Autobio: Spies, secret sanctuaries and my mother

I’m watching the Odette, it’s the story of the French woman Odette Churchill who served as a spy for Britain, working with the French resistance during WW2. Mum told me about this and urged me to watch the film Carve Her Name With Pride, which was her favourite, another true story; that of Violette Szabo who also assisted the French resistance.

Some time before my mum died, perhaps a few years before, she told me she had heard on Radio 4’s Womens Hour that women like this who were injured were treated in secret by the Sacred Heart Convent where she went to school. She was so excited and so proud. She introduced me to Code Poem for the French Resistance by Leo Marx which was broadcast on the show and recited in Carve Her Name With Pride. She asked from her hospital bed when she was dying that the poem be read at her funeral.

Prior to this discovery her only memories of that school were not happy ones.She would tell me only of the cruelty of the nuns, one in particular who would walk around the class room with a ruler and wrap anyone over the knuckles if they got the sums wrong. As a result mum developed a blind spot about maths though she could handle the housekeeping well enough it was only when she did a GCSE in maths to apply for teacher training she could do anything more complex. I remember cutting up an orange to teach her fractions.

I remember another conversation, I was in my mid or late 30’s and had gone back for the weekend. These visits would have a typical pattern. We’d have a few drinks on the Friday night and talk, argue, discuss current affairs. The rest of the weekend we might have a little trip out to a park, garden or stately home.

I’m not sure how we got there on this night but I remember mum saying something like, “I don’t know how anyone does that.” And dad said, “What are you talking about if the Nazis had invaded here you be the one planting bombs and blowing up train tracks.” Or words to that effect. We had had a few if the truth be told. I was just looking on with amazement at this turn in the conversation. It was probably followed with something like, “Well I think it’s time we all went to bed now.”

Mum disliked war films generally, when we were little kids, if something came on, “Up periscope, down periscope!” Us kids would crow, Mum would shake her head, retreat to the kitchen and say something like, “Awful, just awful, war is a terrible thing.” She wasn’t keen on Cowboys and Indians either except Last of The Mohicans.

On afternoons like this or at Christmas we would watch over and over The Great Escape, Spartacus and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. When the latter ended, repressing and hiding tears. Emotion was not something that was easily shown in our family.

I think mum was the only one who really understood me and what I was doing with poetry and politics even though even as late as 2002 she was still overly protective and was furious when she discovered after when a group of us went to the European Social conference in Florence we joined the million on the peace march at the end. I had told her about the conference, no one knew the March would be so big and broadcast across the world.

Later she apologised about flipping out and said I’m not worried what you would do I was worried about the police, which is fair enough they had killed Carlo Giuliani, a year before at the G8 summit, his parents led the march and was so big the police didn’t come anywhere near it.

Next Saturday I’m performing with a group call Things that Make for Peace on the 70th anniversary of NATO. I don’t know if she would get why we oppose nato because that’s not a conversation we ever had but I think she would be proud. It’s times like this I miss my mum but I feel her closeness at the same time.

Only when she was dying she finally stopped saying, “Just be careful” when I went on a protest. I guess that’s what mums have to do and know when to stop doing it. I’m glad we reached that understanding. In the end. If it wasn’t for her I feel my life would have been very different. I believe it was her that planted in me these seeds for peace, justice and equality, it wasn’t just what she said, the stories she told, it the passion with which she did it.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_171571.htm

Writing by others: Extinction Rebellion, London Occupation, a poem by Leslie Stuart Tate

Beautiful poem from Leslie Stuart Tate, capturing moments in action and the dialectical notion of how as we seek to make change we too change, learn and grow in the struggle; “How we made tarmac into garden,/seeding ourselves in the night/and easing up next morning/through drains and cracks/to release soft balsamic fragrance/and love-repeat blooms/ unlocking who we are.”

I love the sense that this is not just a cerebral process but an uncovering, a discovering of our potential. The potential born in us set free by love and action, a beautiful process. Replete in reference, it evokes for me Oliver Tambos “flowers, of the revolution,” Oscar Wilde’s “we are all in the gutter…” and Rumi’s ““Be crumbled. So wild flowers come up where you are. You have been stony for too many years. Try something different.” Yet while doing so entirely original, expressing the essence of XR. This distillation the very definition of poetry.

Extinction Rebellion, London Occupation

(With acknowledgments to Adlestrop, Edward Thomas)

I remember

where we nested on trucks

with our talons drilled into metal

as we sent up wild cries calling to our children,

and they gathered,

rising from their bedrooms

and playgrounds and schoolrooms

to fold their wings around the wounds

and consecrated body of Earth our host.

How we made tarmac into garden,

seeding ourselves in the night

and easing up next morning

through drains and cracks

to release soft balsamic fragrance

and love-repeat blooms

unlocking who we are.

Yes, I remember how we offered ourselves,

sitting cross-legged on stony ground

held together by our songbooks and testimonies

and the rising tide of quiet

on the bridge and in the Square,

and in the silent wait at the Circus for leaf-boat rescue.

And in that minute, as I watched, the air became an Arch,

the sun told the truth; the traffic stopped

and the trees and protestors stood tall

raising a dream-song space with their bodies,

while all the birds

of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire

sang emergency.

Leslie Tate https://leslietate.com/ who adds

This poem is about the April XR occupation of London. It took a long time to write, so I didn’t read it until I was MC-ing a stage during the July and October uprisings. Here’s a link to Blythe Pepino’s song ‘Emergency’, referred to at the end https://soundcloud.com/blythehart/emergency.

#PoetryReadathon

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Poems by me: Bloodlines

Bloodlines – new version for performance, updated 2019

Dedicated to Heba Farouk Mahfouz and Ahmed Harara

I’m pulling on my jacket when I notice your status.

Urgent Qasr al Ainy need blood donors immediately. Spread this #Tahrir 21 Nov 22.22

Almost 12 hours ago then, and I am almost 12 hours away

from the makeshift hospitals in churches and mosques,

where doctors and nurses attend to the wounded on their hand and knees,

and even if I could cross the miles in an instant…

 

look down, blood is smeared all over my screen,

the blood of the hopeful, the dreamers in Oakland,

Denver, Daara and Homs and now in my beloved al Qahira.

Is blood the currency of our liberation?

Scroll, the bodies of Syrian children twist, crumple and fall,

and that blood too wells up and drips onto by desk,

absentmindedly I push the keyboard aside,

hearing the slogan of the revolutions roar from my speakers

ashaab urid isqaat annism, the people demand the fall of the regime.

Move the mouse, click you tell us that Ahmed Harara gave one eye in January

and the other on Saturday

If I could cross the miles in an instant…

I would love to touch again that earth,

where I sat in the summer, in the lull,

under the moonlight and an imperfect victory

with new families, singing rebel songs.

We come here all the time now, not just on Fridays

a woman told me, her son asleep in her arms,

we can come here when we want now, this is our now.

Shame creeps up behind my neck no amount of my reminiscence

with return to Ahmed his eyes. Scroll, he sits in the studio,

a fresh bandage over his eye and he smiles. He is smiling, smiling!

The dentist, son, brother who may never see again. He is smiling

and he has the voice and vision of angels

#dignity #honour #courage. If only

I could cross the miles in an instant…

 

What was I doing? What am I now, Egyptian, Syrian, American?

What am I now but blood, consciousness and pain.

Time to leave now, to wrestle with the tube where I might usually conjugate Arabic

verbs, but not today, knowing … that even if I could cross the miles in an instant

there is not enough blood in my body for the fallen #powerless.

Later I sink back into the smile of the blind man I’ve never met,our brother, this time he

is in the arms of the mother of Khalid Said, the boy in whose name so many stood up and

I know now, that while there is blood in my body,

I have my voice, I have hope

I still have dreams of freedom

while there is blood in our bodies,

always we have our voice and hope

still we have our dreams of freedom…

 

I began writing the poem below as news of a massacre in Cairo came thru from my facebook friends in Egypt. One in particular was ceaseless in her reporting which was vital to the struggle was Heba, who now works for the Washington Times. This version below was updated for performance and for today.

The courage, passion, compassion, dignity and love of those in the struggle inspired me to begin the poem a version of which was eventually published in one of the Loose Muse Anthologies. Forget which one, which anthology. I was actually really depressed when I put my pen to the page. Not coz of this, just in general. Not sure what crashed me now. Perhaps the combination of a heartbreak at the end of a relationship lost in translation and clearing out our family home after our Dad died.

I remember feeling so impotent, being so far away. My heart tearing. Thinking I can’t write, can’t do anything, my writing is crap anyway, then thru the tears that opened my heart came words.

The 21st November 2011 was a dark day in Cairo. So many shot, beaten, wounded, killed. Many shot in the eyes, including Ahmed Harara, a dentist who took to the streets in January, gave one eye to the struggle then another on this day. Under orders from SCAF, the military council. He eventually became a citizen journalist.

Things aren’t much better now under Al Sisi, which is why I feel this is still relevant. Lets never forget the power we have united, the courage that we saw in Tahrir. Will never forget those I met in the square in that mellow summer when things coulda gone either way and many knew that.

Heba and Ahmed helped me live again when I was drowning in my sorrows, worse in the visible darkness of a deep depression. My message to them today; I feel the tide is turning again across the world. Good luck with your writing. Never let go of hope, let the light shine even if all it can do is reveal the darkness. Tadamun, Ohabty, Ohaby.

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Diary: December 2019

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Comment: A rant post about the continuing housing crisis

Every day a new story emerges about council estates left empty after their residents have been evicted and scattered to the four winds, of luxury apartments left empty, of the growing number of rough sleepers, the hidden homeless; young people “sofa surfing” or living in sheds, growing numbers of families in temporary accommodation or in overcrowded accommodation, of the residents from Grenfell tower STILL waiting to be offered suitable accommodation.

This is the reality of the housing crisis, the majority of property being built is for the rich and privileged and it would seem even that market is now saturated. While an exodus grips the capital. When will the government realise we need HOMES for teachers, bus drivers, nurses, baristas, cleaners, shop workers, artists, tube workers, I could go on; the people that keep this city functioning not luxury apartments for oligarchs and their friends. The “market” in”housing” is an insanity. Those that continue to propose it as a solution are deluded. The facts are screaming out that neoliberalism ISNT WORKING.

The good news is there is a sprawling, growing yet connected housing movement. To get involved contact

The Radical Housing Network – fighting for housing justice.

https://radicalhousingnetwork.org/

Demolition Watch h

https://www.demolitionwatchlondon.com/

Follow

Single Aspect Blog – architecture and politics

http://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=15635

Municipal Dreams blog – politics of social housing

Cressingham Gardens, Lambeth: ‘a sense of smallness inside the bigness’

Writing Cities – on community and cities

http://writingcities.com/2014/10/19/cressingham-gardens/

On my estate we have been campaigning to save our homes for seven years. We have combined protest with legal challenges, produced a People’s Plan for the estate, created art and a book. 306: Living Under the shadow of Regeneration, the anthology of writing from Cressingham Gardens.

In the conclusion to the introduction of this book I wrote the following:

“The combination of a short-sighted housing policies, changes to welfare; inadequate social care, invisible and unaccountable decisions which replace pubs and bingo halls with supermarkets, seem to be stripping the soul out of our cities and changing the landscape and demography.

Who will sweep our streets, teach our children, tend to the sick, drive our buses and tubes if these processes of regeneration and gentrification are allowed to continue unabated? What do we want for the future of our cities? Soulless spheres of glass and steel; bereft of pubs, night clubs, gay clubs, market places, the damned working class, public spaces free to wander, sit and talk or organically growing, changing, diversifying, supporting, thriving communities?”

More info https://cressinghamvoices.wordpress.com/

A blog post by Anne Enith Cooper contact me here

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