Who's Afraid of A Poem?

The poet (Hmm) thought of a poem. (Do you think a poem?). Hmm. OK. [Smiles.] (Panic). Right. (Alarm). So ... (Runs out screaming).

Call for Participants - Forced Migration and The Arts

Forced Migration and The Arts is an online series that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, artists, activists and academics for conversation exploring questions around forced migration and the arts.

The conversations take place in the evening on the last Thursday of each month.

A playlist of videos from conversations we have held so far is accessible here. 

As part of the series, we would also like to explore topics that include (not limited to, and not necessarily in this order): refugee camps, internment camps, detention centres, museums and galleries, libraries and archives, decolonisation, community and participatory arts, theatre, music, poetry, creative writing, methodologies, theoretical and conceptual frameworks, the UK's minimum income requirement, visual art, fine art, street art, public art, film, Haiti, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Kenya, Libya, Venezuela, Mexico, Ukraine, and more.

Have you done any work around forced migration and the arts in any of these contexts? Did the work include people with lived experience of forced migration? Would you and the people you worked with like to speak as part of the series? 

If yes, please email civicleicester@gmail.com and let us know.

About CivicLeicester:

CivicLeicester is a community media channel that uses the arts, digital and print technologies and social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to highlight conversations. 

The channel is unfunded and was set up after realising that, year in, year out, there were a lot of very significant activities and conversations taking place at a grassroots, community, national and international level that should be more visible but were not receiving any mainstream media coverage at all.

Books we have published include Welcome to Britain: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction (2023), Black Lives Matter: Poems for A New World (2020), and Bollocks to Brexit: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction (2019).

Ambrose Musiyiwa

Facilitator, CivicLeicester 

This post was updated on 29 April 2023 to include a list of some of the topics we would like to explore as part of the series. 

dinosaurs on first street

would it have been safer
to keep on walking
to ignore that
next to the construction site
with its cranes
and its promise
of incongruous high-rise buildings
looking down
on the derelict memory
of empire
on this street
dividing the old 
and the new
there
on the pavement
dinosaurs

Written on 17 June 2022. Inspired by a find on First Street, in Manchester, after dinner at HOME Mcr, after the opening of a two-day workshop and conference on Transnational Lived Citizenship Through Creative Production which took place on the 16th and 17th of June at the University of Manchester.

The Rabbit On The Moon

You said you were learning Russian because you wanted to be an astronaut. And you laughed and apologised, remembering the friend who found such talk irritating because 47 was too old for dreams.

Once, you stood between the sun and the moon. There was a rabbit on the moon.

They said, then you can write an auto-ethnography about seeking refuge on the moon. 

You said you weren't going to the moon. You said you were going to Mars. You said you were going to be part of a manned mission to Mars.

You laughed and said you were not to be minded, you were being you, making connections where there might not be any.

You said you did not want to be a hero because bad things happen to heroes.

crow's call tears morning meadow's run

blackbird with white stripes bore news

squirrel,

giddy from dodging cars on Welford Road, cyclists on Putney Road, and buses on Aylestone Road,

markings on the road

You did not know if there was an age at which you have to stop dreaming, an age at which you have to pack away dreams the way some people pack away toys.

One day, in London, it was day and then it was night and then it was day again with no darkness at all in the middle.

And you stood between the sun and the moon.

The sun and the moon were like lovers pulling to each other over the rooftops because they could not bear parting.

do you remember how you got here?

why did you come?

do you remember anything?

If you let me, I could love you forever, said the sun to the moon.

Stephen Crane gets His Head Round the Hostile Environment

A migrant said to Britain:
"Do you not see the sacrifices I make?"
"How ungrateful!" Britain replied,
"Isn't it enough that every Thursday at 8pm sharp
"I clap for your right to die for this great nation?"