The Disabled Poets Prize, looks to find the best work created by UK based deaf and disabled poets, in written English and in British Sign Language. The 2024 winners of the Prize were announced on Saturday 16 March at an event broadcast as part of the Deptford Literature Festival programme.
Best Unpublished Pamphlet 2024 was awarded to Susie Wilson for Nowhere Near As Safe As A Snake In Bed. Second place goes to Anna Starkey for All These Frequencies, and third place to Amber Horne for So She Spoke. Exit Amours by Ozge Gozturk, Learning in Nine Keys by Norman Miller and Scar Tissue by Danne Jobin were all highly commended by the judges.
Susie Wilson said:
“Thank you so much to Pascale Petit and Jamie Hale for selecting my sequence of melanoma poems to win the unpublished pamphlet prize. It is fantastic to know that they will get their day in the sun. Living as I do with Stage 4 melanoma, ‘getting published’ was my single bucket item and I’m delighted that I’m gonna need a bigger bucket. Thank you also to the team at Weston Park Hospital, Sheffield, who take such brilliant care of me, so that I’m still here and able to write, however hard things are. Thank you to my wife, family, friends and poetry friends for their endless support and critique. Congratulations to all the listed poets.
As an auDHD poet, it’s brilliant to be able to represent the complexity of what we are capable of (in my case perhaps often left-field/surreal image links and sound/language patterning characteristic of my auDHD) whilst at the same time having the helping hand which this prize brings to get to market and develop further. The Disabled Poet Prize last year made me realise that it’s no good waiting to feel better, or be ok, or get on top of things. It made me see that it’s possible to get on with writing with hope and verve. I hope to see what we can do to keep spreading the word about this brilliant prize over the next year.
Otherwise, watch this space for more related work about the mouse/sun/poetry god Apollo and the nature of time… including in animation and drawn form.”
The award for Best Single Poem 2024 goes to Gayathiri Kamalakanthan for Eating An Orange. In second place is Rachel Burns and her poem Blue Monday. Third place goes to Alex Mepham for Dark Matter. Could this be how to love by Elizabeth Gibson, Ward 9 by Vera Yuen, and A Horse Walks into a Bar – After Tyrone Lewis by Dee Dickens were all highly commended by the judges.
Gayathiri Kamalakanthan said:
“It’s meaningful that this Prize exists – it makes me feel like I’m a writer, even when writing is painful and slow. I can’t type for very long so I often record myself speaking bits and pieces that could become poems. This poem thinks about the admin and scheduling of grief, which for me mirrors some of the admin and scheduling around long term physical pain.”
The prize for first place is £500, second place wins £250, and third place wins £100. The highly commended entries will each be awarded £50. The Prize offers significant professional development opportunities for the winning writers, including a publication deal with Verve Poetry Press for the best unpublished pamphlet, as well as development prizes from The Literary Consultancy and Arvon Foundation.
Sahera Khan’s poem My Eyes was highly commended by the judges in the category Best Poem Performed in BSL.
Sahera Kahn said:
“That is amazing news. I honour my BSL poem My Eyes selected for special commendation. I feel this poem is important to me in expressing my deafness to share the world to understand how I grew up. I look forward to working with CRIPtic Arts and Spread the Word to develop my poem My Eyes and perform.”
Sahera will receive £300 as well as a one-to-one with an editor at The Literary Consultancy and a free membership to their Being a Writer community platform. She also receives an online masterclass by Arvon, and an online professional development session with CRIPtic Arts and Spread the Word.
The 2024 Disabled Poets Prize was judged by Pascale Petit, Stephen Lightbown, Kabir Kapoor – the British Deaf Association’s UK BSL Poet Laureate – and Jamie Hale.
Deaf and disabled poets face significant barriers to developing their careers. The Disabled Poets Prize brings the work of the winning writers to new prominence, focusing attention on the exceptional work being produced by deaf and disabled writers. It is the first poetry prize in the UK specifically for deaf and disabled poets.
The Disabled Poets Prize is a collaboration between CRIPtic Arts, Spread the Word and Verve Poetry Press. The Prize is actively seeking donations and conversations with people and organisations who are interested in supporting deaf and disabled poets, and would like to contribute to the Prize’s growth.
Barbara Hayes, Chief Executive, ALCS (Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society), said:
“At ALCS, we know that writers provide invaluable contributions to society. Writers help us make sense of the world, and it’s vitally important that authors reflect the diverse range of life experiences found in society. That’s why we’re proud to support the Disabled Poets Prize 2024 and the platform it provides to emerging deaf and disabled poets across the country. A huge congratulations to the shortlisted writers and winners.”
Stuart Bartholomew, Verve Poetry Press, said:
“We at VERVE Poetry are thrilled to continue to be involved with this vitally important poetry prize – the only one of its kind in the UK. The quality of the entrants has been wonderfully high, and we are over the moon to be publishing the winning pamphlet, Nowhere Near As A Snake in Bed by Susie Wilson. We look forward to the continued success of the Disabled Poets Prize.”
Ruth Harrison, Director, Spread the Word, said:
“It remains critical that spaces are created and sustained to profile and celebrate the fantastic work being made by deaf and disabled poets across the UK. We are delighted to be supporting the development of the winning, shortlisted and longlisted poets, helping them to build their careers and get their work out to readers and audiences.”
The Disabled Poets Prize was founded in 2023 by Jamie Hale in collaboration with Spread the Word, Verve Poetry Press, and CRIPtic Arts. The 2024 Prize is funded by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and supported by The Literary Consultancy and Arvon Foundation.
The 2025 Disabled Poets Prize, sponsored by ALCS, will open for entries later this year
class="post-64637 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-creative-writing category-deptford-literature-festival-network-knowledge"Mutterings by *AMPLE CollectiveMutterings by *AMPLE Collective is one of three pieces of original work commissioned for the Deptford Literature Festival 2024.
Spread the Word’s Disabled Writers Commissions aim to showcase new work by three London-based disabled writers. They provide a developmental and profile-raising opportunity. The commissions’ open call, judged by Ayesha Chouglay and Joe Rizzo Naudi, invited disabled writers to put forward their ideas against an open brief.
The commissioned writers – Yaz Nin, Jameisha Prescod and Jacqueline Ennis Cole and Sofia Lyall of *AMPLE Collective – received a commission fee, an activation budget and developmental support including mentoring from Esther Fox, Peter deGraft-Johnson and Jill Abram.
*AMPLE Collective are Sofia Lyall and Jacqueline Ennis Cole. They are an intergenerational autistic collective centred around radical ecological care, open dialogue, and collective wellbeing.
Mutterings by *AMPLE Collective includes Sofia Lyall’s zine and Jacqueline Ennis Cole’s scroll in braille. The work was commissioned by Spread the Word and first presented as a live performance at the 2024 Deptford Literature Festival.
*AMPLE present eight micro stories and poems titled Mutterings. The narratives are situated within the local ecology of Lewisham and beyond. Drawing on the strange and familiar, the writings explore the mutterings and speculative imaginings from post industrial breakdown to technological advances through a neuroqueer lens.
Introduction:
Au leaves their home planet on a spaceship and lands on Earth where they become disorientated by the neurotypical way of life. Au journeys through Lewisham, challenged by the noise and the lights and navigates futuristic technologies in a high-tech urban environment. Along the way, Au encounters more-than-human beings residing in Lewisham.
Au climbed the hill to see Lewisham’s lights. A fox sat on the road ahead. The fox was thin and shivering. Au and the fox stared at each other. The fox was not afraid of Au. Au pulled an acorn from their pocket and offered it to the fox. The fox snapped up the acorn and looked at Au hungrily. Au gave the fox another acorn and continued walking. The fox followed close behind. When Au reached the top of the hill, they sat under a chestnut tree. The fox watched them from behind the tree trunk. Below, lights shone from thousands of buildings. They flickered off and on as people left and entered their rooms. The fox scuttled away into the night, nose low. Alone again, Au looked up at the sky. Visible in the northeast was their home planet.
Au’s people were designated crystal intelligence beings from birth. Au was assigned to the floatation transmission programme in the epoch of 3033. There Au engaged in neurological and telepathic communion with ancestral crystals from the quartz mother planet. Lewisham’s training programme was engineered by surviving neurotypical descendants from the 1707 space crew. Au’s people celebrate stimming remembrance nights each and every full moon.
Under the communal canopy of stars
We honour our Ancestral
Redeemers
Replenish, re-charge
free your mind
the floatation transmitter instructs
We dip in
Then lift off
and watch the silver sky night
As stress waves flee
up up and up
anywhere
where Joy lives
Then we pause
rest
and learn how
to turn
our thought patterns
loose
no lucid
into Stargazing
dreams
Au journeyed on the sky-train hovering above buildings. Au had vertigo looking out of the window at the city below. A multi-level network of bridges, skyways, stadiums, and buildings. All manufactured from earthly materials: aluminium; iron and carbon blasted into steel; cement, water and grit mixed into concrete; glass formed from liquid sand. Along the Thames were waste collection barges holding scrapyard mountains of discarded electronics leaching shimmering colours into the water. An announcement issued an extreme weather warning. Rain fell. The river swelled. Torrents hammered the sky-train ceiling and gushed down the window panes. Au had never known rain so potent. The whole city vanished behind a wall of water.
At the gentle glow of the sun
Au lay low
hunted
hiding
grabbing grub
from a lonesome
garden
with bare
humble hands
The slow
swallow of slugs
slipping
and gliding
down
funnel of throat
Always gathered
with care
An elaborate
ritual
of tender caress
and cleansing
at the crack
of dawn’s daunting dew
This ceremony
calmed Au’s
wired wreck
of stomach
Caved in
points of
phenomenal pressure
nervy nerves
tumultuous turmoiled trance
was the bustle of the
Thames city’s hustle
On and on and on
the snake of a river
Hounding
As Au tunnelled
through mountainous terrains
mapped and
tattooed
on a scrolled parchment
of bark skin
Thirsty
After a tap tap tap
Au drank the sap
from the silver birch tree
Rejuvenated
Arms open wide
with wings of a bird
Surrendering
Au flew out
into the warm
open air
Then
As if in a celluloid dream
looped on a film reel
Au reached
Lewisham
Land of the free
The machinery and megastructures had swallowed the greenery marked on Au’s weathered map of South London. Au searched an entire two days for foraging places. As dusk settled, they stumbled across a sliver of woodland along a stream. Using their high-definition night-vision, Au set about gathering mushrooms such as field blewits, hen-of-the-wood and jelly ears; nettle leaves, rich in iron and fortitude; acorns for protein and perseverance; dandelions for making wishes and immunity; young hogweed shoots for allergies, rashes and wounds; and sweet blackberries, glowing with vitality. Au felt gratitude for the sustaining soil of Lewisham and the nutrients, earthworms, and root networks that survived despite the property developers and their encroaching cityscapes.
As calm as a daisy
Neurotypicals were the dominant tribe
Nosey
Regimental
and they made loud cumbersome sounds
Scaring the more-than human creatures further and further away
They had become easy for Au to read
Au scanned their stony aura visible through his third intuitive eye
Au was no longer frightened of them
Au grew and matured into a fine young specimen and protector
Au was handpicked at birth
Au had a fine tuned sensitive ear
Au could hear the distant sounds of crushing waves
Even though Au lived far far away from them
Au had an instinctual nose for pattern recognition
Au had even bypassed their artificial intelligence algorithms
Au sought to find his inner equilibrium with kindness and patience
Au learned how to practise his ancient sensory craft with graceful eloquence
Au waited in the clinician’s room facing a purple robot. The doctor entered wearing a luminous white coat with three different pens in the breast pocket. The doctor pressed the robot’s start button and read out the instruction manual: “SociaLite Pro™ teaches the neurotypical rules of interaction. Using automated video analysis, the robot identifies abnormal behaviour and issues corrective learning.” The SociaLite’s eyes lit up. Au patted the robot’s head which was covered in tiny silicone bumps and made Au’s teeth hurt. The device wriggled and exclaimed: “Hi Au! Pleased to meet you!” The volume rattled Au’s nerves. The robot continued: “Do you wish to greet me, Au? Neurotypical salutations include ‘Hello’, and ‘How are you?’ Let’s try again!” The robot jumped up and down and bellowed: “Alright Au!” Au responded angrily: “No I’m not alright! I don’t understand why I’m here! There’s nothing wrong with me!” The robot BOINGed and spun around uncontrollably: “Wrong, wrong, wrong!” Au smirked. The doctor leapt up and wrestled the robot to locate the off button, saying: “Oh dear. Seems as though we have quite a bit of work to do.”
mini forest revolution
movement gonna spread and spread and spread revolution
labour of love revolution
sun-up to sun-down revolution
no longer tolerate air pollution revolution
trees bring back oxygen revolution
song thrush nesting homewards revolution
biodiversity pulsates with life revolution
sickness gone extinct revolution
hug trees and they hug us back revolution
eat the fruit trees gift us with revolution
walk your talk as trees have ears revolution
primates swing from trees revolution
bees carry nectar gonna make honey revolution
butterflies flap their wings revolution
hurricane sweeps and swirls revolution
humans plant seeds by the moon revolution
gravitational pull revolution
rejuvenation beyond our wildest dreams revolution
(C) Sofia Lyall, 2024 (C) Jacqueline Ennis Cole, 2024
class="post-64628 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-creative-writing category-deptford-literature-festival-network-knowledge"‘From PT, by Yaz NinYaz Nin’s From PT is one of three pieces of original work commissioned for the Deptford Literature Festival 2024.
Spread the Word’s Disabled Writers Commissions aim to showcase new work by three London-based disabled writers. They provide a developmental and profile-raising opportunity. The commissions’ open call, judged by Ayesha Chouglay and Joe Rizzo Naudi, invited disabled writers to put forward their ideas against an open brief.
The commissioned writers – Yaz Nin, Jameisha Prescod and Jacqueline Ennis Cole and Sofia Lyall of *AMPLE Collective – received a commission fee, an activation budget and developmental support including mentoring from Esther Fox, Peter deGraft-Johnson and Jill Abram.
Yaz Nin is a Kibris born, London raised writer. Her short plays have been staged across the UK, her poetry published in several publications including Oxford poetry, 14magazine and Propel (online). In 2023 her full length play Mount View Road was longlisted for the woven prizes award.
Yaz’s commissioned work is a short film of a prose piece – a letter to a previous tenant – which explores the theme of precarious housing and the invisible chain of community and connection. It is an expression of solidarity and empathy with a lived knowledge of the reality of living in London for many.
From PT was commissioned by Spread the Word and first presented as a film at the 2024 Deptford Literature Festival.
The film opens in a dark room. We see the suggestion of a wooden floor and a rough skirting board. A projector flickers to life. As the voiceover narrates a letter, the projector displays a series of slides, which transition with a whirring click. The slides show: an abstract, rocky texture; the bottom of a wooden door with a rolled up towel beside it; a dim room with a rumpled bed and black mould covering the walls; children’s wooden building blocks on a table; a dark blue sock pegged to a washing line; portraits of recent UK prime ministers; thirteen empty silver tealight cases; and a mattress pulled back from a wall to reveal more mould. Finally, the camera pans from the projector screen to settle on a view from the room’s small, grimy window. We see a twilight London cityscape: distant points of light shine from dark tower blocks and a leafy tree branch is silhouetted against the peachy blue sky.
This audio description of Yaz Nin’s work, From PT, was written and recorded by Joe Rizzo Naudi. Joe was one of the judges working on the Disabled Writers Commissions.
That dripping doesn’t stop.
I understand the relief you first felt when you saw the sink in this room, but get used to the dripping.
The rock in the corner under the window is there to keep the rats out. I highly recommend you don’t move it. It is the best I could do.
The mice get in from the shared hallway, I have rolled up towels and placed them in the gap under the door. You could try the same, but it is no guarantee.
I am sorry I don’t know your name. I was “the previous tenant” call me PT, or do as I do and rename me in your mother tongue.
I play this silly game of “in my country you would be named” it has kept me entertained. But floored me when I do meet people whose names are from my motherland.
The rule book to this game – if there were to be one would advise renaming this person with an “English” name but I can’t do this yet. So maybe it is not a game, or maybe I will never “win” at this game. I don’t know, but call me what you need to, friend.
They only told me yesterday I was being moved. And I thought of you.
When I moved in two years ago (they called it temporary) there was a sock. Dark blue with a faded white print. I am unclear what that print once was. I have spent hours trying to decipher this in the hope of a clear message – but no. This is the cave painting that I lived with and now carry in my pocket.
For some inexplicable reason I knew the previous tenant had left this for me. It was clean and neatly placed in the top drawer of the wonky table.
That man in St Anns library that will talk to you for hours, have you been yet? Told me when powerful leaders leave their post, they leave a letter for the next leader.
That sock was my letter and this is yours.
I hope you are warm. I so badly hope you are warm.
I know you have had a so called “journey” If I advise you to raise any problems with your case worker or Jeff at the front I am guessing you too will roll your eyes at this.
Do they tap those biro pens on leaflets when talking to you and circling information in a loud voice? Do you know yet those telephone numbers don’t result in a solution?
I wish I could be more optimistic. What I am trying to say is “I know” and you are not alone no matter how cold this room will get.
On top of the wardrobe, you will find empty silver tealight candle cases. I could not bring myself to throw these away. Whenever I enter a new residence I look to where my grandparents would put our neatly wrapped Quran and light candles in its place.
I hope you have read between the lines here, that grief is mine not yours, this is not melodrama on paper – you need to understand this for survival in London.
I could light those candles for years because the fire alarms do not work.
I moved the bed to expose the damp and mould, I am sure they moved it back to cover it. I don’t know what to advise other than please know it is there. I am certain it is the reason for the obscure nightmares I have had in this room.
I am not a poet or philosopher but the way I think of London is as one big dancefloor. You and I don’t get to pick the music or the steps. But the lights, no matter what the music and if you can, can’t want to or don’t want to dance – the lights are the saving grace, be it artificial or those majestic skylines out of that manky window.
I have tried to style this part of the letter in an official way but failed – I looked to understand the font the home office uses but could not work it out. I want you to know, to have read this in English – in the language that translated you into a case number,
You are not a case number. You are not a case number. Our decision is final, you are not a case number.
(C) Yaz Nin, 2024
class="post-64634 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-creative-writing category-deptford-literature-festival-network-knowledge"Bodies In the In-Between by Jameisha PrescodBodies In the In-Between by Jameisha Prescod is one of three pieces of original work commissioned for the Deptford Literature Festival 2024.
Spread the Word’s Disabled Writers Commissions aim to showcase new work by three London-based disabled writers. They provide a developmental and profile-raising opportunity. The commissions’ open call, judged by Ayesha Chouglay and Joe Rizzo Naudi, invited disabled writers to put forward their ideas against an open brief.
The commissioned writers – Yaz Nin, Jameisha Prescod and Jacqueline Ennis Cole and Sofia Lyall of *AMPLE Collective – received a commission fee, an activation budget and developmental support including mentoring from Esther Fox, Peter deGraft-Johnson and Jill Abram.
Jameisha Prescod FRSA is an artist-filmmaker, producer and writer from South London. Specialising in documentary, experimental film, video journalism and immersive visual art, they are driven by authentic storytelling and apply creative digital techniques to uncover powerful human experiences. Jameisha is also the founder and creative director of You Look Okay To Me, the online space for chronic illness. Jameisha is currently an associate artist at Forma Arts & Media and a trustee for London Arts in Health Forum.
Jameisha’s commissioned work is an audio reading of a creative non-fiction piece exploring the theme of water and its role in Black diasporic communities. Starting from the personal, the piece fans out into how Black communities have confronted water, bringing in the mermaid cultures of the Caribbean and Mami Wata, before returning back to the personal.
Bodies In the In-Between was commissioned by Spread the Word. The work was first presented as an audio recording at the 2024 Deptford Literature Festival.
I floated on my back for the very first time last summer. If you were a bird that happened to pass over the Gulf of Trieste in the Adriatic Sea, you would have seen it. Taking steady, anxious breaths with arms outstretched, I tilted my head back and rose to the surface. It took 27 years to do this simple act. Something young children usually achieve before they hit double digits. I asked myself what took me so long, but the water gently reminded me that nothing happens before its time.
As my body floated atop this other body, this body of water, I realised it had been a while since I last felt held. To be held in such a way requires sacrifice and reciprocity. Prior attempts at floating ended in failure because of my unwillingness to give back. I desired to conquer water whilst remaining in control of my body, but it didn’t work. That summer holiday taught me a valuable lesson. You cannot demand the support of water, or the rest of nature’s gifts without offering something in return. That offering is vulnerability.
In all my unsuccessful attempts at floating, it never occurred to me to put my ears under the water. It was too scary. How was I supposed to feel safe if I couldn’t hear what was happening around me? Submerging my ears meant giving up my sense of hearing and full range of vision in exchange for weightlessness. Perhaps after all these years of fear and avoidance, water was trying to teach me that I couldn’t hold on to everything. I needed to let go.
I trace my traumatic relationship with water to one event. I was three years old and my mum thought it a good idea to put me in swimming lessons early. She carries her own water-based trauma and didn’t want me to go down the same path. I have vague memories of my lessons in a no-frills swimming pool belonging to the local secondary school for boys. Most lessons were spent splashing, kicking and gliding across the water on crocodile-shaped floats. But everything changed when I accidentally fell into the deep end. I can barely recall the exact order of events, but my body remembers and that’s enough to change you. My mum says I wasn’t the same after that and we eventually stopped going.
Naturally, it makes perfect sense why floating in open waters is a big milestone. On that summer afternoon, all I had was the sky, the sea and my body in between. In that moment, I had assumed my rightful place in the natural order of things. I was exactly where I needed to be, existing somewhere in the in-between of earth and air. This meditation was a space where time ceased to exist and the boundaries of where my body began and this body of water ended, became blurred.
In 1975, the words ‘water no get enemy’ left the lips of Fela Kuti. In almost ten minutes of pure afrobeat magic, we’re enveloped in rich horns and hypnotic baselines. Somewhere in the in-between of this sonic experience, Fela reminds us of the physical and spiritual power of water and how it stretches into every aspect of our being. Water has no enemies; it wins every single time. It has always been here and has always known us and yet we only know a fraction of its true nature. Water brings and supports life when met with respect but will quickly take it all away if this sacred contract is not honoured.
Maybe that’s why I have always skipped the last night of the proms where “Rule Britannia” routinely closes out a summer of musical excellence at the Royal Albert Hall. This patriotic piece proclaims ‘Britons never… will be slaves’ at the height of British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Hadn’t anyone ever told them that the waves were never meant to be ruled? Rule Britannia holds a fundamental opposition to that of “Water No Get Enemy”. Colonialism creates a culture of conquest where nature is supposed to work for us rather than alongside us. Where oceans are just paths for the violent subjugation of black and brown bodies.
I still think back to floating in the in-between.
It reminds me of how my identity finds its home drifting across the Atlantic Ocean.
Somewhere between the Western coasts of Africa, the Caribbean and Britain.
I think of all the bodies that live at the bottom of this in-between.
All the names, stories and lineages forever lost at sea.
When you learn that waterways were significant cultural spaces for African people across different ethnicities, it becomes impossible to accept any notion that blackness doesn’t deserve to find peace there. It’s frustrating that European colonial violence framed water as an in-between of lands to conquer. This violence meant that for a long time, I believed that my beginnings with water were solely steeped in ancestral trauma. But water gently reminded me that it has always been here and has always known me, long before the violence of empire. These colonial acts were not the beginnings of our relationship, but simply an interruption.
Water is a portal where the culture and language of many a people survived the currents. It’s why I still find commonalities with Ashanti folklore and stories of Anansi or why I see my own reflection in Yoruba faces. If I listen hard enough, it’s why I can hear my Jamaican heritage when a Sierra Leonean speaks Krio. It’s why the gifts of Yemọja or Yemaja or Yemayá or however you choose to spell their name are still acknowledged in foreign lands. The mere existence of the displaced is a testament to surviving the waves. And maybe it was those lost in the in-between guiding us through the water all along. Everything is connected.
Maybe that’s why I felt chills watching the Montgomery Riverfront Brawl on TikTok. I watched a black captain be overwhelmed by white fists for simply asking a family to make space for his boat to dock. I saw a young black teenager glide across the Alabama River with ease to assist him. The same waters that bore witness to unspeakable acts against enslaved African people were now witnessing groups of their descendants leaping off a boat to resist further colonial violence. There isn’t anyone on this earth can convince me it was simply coincidence that said boat was named the Harriott.
Across the Caribbean, you might find aunties reminding you to remove all jewellery before entering open waters. This is to avoid attracting sirens or mermaids. More recently we have seen writers like Natasha Bowen and Rivers Solomon imagining worlds where these aquatic bodies hold the spirits of people thrown overboard in the middle passage. In Undercurrents of Power, Kevin Dawson also speaks of the mermaid story where one explanation stems from African women using water as a safe space against colonial sexual violence. Water hid their bodies from deviant eyes and kept them safe from men who would likely drown trying to reach them.
It then becomes fascinating to see the outrage against Halle Bailey embodying a Disney mermaid. Ariel’s pale skin and straight flowy hair were traded in for long crimson micro locs and a warm brown complexion. ‘How dare she?’ some would say. ‘Unrealistic’ others replied. Since when has it ever been unrealistic for a black woman to have her voice stolen from her? The pure unfiltered caucacity of colonialism demands a convenient short-term memory that seeks to remove all our claims to water. Is it so unbelievable for black women to feel at home under the sea or to feel at peace in the water that carries us and soothes our aching joints; the same water that promises to take the weight of the world from us when we lie back and submerge our ears? How could it be when water has always been our birth right?
But as I lay on my back, belly up to the world, sun beaming down on my face, water caressing my shoulders, I knew this was exactly where I needed to be. It felt like a piece of my personal and ancestral trauma broke off and drifted away that day. And as bodies of water across the world continue to reflect our skies, maybe heaven was a place on earth all along. Still, in my meditation, I thought of the ancestral bodies who looked like mine, forced across an ocean to the island of Jamaica, the land of wood and water. Generations later, my grandfather left this very same island and sailed across that very same ocean to another island surrounded by water, the one on which I’m currently writing this essay. Everything is connected.
Perhaps that is what compelled my mum to take me to those lessons all those years ago. Maybe the ancestors were guiding us to break generational curses and return to the body that has always known our bodies. While her attempts were originally unsuccessful, maybe my burning desire to process a trauma of over two decades speaks to a yearning for personal and ancestral peace. Water has always been my birth right, for it has always been here and has always known me.
(C) Jameisha Prescod, 2024
class="post-64789 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-deptford-literature-festival category-deptford-literature-festival-network-knowledge"The Deptford Literature Festival Magazine 2024Featuring Jay Bernard, Joe Rizzo Naudi, Courtney Conrad, Jody Burton and Aliya Gulmani
For the 2024 festival we’re excited to launch the first edition ofthe Festival Magazine featuring new commissioned fiction, poetry and non-fiction from festival writers and poets Jay Bernard, Joe Rizzo Naudi, Jody Burton, Courney Conrad and editor Aliya Gulmani.
The commissioned pieces are inspired by their festival event or the festival theme of Untold Stories, Unheard Histories. You can read them here.
Free copies of the Festival Magazine will be available to pick up from the Deptford Lounge on Saturday 16 March. For more information and to see the full festival programme, visit our Deptford Literature Festival page.
class="post-64780 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-anthology category-deptford-literature-festival-network-knowledge category-network-knowledge tag-anthology"Read the Talk Di Tings Dem anthologyTalk Di Tings Dem is a project which celebrates the voices and stories of Caribbean elders from Entelechy Arts’ Meet Me at The Albany community, run in partnership with Entelechy Arts and Spread the Word.
Over the course of eight weeks, poets Courtney Conrad and Lola Oh led workshops with the Elders where they explored themes such as family, race, faith, migration, and culture, and opened up the space for these unheard voices to share their experiences and be creative.
The Talk Di Tings Dem anthology features a powerful and moving collection of poetry and stories by the Elders, which you can read here:
Published: 15 March 2024