In which there are more racist death threats but life goes on (for some of us)
- Reading Warsan Shire: "my alone feels so good, i'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude."
- Watching another UKIPper issuing death threats against a non-white Brit: parliamentary candidate and disaffected-Conservative-come-UKIPper Robert Blay was filmed threatening to shoot Conservative politician Ranil Jayawardena, who has been touted as an eventual possibility for Britain’s first British Asian Prime Minister: "If he is I will personally put a bullet between his eyes. If this lad turns up to be our Prime Minister I will personally put a bullet in him. That’s how strong I feel about it. I won’t have this fµcker as our Prime Minister. I absolutely loathe him." Mr Blay also referred to his likely defeat in the election by Mr Jayawardena (who was born in Britain): "It makes me quite sick. But I’ve always said in my constituency you could put a monkey out there with a blue rosette on and it would win." "His family have only been here since the Seventies. You are not British enough to be in our parliament."
- Reading Warsan Shire: "fit in here, in my palm, in my shadow, don’t be bigger than my idea of you, don’t be more beautiful than i can accept, don’t be more human than i am willing to allow you to be and be quiet, you’re too loud, even your un-belonging is loud. quiet your dreams, your voice, your hair, quiet your skin, quiet your displacement, quiet your longing, your colour, quiet your walk, your eyes. who said you could look at me like that? who said you could exist without permission? why are you even here? why aren’t you shrinking? i think of you often. you vibrate. you walk into a room and the temperature changes. i lean in and almost recognise you as human. but, no. we can’t have that."
- Reading, books 2015, 69.
- Reading Warsan Shire: "later that night / i held an atlas in my lap / ran my fingers across the whole world / and whispered / where does it hurt? // it answered / everywhere / everywhere / everywhere."
69. My Family and Other Superheroes, by Jonathan Edwards, is a poetry collection. Reading it caused me one of those moments of profound disjuncture from reality as represented in popular culture. Y’know, the one in which self-hatred is an art-form, and hating other people is "banter". Whatevz. Most of these poems are distinctly average, like mainstream white boy indie pop lyrics. There’s an occasional poem in which Mr Edwards manages to offer a less bland viewpoint, such as Cheerleaders, or some interesting poetic imagery, such as in View of Valleys High Street Through a Café Window, and a handful of touching poems about his family, such as The Death of Doc Emmett Brown in Back To the Future, but not outstanding enough to make slogging through the remainder of the book worthwhile. This isn’t a case of the emperor’s new clothes, such as Robin Robertson’s execrable Wrecking Light, it’s merely an average collection by a young poet promoted beyond what it deserves. (3/5, and if you want to read good recent collections by younger poets then I suggest you try Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth by Warsan Shire, or Black Country by Liz Berry, or Cairn by Richie McCaffery).
- Reading Warsan Shire: "every mouth you’ve ever kissed / was just practice / all the bodies you’ve ever undressed / and ploughed into / were preparing you for me. / i don’t mind tasting them in the / memory of your mouth / they were a long hallway / a door half-open / a single suitcase still on the conveyor belt / was it a long journey? / did it take you long to find me? / you’re here now, / welcome home."
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/532244.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.
- Watching another UKIPper issuing death threats against a non-white Brit: parliamentary candidate and disaffected-Conservative-come-UKIPper Robert Blay was filmed threatening to shoot Conservative politician Ranil Jayawardena, who has been touted as an eventual possibility for Britain’s first British Asian Prime Minister: "If he is I will personally put a bullet between his eyes. If this lad turns up to be our Prime Minister I will personally put a bullet in him. That’s how strong I feel about it. I won’t have this fµcker as our Prime Minister. I absolutely loathe him." Mr Blay also referred to his likely defeat in the election by Mr Jayawardena (who was born in Britain): "It makes me quite sick. But I’ve always said in my constituency you could put a monkey out there with a blue rosette on and it would win." "His family have only been here since the Seventies. You are not British enough to be in our parliament."
- Reading Warsan Shire: "fit in here, in my palm, in my shadow, don’t be bigger than my idea of you, don’t be more beautiful than i can accept, don’t be more human than i am willing to allow you to be and be quiet, you’re too loud, even your un-belonging is loud. quiet your dreams, your voice, your hair, quiet your skin, quiet your displacement, quiet your longing, your colour, quiet your walk, your eyes. who said you could look at me like that? who said you could exist without permission? why are you even here? why aren’t you shrinking? i think of you often. you vibrate. you walk into a room and the temperature changes. i lean in and almost recognise you as human. but, no. we can’t have that."
- Reading, books 2015, 69.
- Reading Warsan Shire: "later that night / i held an atlas in my lap / ran my fingers across the whole world / and whispered / where does it hurt? // it answered / everywhere / everywhere / everywhere."
69. My Family and Other Superheroes, by Jonathan Edwards, is a poetry collection. Reading it caused me one of those moments of profound disjuncture from reality as represented in popular culture. Y’know, the one in which self-hatred is an art-form, and hating other people is "banter". Whatevz. Most of these poems are distinctly average, like mainstream white boy indie pop lyrics. There’s an occasional poem in which Mr Edwards manages to offer a less bland viewpoint, such as Cheerleaders, or some interesting poetic imagery, such as in View of Valleys High Street Through a Café Window, and a handful of touching poems about his family, such as The Death of Doc Emmett Brown in Back To the Future, but not outstanding enough to make slogging through the remainder of the book worthwhile. This isn’t a case of the emperor’s new clothes, such as Robin Robertson’s execrable Wrecking Light, it’s merely an average collection by a young poet promoted beyond what it deserves. (3/5, and if you want to read good recent collections by younger poets then I suggest you try Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth by Warsan Shire, or Black Country by Liz Berry, or Cairn by Richie McCaffery).
- Reading Warsan Shire: "every mouth you’ve ever kissed / was just practice / all the bodies you’ve ever undressed / and ploughed into / were preparing you for me. / i don’t mind tasting them in the / memory of your mouth / they were a long hallway / a door half-open / a single suitcase still on the conveyor belt / was it a long journey? / did it take you long to find me? / you’re here now, / welcome home."
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/532244.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.