Mud, Water and Magic – Change the Word Bradford Anthology

Introduction to MUD, WATER AND MAGIC, The Change the Word Anthology Bradford by Sai Murray and Saoirse Teale

Over the eight weeks of workshops in which these poems were created, we have seen this country change governance under no less than three different Prime Ministers. And two reigning monarchs. During these ruptures in the ruling order, we commoners have gathered together to write, eat and share stories.

Bradford is an often neglected city, yet we have a lot to say. It is a city with a rich history of people power and home to one of the youngest populations in Europe. In 2025, we will be the UK City of Culture. In these turbulent times, it has never been more important for us to document our stories. To stand tall upon the hill of our city and sing our experiences from the rooftops.

Included in this volume are poems that touch upon the particularities of what it means to be a citizen of Bradford today – a city of contrasts and ‘melodic chaos’ as observed by Mariyam and echoed in Mustafa and Josie’s poems. This imperfect mix is further celebrated by poets defining their origins beyond Bradford; examining their relationships to place, to language, to food, and calling attention to the paradoxes of what it means to be alive today. These poems celebrate knowing ourselves: owning, (re)claiming and defining our identities against the perceptions of others. As Mussarat and Nicholas both suggest in their poems ‘Freedom to Choose’ and ‘Denuding my Tongue’.

Noor, Iman, and Esha also redefine and question our social ideals of perfection and offer us visions of alternative worlds. It is out of this conjuring that we chose our title Mud, Water and Magic. For, although mud is often seen as dirty – something to be avoided or cleaned up – it is also the rich fabric that sustains life and from which everything grows. Those who do not have the luxury of palatial gardens and manicured lawns are much closer to the cold, clammy realities of earth, where the skills needed to survive are always seeded and passed down through generations. When water is sprinkled upon this fertile ground these seeds create magic: flowers bloom, plants grow and new stories blossom.

The book closes with some of the nutritious bounty that has sustained our poets: recipes for life, favourite foods and cherished memories. The final poem is a collective piece written during the first workshop for this project. It is filled with the spirit of ‘kituadi’ (togetherness) and captures the heart of our weekly writing workshops at Commonwealth Theatre. A place where people from all different walks of life came together on Tuesday evenings to share words, flavours and potions for peace. We hope these poems – served with ‘ikabou’ and ‘samman’ (respect) – offer nourishment, spark conversation and encourage everyone to revel in the feast of our creative capacity.

To read the poems and to support the Good Chance project and featured writers you can buy the ‘Mud, Water and Magic’ Anthology here.

Mapping Movement – A Decade of Shaking Futures

An edited extract from the Introduction to Voices that Shake! An Anthology of Creative Movements, published 2021.

by Farzana Khan, Sai Murray

For those new to Shake!’s work, Voices that Shake! is a youth and educational initiative launched in 2010 along the intersections of race, power, media and art. Shake! brings together youth, artists, campaigners, community organisers to vision and action creative responses to the issues of oppression and marginalisation that we face and resist. Shake! practices a two-pronged approach of supporting personal and structural transformation. The Anthology creatively showcases Shake!, whilst our Research Report and Toolkit document Shake!’s methodology, approaches, community, impact and legacy.

We share these resources and encourage you to interact with them fluidly and dynamically, moving and playing between each one. We hope that each interaction offers a more nuanced and differing dimension, in the way that Shake! continues to replenish us in multi-faceted ways.

DEEP ROOTS FOR STRONG SHOOTS

Pathways through the Anthology

We surfaced the arc and chaptering of this book through a freewrite process during our only physical meetup. On the prompt of ‘What Voices that Shake! is, and means to us?’, we unearthed the five iterations of emboldening our voices, as political and liberation practice: The Cry, Protest, Breath, The Call, Harmony.

As we reflected on these five phases of restoring and building voice – personal to systemic to collective to communal – we saw how this mirrored our five-day educational courses:

The Cry – the initial political spark;

The Protest – the refusal of oppression, harm, violence;

The Breath – the embodiment of reflection and the recalibration;

The Call – the connecting together of struggles and communities;

Harmony – the efforts put towards moving together with one another.

All of which align with the process of our courses: unlearning dominant paradigms and mainstream narratives; attempting to integrate what this means in relation to those who are made vulnerable across different intersections of oppression and struggle; and then asking ourselves what it means to repair, re-member, and reimagine. It is this very journey that Shake!rs embark on with us and that we hope to offer readers through this book’s structuring and curation.

THE ONGOING WORK

Reaching for suns while holding the earth of things

This work is not easy. It is both a point of transparency and responsibility, to present and future generations, to name that this work is enduring and comes with its own unique set of challenges that require us to be brave, committed, and vulnerable enough to hack away at it. The heart of this work is relational, it takes time, it is ongoing, and is iterative: different phases surface and emerge different things to work and navigate through.

There are few easy, identifiable solutions, especially against the backdrop of trying to build things entirely in opposition to the status quo. There is no blueprint, only practice. We often have to remind ourselves not to rush towards solutionism as characteristic of white supremacy culture because we live within a paradigm of everything that we’re trying to unlearn. This means so many times we’re reproducing behaviours, thoughts, and actions as a result of the conditions we exist in (see Research Report for further reflections and learnings).

There have been many times where we’ve been clumsy, where we’ve had to re-evaluate what felt clunky or wasn’t fitting. We’ve had to pause, deliberate, seek advice and guidance and that is the work that so often goes unnamed and unseen. We forefront this in our introduction because impressions of glossiness hide graft which is necessary to transformation and always worth it. Any other shortcuts only return us to everything we are undoing.

SEEDING THE COSMOS

As we seed the cosmos with our art, we hope our healing narratives ‘take root among the stars’ (Octavia E. Butler) and gather new constellations. We seed futures in a different sky, with each of us as a carrier of infinite potential. We hope that we can inspire ourselves and others to continue to ‘speak the truth, even if our voice shakes’.

On the other side of lockdowns, detentions, apartheids, divided and bordered lives we hope to all meet soon in some capacity, more capaciously – our heart cavities full, meeting together in joy and celebration to continue to learn and love and fight together.

The system is shook. We have healthy roots that run deep.

Let us fertilise. Harmonise. Shake!

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To read the full 4,500 word version of this Introduction you can purchase a copy of the full colour 320 page Anthology from the Shake! website here.

You can also read and download the accompanying Shake! The System youth-led Research Report and Guidebook to Rituals, Tools & Practices for free here.

Reparations and the Climate Justice Movement – Esther Stanford-Xosei

A short extract on “Afriphobia and Reparations as a buzzword” from RJN’s Race and Climate Justice Collective conversation with leading Reparatory Justice activist Esther Stanford-Xosei.

Here Esther touches on:

– the challenges of movement organising in the face of Afriphobia
– the corporate capture of movements and the NGOisation of resistance
– ISMAR*-denial i.e. the trend for careerist activists to use ‘Reparations’ as a buzzword for social and cultural capital but with no connecting up to the long history of intergenerational grassroots Reparatory Justice organising.

*ISMAR (The International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations)

To watch the full 2 hour conversation on why reparations needs to be at the heart of any climate justice demands and how our organising can reflect this, click here.

Esther Stanford-Xosei is a Reparationist, Jurisconsult, Community Advocate, Educator and emerging Ourstorian of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations.

Read Esther’s statement as Patron for the Racial Justice Network here.

Cohobblopot Compost

A commissioned Black History Month blog for Numbi Arts.

See their Global Munch series here.

Covid-19, lockdown, and the cancelling of Carnival have all taken away the sunshine this year. With the cold autumn nights drawing in, and the winter solstice firmly upon us, the disconnection from Afrikan-Caribbean climes, roots and routes is keenly felt.

Here in Chapeltown in Leeds, as in many sights of settled migration from the diaspora, there are several shops to turn to for vital provisions and foods from the motherland and especially in this month of Black History, there is also an abundance of culture to feast on, albeit largely online.

So as we brace for second wave, third tier, under (supposed) ‘first world’ governance, my thoughts turn to the dish that has sustained most throughout these socially distanced months – the compost cohobblopot.

The right to allotment access is enshrined in UK law and I was first able to take advantage of this when living in a back to back terrace deep in white working-class West Leeds. We had no garden here, just a pavement and

The Thirteenth Recommendation – adding Internationalism to the Climate Agenda (for Leeds and Beyond)

Capitalism is not in sync with nature.

The present day Empire recognises and tries to contain the power of 13 (note the significance of symbology on the American dollar – 13 stars, 13 steps on the pyramid, 13 leaves & berries on the olive branch, 13 arrows…); the 13 original US colonies; the 13th amendment to the US constitution…

The partitioning of time under the Gregorian calendar into 12 hour days and 12 oddly numbered months is a patriarchal ordering at odds with the rhythms of mother nature.

There are 13 major joints in the body.

The moon orbits the earth 13 times a year.

The 13 month, 28-day calendar is, and has been, used by many ancient and indigenous cultures throughout history.

The 13 month moon cycle corresponds with the menstrual cycle.

The number thirteen holds power.

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Back in July 2019 RJN were asked to become a part of the Leeds Climate Change Citizen’s Jury oversight panel. In our limited capacity, we were able to contribute some thinking to the recruitment process and methodology as well as providing testimony as commentators to the jury. At every stage of our engagement we were keen to emphasise the need for an international framing and to ensure that colonial legacies, climate debt, and the various struggles/ solutions already in existence from the Global South were considered.

RJN was allocated 15 minutes in one of the 9 sessions (30 hours in total) to deliver our testimony, and 15 minutes to field any questions (this shared presentation from RJN director Peninah Wangari-Jones and trustee Sai Murray, together with filmed interview questions posed outside the session, can be seen here).

Aware of the voluminous critiques on the whiteness of the UK climate movement and the sidelining of global majority voices we hoped our testimony would be afforded status as a vital underpinning to any recommended action for the city. However, on attending the November 2019 launch event to announce the 12 recommendations, no international framing was included.

Our existing work of engaging with global majority activists continued.

January 2020 saw RJN travel to Kenya to learn, skill-share, strategise and decolonise; and in March 2020 we held the next in our series of Collective Conversations on Race and Climate Justice: Our interconnected struggles. Out of these experiences and the enthusiasm shown by participants who would go on to form a dedicated Race & Climate Justice collective, the Thirteenth Recommendation was birthed.

We continue to do this work and to connect with individuals, communities and organisations locally and globally who have this consciousness embedded, and who demonstrate a desire to build in solidarity and work together for true planet repairs.

The 13th Recommendation is conceived therefore as a statement rather than an amendment or addenda. A foundation statement to underpin all other 12 recommendations and without which they are redundant.

The Thirteenth Recommendation will be launched next month on the 13th October 2020.

Teach Like A Poet

Extracts from the essay, “Teach Like A Poet” commissioned for Jennifer Webb‘s book “Teach Like A Writer” published by John Catt, 2020.

Poetry for the People.

On walks to school and nursery, my sons remind me that poetry is found everywhere and anywhere. Skipping from one gas, water, and electric plate to another they point out the poetry of drains; the rhythm of footsteps; a cluster of ladybirds huddled on a wall. Nonsense noises, babble, silly songs. Things my cynical adult eyes and ears would not normally be attuned to on my daily rush.

Wordplay, rhythm, and rhyme is innate. We learn language through poetic method – repetition, nursery rhymes, counting, song, play. It is perhaps only when going through Primary to High School to Higher Education that we become divorced from this initial fluid elemental learning and the emphasis switches to the rigidity of grades, correct answers, curriculum, examinations.

Engagements facilitating poetry workshops with a mental health arts charity¹ also taught how those who have been stripped of the ‘mind-forged manacles’ can naturally produce poetry closer to raw unfiltered human expression. Re-membering and re-kindling this love of language and wordplay is at the root of my facilitation work. Reminding that poetry is not to be feared, that it is accessible, something we are born with, and that we have a right to claim it, mould it, adapt it to our tongue.

In one memorable commission at a hostel for homeless youth, the anticipation of poetry-phobia resulted in the dreaded P-word being omitted from any description of the advertised sessions. Instead, I was asked to deliver “lyric writing” workshops. However, when able to engage the young people with their own understanding of lyrics, we were soon able to gain an appreciation that the best lyric writers – whether they call themselves so or not – are in fact poets. Poetry was re-introduced back into the room and we could confidently affirm the backronym ‘RAP = Rhythm And Poetry’; that poetry is not just about pretty flowers or that, if it is, it can be about dusty discarded dandelions or, in Tupac’s poetry/lyrics, about “The Rose that Grew from Concrete”.

Poetry is an art form of and for the masses. As Audre Lorde recognised², “poetry has been the major voice of poor, working class, and [women of colour]”:

Of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which requires the least physical labor, the least material, and the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper…

Or indeed on the school bus, on the walk home, on your phone, tablet, Android/IOS notes app, dictaphone, voice notes… In contrasting the accessibility of poetry with prose, Lorde develops Virginia Woolf’s arguments for gender equality to also include class and racial privilege:

A room of one’s own may be a necessity for writing prose, but so are reams of paper, a typewriter, and plenty of time.

Poet Gloria E. Anzaldúa similarly implores:

Forget the room of one’s own – write in the kitchen, lock yourself up in the bathroom. Write on the bus or the welfare line, on the job or during meals, between sleeping and waking. I write while sitting on the john.³

Poetry then is effective both in terms of being a ubiquitous natural communicator but also in being an immediate accessible art form. We can all do this. It is not something we are supposed to simply revere, study, and admire from afar.

Poetry for Change.

Poets (the unacknowledged legislators of the world⁴) have always been at the forefront of positive social change. Periods of upheaval and struggle always produce resistance. And flowerings of art. From Ancient Egypt to Greece to China; across Islam, Judaism, Christianity; through revolts, rebellion and revolutions; via the Harlem Renaissance, the Beats, the Caribbean Artists Movement; to Ken Saro Wiwa to Nawal El Saadawi, to us, today.

As we near an apex in human history with the prospect of planetary destruction having never been closer (nuclear war, pandemics, and not least environmental devastation) there is a need for poetry.

Teach Like a Writer

I was recently asked to contribute to Jennifer Webb‘s new book Teach Like A Writer – a call to action for teaching students to write with purpose and integrity, to write themselves into this society, into history, and into their own futures.

I’ve worked with Jennifer on a number of educational projects and her enthusiasm and passion for all things pedagogical shines large, as well as her ability to transmit this enthusiasm to her students and fellow educators (check her website Funky Pedagogy for a treasure trove of FREE learning resources).

From the Introduction, Jennifer locates the book in her identity as a woman of mixed Carribean and Leeds heritage and coming from a low income, single parent household, Oxford-educated and with a decade teaching in a range of West Yorkshire schools. From experience, she speaks of the need for educators to acknowledge their own cultural bias, their priviledge, and to be conscious of other codes which exist outside of, and alongside, the supposed superiority of English.

“Our ambition must be to enable all students, regardless of background, to be the best academic writers and speakers they can possibly be, but this must be tempered with a mature understanding of our own cultural bias and the way we see our students… teachers should aim to teach the knowledge and skill students need to exist, write and succeed in the real world”.

In the spirit of acknowledging real world challenges, and not erasing labour, it should also be highlighted how Jennifer compiled this book during the months when she was heavily pregnant, and managed to deliver on schedule before the birth of her second child.

Jennifer has roots in Chapeltown so it was a joy to also be featured in a book that compiles thought from CPT-residents Jacob Ross, Zodwa Nyoni and Saju Ahmed. Jacob (the Don) has been one of my key writing mentors over the years and his workshops on narrative craft are renowned for developing many a prize-winning writer (as well as being renowned also for his strictness and adherence to discipline). A published collection of Jacob’s unique insight into storying will be welcome indeed but for now, it is great to see some of his story philosophy reproduced in these pages.

Extracts from my essay are here and the full list of contributors, together with the mission for the book is below:

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All resources from ‘Teach Like A Writer’ are available to download for FREE from here and you can purchase a copy (from places that pay tax, do not exploit their workers & which aren’t Amazon…) direct from the publisher John Catt.

 

 

Testimony to the Leeds Climate Change Citizens’ Jury

In October 2019 myself and Peninah Wangari-Jones (director of the Racial Justice Network) were asked to present testimony to the Leeds Climate Change Citizens’ Jury.

Our theme for this testimony was the need for an international perspective to be considered in all thoughts, recommendations and action.

The 15-minute presentation is below (from 13mins 29):

And responses to further questions we were posed around the need to consider climate change from an international perspective also available here:

We look forward to hearing the recommendations for the city of Leeds and will continue to engage with our local and global communities to push the agenda of climate justice, recognising the climate debt owed to the majority world from exploiting countries (such as the UK) and striving towards the goal of holistic, economic, spiritual, environmental and cultural repairs to address legacies of colonialism and to end racial injustice.

Why Write?

I was aksed to answer this question by First Story for National Writing Day.

Here’s my musings:

“It’s important to tell your story, to express who you are… If you don’t do that, then someone else may do that for you…and write you out of history…”

And here’s some other writers on the same question:

+ lots of resources on the NWD website to help get the writing flowing:

https://www.nationalwritingday.org.uk/resources/by/write-away/

TLC Showcase Writer

This month I’m featured as The Literary Consultancy Showcase Writer for my in-progress-forthcoming-hopefully-completed-sooooooon novel as memoir, Ad-Break.

It’s been a journey writing this manuscript but definitely feeling closer than ever to finishing it after receiving an insightful and encouraging report from TLC reader Jonathan McAloon. An extract of the middle part of the novel is included to download here as well as an introduction for context:

The manuscript for Ad-Break has gone through many guises. It began life intended as an illustrated coffee table book entitled 57 Creative Ways to Kill Yourself (influenced by the comedian Bill Hicks’ sketch: “if you work in advertising or marketing, kill yourself”). After attending writing workshops with Yorkshire Art Circus (2003-2005) then joining the Inscribe Writer Development programme (2005) the present form began to emerge as a semi-fictionalised account of my own experience in the advertising world. In 2008 I had enough words to publish an early version of the opening chapters, with Inscribe, as the novella Kill Myself Now – The True Confessions of An Advertising Genius.

More soon come.