Familiar strangers
and a little poetry on the side
Hello friends,
The light at the end of the tunnel is slowing approaching right? I personally can’t wait for my vaccination and to go back to work in a whole building that’s not my house. I miss my desk, I miss my team and I miss the crazy rushing about before opening night, hell, I even miss the commute. When we get back into the building I am going to be a snotty mess for at least a month. I think I might book some leave and spend it at work so I can just sit in on a terrace with a box of wine and chat to people.
When not thinking about getting the 8.15 am to Liverpool Street Station, I’ve been thinking about old photographs and how important they are and how absent they are from too many migrant families.
So many people who left Jamaica, Dominica, Grenada and Barbados etc in the 1950’s and 1960’s did not know that they would never go home. If they did know this, I expect they would have approached the move very differently and I think they would have packed some photographs. I have never seen a picture of my Great Grandmother because in the early 1960’s, when my Granny moved to England from Jamaica she never thought she would live here the rest of her life.
After WWII when many people from the British Commonwealth began to migrate to England they thought the move would be temporary. They thought they would spend a few years living in England, get started in a career and eventually go home when the post war recovery in their home land had created jobs and when their country was seeing the promised benefits of post-independence politics and the economic stability that would bring.
The 1948 British Nationality Act said all Commonwealth citizens could have British passports and come and work in the UK. The first wave of mass migration, post war, at the request of the British government, saw people coming from the Caribbean, South Asia and Cyprus to take on the jobs the UK population could no longer fill, and ‘make Britain Great again’. These phrases eh!!
Because the moves were considered transient these migrants did not pack up their whole lives to move to another country on the other side of the world. They packed what they needed and could carry in their allocated luggage allowance. They didn’t need to pack photographs because one day they would be going home. Because, for the most part, these mass migrations have been a completely different life experience than was expected thousands of families have lost records and memories that can never be replaced or reclaimed.
I was thinking about this for two reasons. One because I collect old photos of people I’ve never met and two because a friend keeps a photo album by her front door in case she needs to leave the house in an emergency. She has also scanned all her important photographs. In her bathroom she even has photos of her whole family going back generations before the war. While I have no idea what my Great Grandmother looks like, I do have a collection of old photos brought via ebay because I couldn’t bare the thought of other people’s families treasures being thrown away.
My husband who is American has some photos of his family going back generations, not many, photography was an expensive business going back seventy odd years and not something many black Americans could afford, but there are some and they are amazing. The oldest photo my Granny has is a typical studio portrait taken in London to send home to Jamaica, to show how ‘well’ she was doing. And although it is a lovely photograph, it makes me so sad that she can’t show us photos of herself as a little girl, where she used to live, or her mother.
Photographs are such important records of family and social history and so many migrants end up sacrificing these physical reflections of their times past, of their kin’s facial expressions, of families body language, of relationships and their people, in pursuit of a new lives. This leaves us, the ones who benefited from these sacrifices, us our ancestors wildest dreams as familiar strangers from our mothers land and kin, to whom are related but disconnected from. Print your photos people, they may not mean much to you now but I’m pretty sure in thirty years time you’ll wish you had some old photo albums to look through with the youngest members of the family.
Poetry you say?
I have been asked by Renard Press to be a judge in their new poetry competition. I know!
Well over a year ago I was driving through the Blackwall Tunnel on my way back from St Leonards (ah the old days when you could do that) and I heard Roger Robinson read On Nurses. I cried the rest of the way home. Then I found Jackie Kay CBE, Scots Makar, the national poet laureate of Scotland and cried some more. And I’ve been reading poetry ever since, absorbing the stories, rhythm and activism with such joy. When even a short story is too long a read I’ve found poetry to be the perfect escape in these crazy times and I’ve found there are so many wonderful living and working class poets and they are really easy to find online. Being asked to be one of the judges for the competition is such an honour. I’m not ready to write any poetry but I love reading it, being challenged and being moved by it.
New Beginnings is a poetry competition seeking to celebrate the same theme; New Beginnings. It’s open to all those who feel their voice was silenced in 2020 – and to anyone in the world, of any age. The competition closes for entries on Friday 21st May 2021. The longlist will be announced on Friday 25th June 2021. You can find all the details on how to enter here.
That’s me, I hope you are OK? I’ve a short story to submit to an anthology this week, let me tell you self doubt is setting in but what can I do? Regardless of what I think of the story I will be submitting it on Saturday and then getting back to work on my novel.
With love and laughter,
Denise