to learn how to drive, to develop skills, to find meaningful jobs, to find a girlfriend or boyfriend, to enjoy time with their friends and family. Their determination shines through in every scene but it is clear that all of them want more fulfilling lives than the refugee camp can offer them.

Hamada is screening as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival at  1325, Saturday 29 June and at 1530 Sunday 30 June both at Odeon Lothian Road. You can buy tickets here.

You can read my earlier reviews from Edinburgh International Film Festival 2019, by following the links below:

Boyz in the Wood a group of teenage boys get lost in the Scottish Highlands.

2040 - can technology offer solutions to our current climate and ecological crises?

 Bait - Cornish fishermen try to adapt to a changing world

How to Fake  a War (on my Shapeshifting Green blog) what happens when a rock star decides to meddle in international affairs?

Farm Animals on Film - featuring The Biggest Little Farm - an inspiring story of the creation of a sustainable biodiverse farm in California, plus Vulture, an experimental film about farm animals.

Virgin and Extra: Land of the Olive Oil.

Chef Diaries: Scotland - Spanish chefs the Roca brothers take the viewer on a culinary road trip round Scotland.

Up the Mountain - a year in an artists' studio in the Chinese mountains.

The Amber Light - a cinematic ode to Scotland's national drink

Aren't You Happy (on my Shapeshifting Green blog) - a writer searches for the meaning of life while not actually writing anything

The Deer - a Basque language film following two poachers in a national park on the outskirts of San Sebastien.

Hurt by Paradise - a poet keeps searching for a publisher and an actor keeps trying to get a role

Photograph (on my Shapeshifting Green blog) - a street photographer in Mumbai invents a fiancee for himself....

Endzeit - an ecofeminist road movie with zombies. 

Vai and Venezia - 2 films from sinking worlds. 


Volcano - lost in the borderlands of Ukraine.

Disclaimer: I have a press pass for the film festival and attended a free press screening of these films.

Neighbours

Through her territorial fence
she watches them
and mutters.

‘Bogus people
begging on the Underground,
stealing food
from the mouths of MY children.’

Over the fence, the children
mourn lost friends
to a backing track
of remembered bombs.

Their Mama dusts desert sand
out of their long dark hair
and wonders whether this week
she can afford to buy them sweets.

**
Previously published on Leaveners Poets Corner. 

Meanwhile on Crafty Green Poet I've reposted a poem from 2006, you can read it here.  

haiku for Catalonia

gathering clouds -
watching the news from
Catalonia

**
Read more on the Catalonian Independence Referendum and the violent response of the Spanish state here.

Two films about social activism

I came out of today's screening of Everyday Rebellion feeling strangely deflated. It's a film about non-violent resistance across the world, but it gave us snapshots of too many different groups, some of which, including Femen (the Ukrainian feminist activists) weren't really given enough screen time to fully articulate their campaign aims. So we got lots of footage of half naked Femen protesters covered in marker pen slogans and crowds on demonstrations at Occupy Wall Street and across the world. There were some quirky awareness raising ideas (for example writing Freedom on ping pong balls and then lettting them loose in the middle of a city), some great quotes (eg "If you want to defeat a boxer, challenge him to a game of chess) and some impressive cartoons and graffiti. However overall, it felt to me too disjointed and overlong and lacking in real emotional engagement. 
(Having said that the Everyday Rebellion website looks like a great resource for protesting on issues of social justice).

Last night however I had come out of the screening of Pride crying from laughter and emotion and feeling a real sense of the power of solidarity between unlikely groups. This is a drama, based on real events from the 1984 Miners Strike when a group of Lesbian and Gay Activists in London decided to support the a mining community in Wales. Initially there is a lot of distrust between the two groups but gradually they move towards understanding and a shared community spirit, having a lot of fun along the way. It's hilariously funny, emotionally engaging, incredibly moving and ultimately very hopeful and is an example of how drama can often be much more powerful than a documentary.

Everyday Rebellion was showing as part of the Take One Action Festival, which is happening in Edinburgh and Glasgow while Pride is on general release at the moment.

Risks

She, your daughter or perhaps your niece,
has worked with refugees,
sewn on limbs blown off by mines,
read homelessness in women’s eyes –
the pain of the dispossessed.


You, an insurance man, say
‘they should better have weighed
the risks, avoided the temptation
of escape, stayed at home
for goodness sake!’


Safe and bored in suburban freedom,
you cannot imagine danger
surrounding your home
with paralysing fear
a time-bomb slowly ticking.



previously published on Catapult to Mars

She Thought She had Lost Something

When she was five, she thought she had lost something.

She wasn't sure what, the pain and discomfort were overwhelming and no-one told her anything.

When she was twelve, she thought she had lost something.

The blood dripping slowly, every month five days of fever and pain.

When she was eighteen she thought she had lost something.

Feeling only pain, as her husband cut her open again before penetrating her, no love in the act.

When she was nineteen, she thought she had lost something.

Cut open to give birth to a daughter, sewn back again, months of fever and pain.

When she was twenty-four, she thought she had lost something.

Bringing the circumciser round to cut her daughter with unsterilised glass.

When she was still twenty-four, she knew she had lost something.

Watching her five-year old daughter bleed slowly to death in fever and pain. 

**

You can read more about female genital mutilation on the WHO website.

**

This is an entry for the FEMFLASH 2013 writing competition from Mookychick Online. Enter now.

**

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that thae you to other webpages where you can find out more. 

Desert Flower by Waris Dirie

This is the story of Waris Dirie, a Somalian nomad who ran away from home to escape an arranged marriage with a much older man, found her way to London, where she worked as a maid in the Somalian Embassy and then at MacDonalds before becoming a supermodel and then a UN Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation. It's an amazing book, full of life and a passionate commitment to women's rights along with descriptions of female genital mutilation that will convince every reader that this is a practice that ought to be banned everywhere. It is not something that can be respected as a cultural practice, it is gross mutilation of women's bodies that can cause lifelong suffering if the woman doesn't die in the process.


Female Genital Mutilation has been banned in Egypt and is decreasing in many African countries. Unfortunately it is still carried out in some African communities in some countries outside Africa.


Links:

The Waris Dirie Foundation

FORWARD - Foundation for Women's Health, Research and Development

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more. 

Home

Home is a place you won’t see again
Home’s what you lost when you boarded the boat
Home is the songs you sing to keep sane
Home is the seeds in the hem of your coat

Home is the warm soft bread that you bake
Home is the old-country clothes that you make
Home is the musical language you speak
Home is the garden where you plant the seeds

Home is the tree that grows from your seeds
Home is the shelter and shade of the tree
Home is the love in your children’s eyes
Home is the future here to which they aspire.

Fragments by Binjamin Wilkormski

I'm currently teaching a writing class on 'Writing Our Lives' and am reading through some memoirs to share with the class to give them an idea of the variety in this type of writing.

Fragments is an astonishing, powerful memoir about Binjamin Wilkormski's childhood in concentration camps and orphanages. It is never an easy read, but it is totally compelling.

If like me you have read a lot of books and watched a lot of films set during the Holocaust, you may think you are prepared for the horrors that lie in a book like this. I think though that this book gives more insights into the searing horror of the concentration camps than anything else I've read. The effect is particularly poignant because the author was so young at the time and he remembers things from a child's perspective. Things just happen to him and around him and he has no way of understanding or making sense of any of it, let along even hoping to have any control over things. The fragmented memories presented in the book, with memories from the concentration camp mixed up with memories from the orphanage, are incredibly powerful in the overall sense they give of hischildhood.

Most telling is how, when Wilmorski finds himself finally in a safe orphanage in Switzerland, he doesn't trust it and behaves as he would when he was in a concentration camp.

*

Talking of trust, though, I've just done an internet search to find a link for Binjamin Wilkomirski and apparently Fragments was in 1999 uncovered as a fabrication or more precisely a book based on false memories (It seems that Wilkimorski was actually Swiss, born Bruno Grosjean). I decided not to rewrite this review, the book remains just as powerful in its effect and still has truths to tell us about the Holocaust, and after all many novels have been written on the same topic. Or does the fact that it was fabricated and presented as a truth, now undermine it completely? What do you think?

You may be interested to read Why Would One Pretend to be a Victim of the Holocaust? which examines themes around false memories, with specific reference to Wilkomisrski's book.

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks to other webpages where you can find out more.

Inspiration from Helen Keller

I've always been amazed by the achievements of Helen Keller, who lost her hearing and sight at 19 months and didn't start to learn to communicate properly until she was about 7 or 8. Her name has come up several times recently in things I've been reading and so I looked up more about her. You can read her life story and letters from her equally amazing teacher Anne Sullivan here. There's a lot of reading on that webpage but it is totally inspiring!

Not only is Helen Keller's story amazing in itself but her account and those of Anne Sullivan say so much about language acquisition, the importance of reading, natural approaches to education and joy for living - Keller seemed to always be enthralled by the world around her.

Helen Keller was entirely deaf and blind yet could speak English, French and German. She could communicate using a touch based sign language; by morse code or by touching people's lips as they spoke. She could read English, French and German in Braille and in text with embossed letters. Her writing was elegant and well constructed (which really gives the lie to those who say that deaf people can't learn to write properly, though of course some can't). She had a voice that some people found difficult to understand, but was well respected as a speechmaker and campaigner.

She became a renowned campaigner for disabled people's rights and for human rights in general. A totally inspirational woman!

Shells

(Morecambe Bay, February 2004)

Grey skies, cold and bitter wind
a share of a damp mattress
in an unheated room.

You follow orders from the brother
to the man who let your cousin die
in a truck approaching Dover.

Your parents wait back home
with nothing but pain and a photo of you
smiling through the English rain.

Shells held to your ear
murmured promises, but they are empty
here in devil’s beach.

Treacherous sands shift
impossible to know where is safe
where will suck away your life.


Speaking freely for Read Write Poem

reposted for Refugee Week

What does Home mean to You?

From film festivals to football tournaments, comedy nights to carnivals, exhibitions, workshops, parties and much, much more, Refugee Week Scotland (15-21 June 2009) is an exciting programme of events happening across the country to celebrate diversity and raise awareness of refugee issues.

This year the theme of Refugee Week is HOME. For many refugees and asylum seekers, a new home in Scotland means safety from persecution and a life without fear. But what does home mean to you?

Home for me is Edinburgh, Crafty Green Boyfriend, goth clubs, the Filmhouse bar and of course the natural environment. You can read more about that last over on Crafty Green Poet, which is my natural blogging home.

I'll be posting poetry on the theme of Home during Refugee Week.

Meanwhile what does home mean to you? If you're in Scotland and want to include your thoughts on home in your blog, please include the first two paragraphs and link to Refugee Week Scotland 09 in your post.

August

In August heat
.............we see
...............from every crossroad
.............a funeral procession winding
..........through narrow hillside streets
..or perhaps it is several processions
for several funerals

so many people are dying now

under a bridge
a thousand miles from here
in the place that was his living home
a dead man hangs

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

This children's novel follows nine year old Bruno as he moves with his family when his father is made commandant of Auschwitz. Bruno doesn't understand what is happening around him - why do all those people live behind the barbed wire when he has no-one to play with on his side. Why do they all wear striped pyjamas? Why are they all so thin and sad? He makes friends with Shmuel, a nine year old boy on the other side of the wire, who shares his birthday. They sit and talk about their lives and Bruno smuggles food out of his house to give to Shmuel. Although I knew the ending before I read the book I won't reveal it here, though I think it may be well known. Just to say, have a large box of tissues with you when you read this book, it's very moving. And do read it, even if you don't normally read children's books.

Refugee - a poem for Read Write Poem

This week's prompt from Read Write Poem:

Choose a book that calls to you.
Go to the end of several chapters, and find the final noun or verb.
Make a list of 10 or so words, and then write a 10- to 20-line poem using those words.
Maybe the feeling or tone of your poem will come from your emotional connection to the book you choose. Maybe not.

I thought it was a clever idea for an exercise but it didn't speak to me particularly. But anyway, I was choosing which novel to read next and thinking about this exercise drew my eye to Anne Michael's wonderful novel Fugitive Pieces (not that I'm going to re-read it just now but it spoke to me for the exercise). I cheated slightly with the words, there are two nouns from one chapter and the second to last verb from another chapter. So, this is the poem I came up with, the words from the novel are listed after the poem.


Refugee

a radio crackles below deck
outside nothing but sea ............ waves
of nausea alternate with hunger
thirst to return to the world
that now only curls a memory
in my heartbeat the history
of my given name ............... there are too many
of us who need too much


waves, refugee, thirst, return, world, name, heartbeat, hunger, crackle, need

oh and for the record, it does work for me, and I may very well use this idea again! I may even find myself doing this exercise after every novel I enjoy reading!
A novel idea for Read Write Poem

Olympics - International Goodwill and Local Abuse of Human Rights

The Olympic Games are usually praised as being a beacon of international goodwill. However is this actually achieved at the expense of local people's human rights? The link below leads to stories of gypsy familes being evicted to make way for developments in London for the 2012 Games:
http://society.guardian.co.uk/socialexclusion/comment/0,,2194782,00.html

There are many other similar stories from past Olympics across the world. I'm getting so tired of reading these while other people are praising the games that I'll put a longer article together and post it sometime in the next month or so.

haiku for Burma

red
of monks' robes -
leaves fall.


Visit the Burma Campaign website

Pink for October

Alter Ego and Bolts of Silk have gone Pink for October!

Web sites are Going Pink during the month of October to bring attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, get people talking about breast cancer, and raise money for research.
But to be clear, raising money isn’t the primary purpose of this web event.
The hope is that you turn your site pink (in whatever way works for your site), go out to that World Wide Web thing (in fact you’re on it right now! :) ) and educate yourself about the multiple issues related to Breast Cancer, then take that newfound knowledge and tell someone else what you’ve learned.

For obvious reasons, Crafty Green Poet will remain green during October, but I'm experimenting with a delightful green and pink combination at the moment and will hopefully post something about the environmental factors in breast cancer.

Celebrate Literacy with Your Favourite Words

8th September is International Literacy Day and Education Action , a charity that works with wartorn communities to rebuild lives through education, are celebrating the occasion by asking people to share their favourite words. Here are some of my favourite words today:

adorable, ingenious, weird
German - there are lots of wonderful words in German that don't have an exact or good translation in English, my favourite today is Zeitgeist
French and Italian - well everything sounds so much nicer in those languages, it would be difficult to choose my favourite words!

What are your favourite words? Remember to share them at Education Action!