this is not a poem and i am not a poet by anthony anaxagorou

I read this yesterday, wonderful writing by Anthony Anaxagorou, and thought I’d share it with you here. It’s exquisitely profound and if you’re like me, the words will stay with you for a  while.  Not all the words of course but one or two stanzas may linger on in your soul for a little longer than usual. Anthony’s web address is provided at the end if you wanted to sample more of his work.

Enjoy!

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This is not a poem

and I am not a poet

 ……

when I’m unable to find a better way of saying that in 2012

48 people in Great Britain were killed by guns

and 120 women killed by the hands of their beloved partners.

 ……

I am not a poet

 ……

when I can’t find a more beautiful way to say

that no nation in the world imprisons as many members of its population

as America does

 ……

that more Black men in the U.S are incarcerated today

than what they were during the peak of South Africa’s apartheid

no

 ……

I am not a poet

……..

when I can’t find clever words to illustrate the fact

that before 2008 Nelson Mandela had been on America’s list

of most dangerous terrorists for over 60 years

…….

that Cameron is a liar, that Cameron was a key member

of the Federation of Conservative Students in 89’

that hoped to hang Mandela

…….

forgive me

because today I am not a poet

and this is not a poem

…….

when eloquent words fail me and I can’t capture

the struggle of the poor through the metaphysics of language

……

that by the time Margaret Thatcher left office in 1990

the annual incomes of the richest 0.01% of British society

had climbed to 70 times the national mean

…….

and I don’t know how I feel about the fact

that key policy makers and leading

civil servants have never had a job outside of their politics

…….

the same men who set the minimum wage,

with only 4% ever having worked in manual trades,

of which 68% went to private schools

…….

that is why this is not a poem

and I am not a poet

……

because everything I’ve ever written suffers the weight

of its own futility when another mother comes to a workshop

with a fresh black eye

 ……

when there’s another empty seat in the place that James sat in

last week and when I ask the group where he is their young eyes open wet

as if his coffin in that moment was being lowered into them

…….

but you see

……

I can understand all this more when they cut funding to schemes

that are aimed at inspiring people previously inspired by crime

and the insufferable dross of mainstream culture

……

private prison systems and prisons for profit

……

when young women are given more options than just

be someone’s girl, be someone’s mother be someone’s silence,

but you see, I’ve done it again

……

I’ve crossed themes

I’ve not followed traditional poetic form

and so

 I’m a terrible poet

because how do I speak words in prison

then tell a young black person

that they were once kings and queens of lands whose names fall dead on their tongue?

……….

How do I return their history?

How do I mention The Marriott Excavation?

Cheikh Anta Diop and the skin-cell sampling of three hundred mummies?

……

How do I show them pictures of skyscrapers before skyscrapers even existed?

How do I do all this and then have them ask what part of the world I’m from

and why don’t I write poetry about 1974, EOKA and Kissinger

until I tell them

…….

that I am not a poet

…….

and nothing I can write will help dismantle this idea of race

that we’ve become so attached to.

……..

Nothing I can write will include the importance of mitochondrial DNA

and the 99.99% of us that is identical

……

that a BNP member most probably has more Asian and Arab in them

than the mosque they conspire to blow up

…….

that immigration isn’t a choice,

that people don’t come to the UK for great weather,

hospitality and quality of life

……….

how do I explain all this and still retain artistic merit?

……

I spent days looking for a metaphor to put the Palestinian Nakba in

until I found a home that once stood beautiful and prim

and I opened the door

and saw its contents ransacked

its family massacred

and its garden on fire

……..

from that day I abounded any hope of metaphor

and accepted that I could not write poetry about this

that everything I tried to imagine had already slit its own stomach

……..

like the afternoon I spent with a woman who had been raped

and I asked her to capture it in verse, I asked her to use simile and alliteration,

until she looked at me and said I don’t know what those things mean

but I can tell you in a few simple words

what it feels like to live with the Satan of your own heart

 …….

poetry

 ……..

isn’t for me

it’s for people who can use words like odoriferous

while putting red wine to the lips of their white skin

and applaud the technical endeavour of a poem,

its wit, its ingenuity, its meter and form

……..

not its helping, not the ambulance siren

that screeches from the height of its title,

that is why

this is not a poem

and I am not a poet

 ………

because I cried reading Douglas Dunn, Arun Kolatkar, Borges and Neruda.

I cried when I went looking for female poets and found few.

I cried when I asked how many black poets Penguin had ever published and was told two

 ……..

when my English teacher told me that language wasn’t my strength

that my anger crushed my intelligence,

that I should think about going and learning a trade

 …….

and I cried then too

……..

when I spoke to a group of young men about what it was to be a man,

how we inherit this cancerous culture, how we inherit misogyny, objectification and the glory of violence while silently suppressing the sensual,

…….

these

were all the hardest things to write about, to talk about and to live with

that is why I keep saying

that this is not a poem

and I am not a poet

…….

because all of the above digress and ignore the rules set by the establishment,

…..

but all that doesn’t matter

because it’s done now,

you’ve come this far in listening

endings are always the hardest things to write because the author knows

that’s the last impression the reader will be left with

so I chose the following wisely

….

we are made up of all the things that broke us

just to keep us alive

…….

maybe I could have said just that

but I didn’t

because like I said

…….

this is not a poem

and I am not a poet.

www.anthonyanaxagorou.com