We are thrilled to present ‘2020 Mixtape: Writers of Colour Audio Anthology’, to celebrate the work produced within the Writers of Colour Writing Group, led by Hannah Lavery.
This group began in February 2019 as a monthly writers group for Black writers and writers of colour. During 2020 Hannah ran it online weekly as a response to global events, including the Covid-19 pandemic and heightened awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement.
For the anthology, attendees were invited to submit up to three poems and had a 1:1 mentoring session with Hannah before submitting an audio recording of their final poem. You can listen to the album on Soundcloud here or scroll down to listen and access the text.
The text of each poem is provided for access purposes only. Text may not be used outside of this website or for any other purposes. Authors retain full copyright.
2020 Mixtape: Writers of Colour Audio Anthology
Listen to the anthology on SoundCloud
Featuring:
- Hannah Lavery
- Jess Brough
- Bee Asha
- Jeda Pearl Lewis
- Yasmin Hanif
- Amanda Ajomale
- Andrea Cabrera Luna
- Lyly Lepinay
- Myla Corvidae
- Andrés Nicolás Ordorica
- Titilayo Farukuoye
- Clementine E. Burnley
- Esraa Husain
- Alycia Pirmohamed
- Sanjna Yechareddy
- Dean Atta
- Sean Wai Keung
- Nasim Rebecca Asl
- Sanjay Lago
- Karl Leon
- Nadia Freeman
Selected by Hannah Lavery | Twitter | Website
Sound Design by Sarya Wu | Instagram | Soundcloud | Website
Hannah Lavery
Flying Bats
I was invited here – I am sure I was
to read my poetry
That’s what the email said.
I’ve been writing a lot about trees –
Oh, there is this nest I found in a hedge.
Blue wee eggs. A Starling – was it?
Aye, well, I was invited –
that’s what it said.
Tonight, for all you lovely folk
I am unpacking my poetry suitcase – ta da!
The travelling poetry salesman. That’ll be me
Roll up, roll up- going, going, going…
And they say, after, they say, I love
how you spoke about found nests
as a metaphor for immigration–
truth is- I’ve always been here
I was just writing about this wood
at the back of my house
about a nest I found
how at night I duck the bats
as if they might fly into my hair
even though I know, I duck.
Even though I know
they know this place
just as well as they know
I know this place…Still, I duck.
Jess Brough
Quiet in the Dark
Silence doesn’t exist for the living.
The best we can do is a quiet place,
an absence of loud noise,
or a whisper on the end of a breath.
Even with the sounds turned off
and our mouth shut, lips sealed,
there will always be
low hum of a light switch,
electricity moving behind a wall
inside insulated wire.
The smallest footsteps of an ant outside,
wind entering a room through a gap by the window.
Even in the dark you will hear
the dull beat of your own heart,
creaking sounds of your bones’ angles.
Teeth tap in a head
rubbing sideways on the pillow,
above where your body is settling, but kinetic,
all the while communicating that you
are still alive.
So even when you say you’re sorry
for your silence,
that you did not speak up
when you could have shouted with us.
Remember, silence is only attainable
in truest form
at final rest.
When hearts and bones
and breathing stopped.
And though you did not shout,
or speak up with us or cry,
you still joined a chorus
much louder than forgiveness.
Bee Asha
To Write
here
now
I sit in my cave
my underground pit
with avocado in my hair
and the heavy fear of
it all.
I watch the clouds from my one basement window and consider the axis
then turn to my black Friday, flash sale, flat screen TV..
and access
it all.
I think that I am angry or maybe she just was
or maybe I am sad.
I pause…
what do I feel, are they even mine?
it reminds me of then,
now.
they remind me of them
and how they had said that
I think they felt that same bubbling in their belly as I am feeling now
I was listening to that poet that I like
I was letting the videos roll on and on to the next
and I felt it.
I felt that same want to be heard
and to hear
so I picked up my pen
and I sat at my desk
I wanted to tell them that.
that I had felt it
that I had heard it
words of worlds apart and together
roll from lips and syllables lay little spoken stones for stepping into their known
a thousand different tones flow down their river bed
and inver my head
I am led to lead
and I am fed to feed
I have avocado in my hair and I sit in my cave considering
it all.
Jeda Pearl Lewis
I was born
After Jameson Fitzpatrick
I was born
and it was political.
I was breastfed and the breastmilk was political.
There was no hot water tap in our flat and that lack –
that was political. After swim-pool baths, my brown skin was anointed
and those were political, the bathing and baby oil, and my mother’s white hands.
Soon, I was weaned without meat and that was political.
When I refused to eat vegetables, my grandmother’s mince
became political. Our new housing association home
felt different, until banana peels rained from windows above,
along with gobs of spit that were very obviously political.
In my “multicultural” school playground, those stubby white fingers
pointed in turn, reciting ‘einy meeny miney mo, catch a nipper…’
In school corridors, aged eight, I was groped by an eleven-year-old white boy
and telling them – mum, dad, teachers, all – that was political.
Later, I wore outlandish clothes, injected skanking and whining
into my dancefloor grooves and, in doing so, claimed back my political.
When told I couldn’t write by an old white man (my teacher), I
penned songs instead and hill slides of letters.
I called myself mixed-race and that was political.
Then, off I went, carrying ancestors’ dreams on my back to uni, where the total sum
of us three non-white students had our portfolios on display – the token attractions
at Open Day. I thought someone like me couldn’t be a Scottish poet. But here I am,
placing black political ink on this white political page, with my brown hand
that refuses to sleep.
Yasmin Hanif
Partition
Refugee trains pass through the mother land.
Carrying loads of closely held heartbeats.
Some large, some small, some shaken, some beat.
But all with one desire, one hope, one need.
To live.
They clutch their only ticket tighter,
They breathe a little longer and a lot deeper.
A one-way track to freedom, from a divide
of nation, religion, and pride. A divide,
of hearts and souls and minds left behind.
The train goes faster, the load becomes heavier,
Speedy, wet eyes make the land blurrier.
The sun grows hotter, the day becomes wearier.
Then the carriages are set alight.
They burn.
People are used as logs.
They burn.
The train and its contents.
They burn.
Everything is so bright.
It burns.
The small, the large, the still, no longer beat.
Except the driver.
Who departs the silent tomb.
Across the Great divide.
Amanda Ajomale
Mama, I really did try my best
Mama, I really did try my best.
He did nothing wrong.
He went to the park; he was wearing a mask.
Stopped and searched because his skin was suspicion enough.
His mother is my mother, but my blue eyes and golden hair shield me from the crime
of my negro blood.
His skin, dark, like hers, is reason enough, punishment enough, to lock him away,
hide him from society.
And still we fight violence with silence and somehow expect it to stop.
“Mama, I really did try my best,” I said in my one phone call.
I only got after begging, pleading.
Down on my knees in tears, crying for my mother.
Born of a black woman, born of a black woman, born of a black woman,
whose blood runs through these very streets,
whose breasts nursed babes who would grow to hang her own children from trees for sport.
They see it in the shape of my nose.
An African man in a white man’s skin.
And my eyes are as blue as my tears are wet,
tears for my brother whose only crime was having a black woman for a mother.
Punishment before judgement.
Walking while black,
and that one drop of negro blood was enough to alter the value of his life.
Should I, then, consider myself lucky?
Had my skin been dark like my brother’s,
My eyes darker,
My hair curlier,
Would I even get to call my mother?
Would I even have the chance to hear her voice one last time before my soul was so cruelly snatched from this earth by those who consider my hue a threat to their own existence?
Mama, I really did try my best.
But maybe my children can do better.
Andrea Cabrera Luna
Mamá, I really don’t know how to say this (a story of white fragility)
Mamá I really don’t how to say this
Mamá don’t believe what they said about me
I Woke Up At 6AM
Went to conservatoire everyday
They didn’t explain
They just kicked me out
They said I wasn’t clear enough
They said I made them cry
A bunch of white Americans cried
Because they couldn’t understand me
They hugged each other on the corner
Looked at me as if I was the devil
Mamá I didn’t shoot them
Mamá I just observed
Distanced myself
What could I do?
Mamá I really don’t know how to say this
Don’t believe what they said about me
I’m angry
I’m sad
I want to kill myself
But why should I?
You gave me this life
Who am I to take that away?
Mamá they ignored me
They said they couldn’t understand a word I said
They said I wasn’t clear enough
So they cried
A bunch of white Americans cried
They hugged each other
Why?
Because they couldn’t understand me
The tutor kicked me out
I said nothing
They said they were hurt
I said nothing
The tutor kicked me out
I said nothing
I Did Nothing
Mamá no sé cómo explicártelo
But I know you understand me
Lyly Lepinay
A granddaughter’s first words in Cantonese
公公
龍眼
She bites into the fleshy fruit savouring its sweetness.
They savour the sweetness of hearing those two words.
Two words that bear fruit to her half self,
though she claims less than that.
Hungering after this part of her
they watch the juices of their culture drip down her cherub face,
marvel as their shared heritage stick to her chubby hands,
only for her mother to wipe them away,
keeping only the fruit of her whiteness.
The mother long discarded the seed of her own identity,
lost the taste buds of her mother tongue.
There are parts of herself she no longer consumes,
plenty more she does not plant into her daughter.
Her Asianness is shrivelled inside
even if she cannot peel off her own yellow skin.
But they’ll that
Those two words:
公公,
龍眼.
And they’ll savour that Less-than-that:
their granddaughter, their flesh.
The fruit from their seed.
Myla Corvidae
A Bull in a Charity Shop
After Anthony Anaxagorou and Karim Kamar
Head down
Weaving through crowds
The sound of footsteps on rain on streets
The wind in my ears
Tugging me to listen.
But I have stopped listening to whispers.
Too busy to think about then
Only now.
A hand on the doorframe,
I push
The merry jingle of bells
Announces me
Like thunder
A storm has approached.
Old white body
Crumpled up behind the counter
Glares at me in distrust.
I greet her with platitudes
“I’m just looking.”
Unconsciously roll up my sleeves
No thief here.
I have 5 pence to my name
the raindrops on my back
and the wind chasing me in.
I feel like a hulking creature
Entering such a small space
Old white body eyes bore into the back of my skull.
Labelled: They will break everything they touch.
I hope I do.
This process is meant to be simple.
These prices are too white for my pockets.
Old white body crackles as she stretches her corrugated limbs,
moved out behind the counter.
Disapproving laser eyes.
She wants to protect this place from the likes of me.
She is the bull in the charity shop I must lure away with the red flag of money.
But I do not have enough.
I search again, eyes jumping from price to price.
I am frozen with embarrassment
This hulking invading piece.
All odd bones and unsorted pieces.
Eyes sideways glancing at the bull
As it draws ever closer
Waiting for the signal to rage.
Then, as I am about to give up the hope of victory,
I see it,
Hidden away at the back.
Away from white eyes
A haphazard handmade cup
Clay chipped and colours fading
3 pence.
Brown.
I turn around and smiled knowingly
I the bottom of this cup I will bury the memory of this bull.
I go to the counter with the found object,
Old white body hates this cup as much as she hates me.
The bull wraps my chalice and places it on the counter.
No hands exchanged.
Contagion.
She says with her frown.
Outside sun shines again
A moment of rainbows
I go home with my prize.
There it sits on the counter. I change out of wet clothes
Drenched in this old white bodied bull.
I unwrap this new holy grail with care,
I thirst for a taste of home.
Gently I bring the chai to a simmer, add a generous portion
Of colonial sugar
And pour into my cracked cup.
Praying it together.
The cup holds, so do I.
A sip of memories.
A sip of old white buried in moments already forgiven.
A sip from a cracked cup, I cling, I dream of home.
Andrés Nicolás Ordorica
The Flower had a Name
The flower had a name that stood out but is now forgotten.
“Should I get another basket?”
“Why?”
“For the flowers.”
The ones I was holding in my hands.
“Was it hyacinth, or hydrangea, or hawthorns?”
[Google cannot make sense of my questions.]
For the past seven months, memories have melded
like yellow butter being mixed into a battered
and bruised existence, left to rise eventually.
[The care home sign reads: “Come join us”.]
As fire burnt – to complete destruction – a home
that was built for the dying (or the old).
A highland train hurdled toward a field due to rain
that some had prayed for because a dry season
had momentarily plagued the barley fields.
The flowers were pretty as they stood tall
but had so much detritus that turned the water
a sad mildew green, a swamp in the bottom of the vase.
“Those flowers are pretty.”
So much of my recent life has been performed through a screen,
behind a mask, hiding half my truth.
This week my nose bled for thirty minutes straight
and yet that was not the worst thing to happen in the world.
The flower had a name that is now forgotten,
so instead I watched the petals fall
as a swamp took over my living room.
as the world burned and flooded outside, and
the approaching seasons came hurdling toward me
like a highland train that had broken from the track.
Titilayo Farukuoye
Nature
My skin registers the air first
Most visible in the wind is my hair
Goosebumps develop all over my body
I breathe. Take a deep breath. Ground my toes in the soft, moist grass.
My chest lifts <breathe in>
for a split second I share freedom with the bird above me.
For a split second, I am closer to the sun.
<breathe out>
I release the air.
I am back, closer to the grass, heals grounded
feet hip width apart.
I lift my face to the sun and smile <breathe in>
like the old Norwegian lady happiness spills over my face and through my body <breathe out>.
I imagine I feel like her, feel that moment when she encounters the first sunlight of the year,
after a long, eternal winter. <breathe in>
<breathe out>
Clementine E. Burnley
Graduation Day
I notice how you bring your parents’ Empire
with you. Your mother’s gloves, her dressing table
her “Good morning my thin gal”
her thanks and praise
her petulant “You no greet when you see me”
her blue hardback passport cancelled by
a Labour government in 1972
your father’s barbecues
his sense of being on the right side
Your parents had a good time
They were a bit smug
but didn’t look down on everyone else
who was a different colour
I come to love how in class
you pause deliberate before you say
“And therefore the implication is,…”
When the teacher asks
You’re not a troublemaker are you?
You shake your head,
“Oh no, not at all Miss,”
I watch how
you come to enjoy how
our presence worries the scene
How you make the margins
a middle ground
You make notes, for our revolution,
you bring seasoning
For a while, after the politics of your
belonging invade your friendships
When a hostile outside climate invades you
you say you could drown,
For a while, you disappear
You say to see where your brain goes
I fear you will not come back
Others have gone before you
I swear if you return
I will swim with you and we will survive
When we graduate high school
Your parents will come to see us
as we drink ginger beer, as chew meat pie
as celebrate a win against the full force
of the official discourse
Esraa Husain
August
The runaways,
Bleeding,
And ignoring,
A cloak of sorrow,
Not as an act of denial but as an act of defiance,
Of the untold,
That a seagull was hit by a car, a bus, a train, a rocket, a reality,
And continued to internally jumping jump,
Because there was no time to think critically of what had happened,
The sheltered-mind,
Plays a pivotal role,
Creates a vivid vision,
And the pretend-sheltered-mind,
Comes up with a bubbly crumbly numbly wobbly entity,
What’s left to see?
Infinity.
Alycia Pirmohamed
I Want the Kind of Permanence of a Birdwatcher’s Catalogue
At Lochend Park, swans tendril together
the shape of my longing,
a languid zipline trail of water.
I lean over the edge, see petals of my face
thorning in the water, a Tuesday morning vase
of unhurried thoughts and magenta
lipstick—
Any birdwatcher will tell you
that winged boats
do not howl through their sharp, pyramid beaks.
That sound clicking through
waterlogged bodies
must be the prosody of my own desires.
I showered in the summer solstice light
that morning
and read my morning prayers off the cracked
screen of my phone
—Forgi/ve me
as if a corner of my yearning refracted into an alternate
universe,
a parallel world, a symmetrical ruffled wing.
I reorient myself on the path, into a body turned
away from its doubling,
sick of my own gaze staring back.
There is departure in every window, in every
wind-rustled memory.
Forgi/ve me
for desiring the permanence of a birdwatcher’s catalogue
each line of pigment an absolute, a trail of ink
never slipping beyond / its typeset world.
Sanjna Yechareddy
September for Beginners
After ‘November for Beginners’ by Rita Dove
My initiation into this nation
begins with the fall of the first leaf
I don’t know how to box
seasons into four, neat cartons
So all I’ve brought with me
is a powdered blend
of sandalwood, heat and rain
packed in my two, new suitcases.
I’m not sad – yet.
Just newly arrived
on this island
in this bronze skin
in this blue sweater
I buy in a store called Primark
as I let conversions of currency
loop and tighten
around my neck
as my new scarf.
How much does it cost
to look like that woman
whose beige coat dances
with her pearly reflection?
How much will be left
in my heart’s purse after
I have been awarded assimilation?
I’m not sad – yet.
Just hopelessly lost.
So I follow the trail
of cobbled stones heaving
to unfamiliar heartbeats
of leftover chips hung on
turning tartan leaves by seagulls
until
I reach a stall
where a man with a
slowly freezing smile
hands me a red, glossy
flier that neatly reads:
Three Ways of Coping with
Seasonal Affective Disorder are:
One:
Pretend that hearing sun in your name is the only sunshine you want to feel
Two:
Pretend that your latte has completely dissolved cinnamon’s colonial history
Three:
Pretend to forget the direction of home as you sleepwalk amidst barren trees.
Dean Atta
Word Association
Loving you is letting you
heat your cold hands and feet
against my bed-warm body.
I’ve been underneath the duvet for a while,
generating enough to share.
I’ve been looking through recipes
for beetroot soup, because a friend
gave us some from her allotment
but you don’t have time to cook this week.
Last week, we cooked together:
Maya Angelou’s Shepherd’s Pie,
which calls for bacon as well as minced beef,
a layer of mashed potatoes
on the bottom as well as on the top.
Loving you is not about
who is bottom and who is top.
It’s about finding ways to be together,
when sex isn’t what either of us feel like.
Loving you is word association games:
you tell me you’re a cold bean.
I say you’re Mr Bean.
You say: Sean Bean.
I say: Been there and done that.
You can’t think of a come back.
I rap:
‘It’s been a long time
we shouldn’t of left you
without a dope beat to step to
(step to, step to, step to)’
I sing:
‘Been around the world and I, I, I
I can’t find my baby’
You laugh, and hold me tighter.
Your hands and feet are warm.
Sean Wai Keung
A home
to finish the house and turn it into a home first you have to switch
on the gas cooker and take the well-seasoned wok
your mum gave you when you first moved out and begin
to heat it w/ oil
you must open your fridge filled with the ingredients that made you
broccoli you learned to love as a kid and bean paste you only discovered
a few weeks ago
the rest of the world may be coming round to taste what you cook tonight
but it will be by your invitation only
and this time they will not bring spray paint or bricks to throw
or insults to hurl or assumptions about who you are
instead they will bring three oranges with them just like you were taught to
along with a wee dram of laphroaig for first-footing
because this meal will mark the start
and it will only ever finish
when you want it to finish
Nasim Rebecca Asl
Postmatch
My brother and I picked up our tools. On tiptoes
he gathered supplies like bundles of wood: toys, lamps,
pillows all spilling from the shoots of his arms.
I struck gold in the warm void of the airing cupboard
and brought him our mother’s favourite cotton sheet.
Our hands worked quickly to reassemble his bedroom,
rebuilding a cavern under his desk, silence nestled
between us. Cushions strewn like leaves in a forest
were our thrones. The smell of Persil dripped like rain
over our grass-stained knees. We drowned out the thunder
of our father with the crinkle, rustle of cheese and onion
crisps. Together, we roosted under a canopy of fairylights,
warmed ourselves in the glow of Nintendo DS and whispered
cheat codes to each other until late into the night.
Sanjay Lago
The Doors in my House
The ringing of the singing bowl.
Entering the threshold.
Removing the veil.
60 Years since you migrated.
Each door a story integrated.
A wedding in the backroom.
The ringing of the singing bowl.
An ill child in the front room.
The ringing of the singing bowl.
Each door, each story, our home.
Karl Leon
Hello, Anyone
I walk these city streets and I see souls crying for help,
Souls leaking through every orifice,
Trying to escape their walking Sarcophagi.
Talking through momentary commissures between our windows,
Begging in that second that we might go where the wind blows.
Dragged behind as the possessive march,
Unwilling to partake in obsessive need for starch.
Crying out in dreams,
The holes in these genes,
Everyone needs pills if the governor intervenes;
Hampers of Aderol ‘fore opinion polls,
Dampened souls.
Take control.
You are not alone if you spit out the tablets,
And let your spirit wander with the white rabbits,
With all these bad habits our ghost remains free,
Searching for a host; confide in me.
Nadia Freeman
The Maiden, The Mother, The Crone
When the years pass
And I am only thought of as past
When my skin and body bend with gravity
Where will they class me
Not mother, so matriarch I cannot be
So where will they cast me
Vapid, stale, no longer enchanted by youth
Hag, spinster, widow or shrew
Will they observe the knowledge I have collected
Use my spells as cures, or perceive them as inflected
Will they smile and say hello as they pass
Or avert their eyes and hurry past
Will my gingerbread house bring children delight
Or will I be left to fight the flames they ignite
Will I matter anymore
Be revered or ignored
Cherished or alone
Queen or crone
Find out more and connect with the poets…
- Hannah Lavery | Twitter | Website
- Jess Brough | Twitter | Instagram
- Bee Asha | Twitter | Instagram
- Jeda Pearl Lewis | Twitter | Instagram | Website
- Yasmin Hanif | Twitter | Website
- Amanda Ajomale | Twitter | Instagram | Website
- Andrea Cabrera Luna Instagram | Website
- Lyly Lepinay | Twitter | Instagram
- Myla Corvidae | Twitter | Instagram
- Andrés Nikolas Ordorica | Twitter | Instagram | Website
- Titilayo Farukuoye | Twitter
- Clementine E. Burnley | Twitter | Instagram | Website
- Esraa Husain | Facebook
- Alycia Pirmohamed | Twitter | Website
- Sanjna Yechareddy | Instagram
- Dean Atta | Twitter | Instagram | Website
- Sean Wai Keung | Twitter | Instagram | Website
- Nasim Rebecca Asl | Twitter | Instagram |
- Sanjay Lago | Twitter | Instagram | Website
- Karl Leon
- Nadia Freeman
- Sarya Wu (sound design) | Instagram | Soundcloud | Website
