Poem: Never Look at Yourself in Bed

Never Look at Yourself in Bed

Tired eyes wiped across a screen

Where all imperfections glow

I see scars

I see black ice

I see two bursting dams

By now I should know that nothing is impervious to glass

My hair frequently collapses under it's own rigor

Yet its death always comes as a surprise

The price to illude to life is high

But this I accept

So I stretch the mouth to paint the eye

And contort the limbs to clear a patch

The devil is in a darkened mirror

And ugly is in the relaxed

A Poetry Promise

I've just remembered how irritating it is when people dissect their poetry in front of you (or in my case via a blog). The reason I'm guilty of this is because I had three years of creative badgering (disguised as education) from people who insisted this was the norm and insisted they knew better. But I know better.

They used to tell me that my stories were too unbelievable even though they were all based on things I'd experienced. They'd say write what you know but what they meant was write what I know. Trouble is what I knew was totally out of the remit of what a sheltered middle-class-middle-aged academic who'd never fucked up in their life knew. Anyway I left that institution three years ago and it's only now that I've started to write again and I guess old habits die hard.

But I promise any new poems or stories I write I'll just put them up as they are and leave it up to other people to figure out what I'm ranting on about.

Poem: Burning Youth

Here is another old poem of mine called Burning Youth. It's about all the fun I had getting carried away in the Leeds Festival riots when I was a teenager. It was supposed to be a ballad but all that structure fucks me off so it is what it is:

Burning Youth

When someone in the crowd shouts charge

Everyone does obey

We run to them, they run to us

All with their batons raised

Through classic choreographed moves

Primal urges surface

Kids and the Police together

Fulfil this strange purpose
 

Mob mentality has its place

And in this field it lies

Where the rocks and rubber bullets

Shower down from the sky

I've never seen police so crazed

Out of football season

What was started was soon finished

With force beyond reason
 

Yet when the night is through and the

Fires are fully put out

Everyone will return to peace

Of this I have no doubt

Poem: Friendly Mute

Here is a poem I wrote a while ago about a young woman who lived in my best friend's estate and suffered selective mutism. It was well known throughout the neighbourhood that her uncle and father abused her when she was a child and that was believed to be the cause of her selective mutism. My friend moved out of the estate shortly after I wrote this poem so sadly I don't know what happened to her. 

Originally this poem was supposed to be written as a sonnet but my iambic pentameter was well off and I could never be arsed to fix it so it always remained a draft. But anyway here it is:
 

Friendly Mute

A tragic story despair from the start,

Like a silent film frail in movement.

Stitching from her thread-thin soul torn apart,

For someone else's depraved amusement.
 

Still the ugly hand of human nature,

Could not blemish her natural beauty.

But beauty hasn't power to free her,

From a childhood of horror and cruelty.

No one denies this story's atrocious,

Yet for her no one ever shed a tear.

In fact no one ever seems to notice,

This young woman who was silenced by fear.

But one day soon you will not get a choice

As our neighbourhood mute will find her voice

No Recourse

I currently work in student support at a local university and for the past month my role has included checking the visas and passports of international students who are about to embark on a course with us. This task is fairly tedious and involves a lot of monotonous data entry but it has forced me to take stock of a certain UKBA policy and encouraged me to carry on campaigning against it.

Firstly I'd like to add that I'm not an expert on these things so please excuse my ignorance, but the policy I'm referring to is the 'No Recourse to Public Funds' policy and in particular how this infringes on the human rights of immigrants who are experiencing domestic violence.

The following example illustrates my understanding of how this policy infringes their rights:

Student A came to the UK to study on a Masters course and she was granted a temporary student visa. She moved in with her fiancée who was already studying at a UK university but she didn't have any other friends or relatives in the UK. Student A also didn't have a lot of money to live off because international students have to pay extortionate tuition fees and are limited in the amount of hours they're allowed to work. Whilst living and studying in this country her fiancé repeatedly subjected her to vicious beatings and threatened her with worse if she spoke out about it. She wanted to leave but she didn't have anywhere to go and couldn't afford to find other accommodation. Then one day after suffering a particularly brutal beating she mustered up the courage to go to a local police station to seek help in finding a refuge. Sadly they weren't able to help her because in order to be able seek a place in a women's refuge you have to be entitled to benefits such as housing benefit and income support and No Recourse to Public Funds means no benefits. Student A's only options were to return to her abusive fiancé or become destitute.

I think it is truly abhorrent to think that a supposedly progressive and safe country such as the UK deems it acceptable to deny support services to any victim of domestic violence. Sufferer's visa status should not even come into it – they're human and they have human rights.

Luckily there are powerful institutions out there who are putting pressure on our government to change this policy and make it include amendments that help sufferers of domestic violence seek recourse. Amnesty International for one have been fighting for this in their 'No Recourse No Safety Campaign' and this collaborative pressure led to the government agreeing to a pilot scheme which included the recourse amendment for sufferers of domestic violence. This pilot project has now been extended until March 2011 but as great as that is it still has flaws and exemptions that need to be worked out. So now is the time to step up the pressure on our government to make sure they get it right. For those of you who want to get involved I think Amnesty International is the best place to get information from or like me you could write to your MP and make sure they keep pressuring Teresa May and co.

We'll have to see what the outcome is come March 2011 but lets hope this pilot scheme leads to a permanent reality where all sufferers of domestic violence are able to seek recourse regardless of their visa status.

Ezra Kire Interview (aka my first interview)

When I was 17-years-old I thought I was going to change the world armed with nothing but a zine and a big mouth. Gradually logic and experience proved me wrong but it does seem a shame to waste all of my zine creations. So here is one of my best - an interview with Ezra Kire of Leftover Crack/INDK/ Morning Glory fame that I did for The Enemy zine (never heard of it? Well that's because I only printed about 10 copies meaning it inevitably disappeared into obscurity). This was compiled in 2002/3 so some of the information is out dated.

The Dirty Word

Many of the items featured in my blog will be based on my perceptions of life as a 25-year-old feminist. This introduction and subsequent similar items will be labeled as 'The Dirty Word' and that is down to the following reasons:

• Many of my girlfriends either don't consider themselves to be feminists or won't admit to it.
• Many of my boyfriends are feminists but don't consider themselves to be feminists or won't admit to it simply because they're men.
• Some of my boyfriends and girlfriends refuse to acknowledge the existence of feminism because they refuse to acknowledge some of the problems and challenges women face.
• Some of the my boyfriends and girlfriends refuse to acknowledge the existence of feminism and are either knowingly or unknowingly responsible for some of the problems and challenges women face.
• Some of the items featured in this section of my blog will be of sexual nature, challenge sexual discrimination or bring up some of the age old arguments raised in the feminist sex wars.

I will seek to explain and/or challenge such perceptions through out my blog.