I See Clearer With My Eyes Closed - Empoword Slough | Curated by Desree | Illustrated by Abeer Kiani

F oreword

Empoword, our adventure in spoken word, is almost ten years old. The roots of this anthology are in our Saturday sessions in the YES Shop, tucked away in the shopping centre. Sometimes, when listening to the poets, I shut my eyes to shut out the extraneous, and to really focus on the words of the poets and their meaning. This is why the line in Bevell’s piece felt such a fitting title for this collection - because it feels witty and contradictory but also fundamentally true. Visually, we can be overwhelmed, scrolling through endless timelines and headlines, and the images we see can be duplicitous or photoshopped to tell half-truths. In these words, in this collection, we can shut our eyes to everything but the words on the page and the truths they share.

It is in this sharing that people truly come together, and the power of poetry as a conduit for greater understanding across our community has always been so important to us. In a world of polarising visions it has never been more important to heal divisions by listening and opening our minds.

Thank you to all the poets who have shared their work so generously. Thank you to Desree for helping to elicit their words in the first place via her workshops, and then caring for them with such diligence and determination - the hallmarks of her work. Thank you to Abeer, for the powerful imagery, beautifying and elevating this anthology. Finally, thank you to Arts Council England for enabling us to do this work and for all your support for Empoword.

Rob Deeks CEO, Together As One (Aik Saath)

Writing is a strange one isn’t it? Some people do it for the joy, others as a job. At times words fall out of you, or you can spend days, or months, or years trying to find the right singular word to fully encapsulate what you mean. It’s hard, and it’s joyful. It’s frustrating, and it’s triumphant. It’s lonely, and it’s communal.

And for some reason, we still do it. When the pen runs out of ink, and or the ideas have stopped inviting themselves over, we keep going. Which communities, like Empoword, help foster. It is in writing together, that gives us the hope to go and and get more ink and the courage to invite new ideas around. I am so grateful for all the spaces where community lives and breeds, the places where I can help construct the ideas of others, and the places other people construct me.

People assume writing is lonely, but it shouldn’t be. It should be an act of community, a togetherness that permeates through the solitary, that grows and strengthens us.

So here it is. Our ode to writing, to dedication, to community. We were so lucky to have so many submissions for this zine and even luckier to be able to publish some of them. I am so excited for you to read this anthology and take in the amazingly beautiful illustrations of Abeer Kiani, a friend of Empoword and a wildly talented designer, who saw the words of these poems as images.

It is impossible to talk about community without honouring Christina Brooks. The work, strength, and power she gave to the community of Slough is everlasting and lives in the spirit of everyone who had the honour of being nurtured by her. Through us, the work continues.

This is for Christina.

Artist In Residence / EPF Project Lead

C ontents

The Anatomy of an Activist

after Cynthia Dewi Oka

The activist body wears the face of big ideas often nicknamed loud opinions by people she wished would be quiet.

The activist body thinks in threes, of lists, of goals, of dreams.

The activist body is a melting chocolate mug of creativity, strength, quiet confidence, courage, and the loudest joy in the room.

The activist body often plays the role of therapist by accident.

The activist body needs purpose the same way she breaths oxygen. She thinks she was told she will “make the world a better place” so many times that she did.

The activist body doesn’t know when she started to care, nor does she know how to stop.

The activist body is a ray of light from the sun and is the sun.

The activist body is the sun peaking over the horizon and the horizon.

The activist body is the horizon rising in a waking sky. The activist body is the sky.

The activist body believes the only route to joy is impact, is generosity of time, is passion for purpose, rallying for movements for change, for without movement we are still, without change of the seasons we are static and stuck in Winter, and what do we have if not evolution.

What does the activist body evolve into?

“For Christina”

Her eyes hold you still like headlights

Like a pied piper telling tales to pull you in She is not a small woman

She spans an ocean

Feet on two islands from A to U

Gifting her glory

She builds spaces

For people to be, to speak

To grow ever more mighty

She speaks gratitude casually, but with meaning When praised she giggles like a little girl

Like an apple tree

By her fruit you shall know her Not one of them is meek

Her arms are welcoming, gathering in Yet still she wonders if she can build a legacy.

Morgan Parker did you know... after Morgan Parker

The scent of rain is actually our nostrils smelling earth helped by humidity moisture making way for new dimensions of sense and I wonder sometimes who I’d be if this wasn’t the life I was living who my mother would have me be I know things about the boy 3 hours in the future awful things and beautiful ones too things that make the boy living every self I’ve been these last 575 days with me both an echo and a heartbeat tender precious in need of protecting and the things I know the ones that repulse me about a future in the conditional tense make me see him more human than an entity more real than idea and that is a good thing but my God the repulsion at all this humanness all these sides we tuck and smooth and what does that say about my own humanity?

Trust is a pair of shoes

They need to be worn in. Uncomfortable when cheap Essential in a pair.

They take a lot of sweat. When it’s new there can be blisters Comfort comes after work even when in step. The soul can wear thin But you patch the holes to keep out the rain.

Trust is a pair of shoes, a protection

Two shoelaces entwined Dependable, together.

Clearer With Eyes Closed

Sometimes I see clearer with my eyes closed

Sometimes a bird, sometimes the times when I walk this road one heavily travelled

One travels so much that the grass has turned to dust

And I see footprints made by bare feet

Each and every one of them unique

But I continue on this journey to trace the outlines of my feet

Because my feet have their own story to tell and this is chapter one

The activist body is a ray of light from the sun and is the sun. The activist body is the sun peaking over the horizon and the horizon.

The activist body is the horizon rising in a waking sky.

The activist body is the sky.

Road Trip Tales

Pine supplants clean car scent the plastic dashboard and serpentine road are swallowed by dense forest.

We’ve exhausted all chat comfortably listen to Slovenian songs making up meanings in our heads.

From behind the wheel M suddenly says tell me a story there’s a rock in my throat I make excuses worried my imagination won’t live up to his but with gentle persuasion

I start by making notes build a plot try to embody characters.

As I begin to speak we drive past couples relaxing sipping bottles of red liquid I swear I see fangs. We approach Bled the ominous castle dominates the lake secrets emanate. I whisper of a boy held hostage an unknown skin condition sensitive to light forced to drink red lumpy fluid before his captor abruptly dies.

We pass a newsagents picture the boy hiding under an umbrella from the sun reading headlines of nearby killings putting two and two together. The car swerves

M fights his stare back to the journey ahead.

My mouth is dry from talking no longer doubting my words we drive by the town fountains imagine its magic water saving the boy vampire from murder.

M’s mouth is as wide as clouds when hearing the boys friends are talking foxes who relate to the unnecessary loss feeding from the fountain instead of eating rabbits.

The township soon hears of the outcasts new outlook all habitants of Bled live harmoniously with the lowest crime rate in decades.

We marvel at how a fountain can turn monsters and vermin into neighbours as we pull into the drive of what feels like home.

I will put on my brave face / my Braveheart face / my blue face / my howling dog face / my fox face / my cougar face / my cliff face / cliff-hanger face / my keep calm & carry on face / my Live, Laugh, Love face / my rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle face / my ‘no-makeup makeup’ face / my stay up forever face / my hangover face / my betterlaughoryou’llcry face / my resting bitch face / my overhang face / my stone face / my rock face / my best foot forward face / my silently falling off a precipice face.

Gal Dem

Back a yard, hands smooth cocoa butter over leg. Lightbulb refracts in the shaft of gold dancing down your shin.

Prepped, you saunter in sharp shock of pink, juicy fruit flashing through pearly whites. Chicken Shop box, suspended: Blue bag lit from within, leaking oil and spices like blessings, a bossting.

The sun anoints you, uplifts you when prowling en masse, on road hunters of opportunity; The restless, wild youth.

a shrimp’s heart is

in its head–

i think you may be a shrimp

my head against your chest nothing but

whoosh in my ears beat against your ribcage

kuchisabishii is eating to stave off the longing of my lonely mouth

i crunch through a hundred hearts battered lightly

supernova

everyone dies. even the stars and the trees, the centipede. everyone dies. your inner child how it lit up a room never got a ceremony when it reached the tomb but you inherited the melancholy it left behind. everyone dies. like the party the laughter movement eventually becomes still. everyone dies. ideas though, they grow

Digital Devolution

Bustling darkness, roaring silence, all faces are aglow

Gliding past, without a look, their legs know where to go Eyes down, left then right, seemingly do not blink Iris contracts, the surrounding white, now shades of pink

The world’s secrets and answers are in the palm of a hand Memories, discoveries and dreams only they can understand And even when it’s time to stop and let the body rest

Lying down, hand still swipes, decides which post is best Stop it now, put it down, breathe in life-giving air

Don’t even look, don’t even think, don’t even have a care

The world hurts, it shouts, it pulls, it won’t ever let you be

Here you can be anything you want, here you are totally free Online there is love and listeners and it is purely bliss

I wonder, if I post this now, how many likes I can get for this?

Head filled with water

Ocean iris to drown in Pain is a liquid

Vignette

I see you soft focus blurry vignette of woman

dallying with desire

nipped by crisp air fresh and fragrant from youth and growth looking through eyes fuelled by fire and fury, softened by the tongues of forgiveness venomous and vivid jagged and smooth, on the pyre and lighting the fire a moving antithesis of person. You move amongst lillies follow moonlight, press roses, consume stories and secrets and feel sedated at the burden of bearing them. You peer through the portals, and then you jump in, teetering on the precipice, and then in the deep end.

Floundering and floundering, looking for something to hold on to, you let yourself sink, knowing you’ll emerge, when the time is right again.

Grandchildren

My eight grandchildren are like wine bottles in my rack

Four boys are red, and four girls are white wine – but then again, they can all be rosé.

Sometimes they sparkle, sometimes mellow, sometimes full-bodied, sometimes sour.

Meeting one and embracing is like opening a bottle and hearing the cork pop.

They give so much pleasure but are so unpredictable

So I take some sips and reckon to come back for more as they all mature.

I can’t stand the rain a

saturated sestina

I’m not sure when you started exclusively using ‘I’ or when, for you the words do, don’t, can, can’t all became interchangeable. But I can no longer stand how now time nibbles incessantly at the nape of my neck, like you did when nothing smelt like rain.

I often wonder if you remember that winter, it didn’t rain, not outside anyway. Inside was laden with damp and I tried to remove the mould you didn’t want to open the windows. I’m not sure when you started using can’t or why the dark became the only place I could stand.

That winter we didn’t bother getting a coat stand we piled our jackets on top of chairs. There was no rain. no shops for miles, our feet weighed heavy on the dry leaves. Forced them, unwilling into the stark mud and I pretended you had not heard me whisper to you, I can’t.

Our hibernation became compulsory winter can’t last forever and neither would this The cold punched the tip of my nose like you did rain refused its sprint to the ground every time I stand I think of how the trees would growl at me. I can never explain why I didn’t leave why I kept the door open hoping for warmth The truth is I’ve never liked the cold or having to stand outside listening to my teeth applaud each other ‘can’t you hear me wish for rain’ all winter I did I wished for rain.

My mother my mother, deserves an effigy

Here lies a lifetime’s worth of potential: bundled into memories and clothes and bodies, made and worn and made again. Cutting a figure, aloof and brooding at first; irreverent, on closer inspection. She dabs a trickle of ochre here, a droplet of violet there, an array of pearlescent speckles throughout and anoints herself with a luster of oil. The coating, a gift, sealing in the depth and light of space: the wonder of exploration. Instead, all I have is this poem. These words and this screen. This body and this voice. This life, to gift the world - give herwhat she deserved.

or the felled moss-covered wood commemorating a life lived or lost. By its crinkling fog, or the crispness of its shadow.

1 2

1

Reluctantly, the rain makes space for death. Out of phantom limbs, flesh grows from knife wounds. The stench of greying wind lash against weathered stone. When great trees fall fruit grows within them.

2

a type of mythological spirit or demon in the folklore of some Caribbean countries. an alternative name for a mushroom in some Caribbean countries

3

Taken from When Great Trees Fall by Maya Angelou (I Shall Not Be Moved, 1990, Random House)

Th e world’s secrets and ans w ers are in the palm of a h a nd Me m ories, discoveries and dr e a ms only theycan unde r s t and

When I speak to you

I am nothing

No labels needed

Undefined by the world

I have no boundaries

I do not bite my tongue

My words unfettered

Not assumed to be cruel or wrong

When you call me, I am home

No longer adrift in the world

You just know

When you see me

You smile

And hand me cheese and onion crisps

If I have only you

I know I am loved.

C ontri B utors

Aditi Banerjee is a 17 year-old youth activist and spoken word artist. She is a top 100 winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2021, selected from over 14,000 entries worldwide. Aditi has performed poetry at a FTSE 100 Company and on multiple YouTube and Instagram livestreams. She created the opening video and accompanying poem to introduce the ‘UK Youth Inspiring Hope Awards’ and has written over 200 poems on the web’s largest poetry site: AllPoetry. Her work is published in a zine, and is featured in the ‘Global Poetry Project’, a gift to the United Nations.

eljae’s writing has broached different topics on loving and building and making ourselves, our relationships, and each other. Published in collections and magazines (Azza fi Hawak, Sawti Zine, The Colour of Madness, and Propel Magazine), she has also been commissioned and featured across different platforms (Dispatch FMI, Publicis Groupe Ltd, Poetry and Shaah, Boomerang, Pen Ting, and Vocals and Verses). Eljae is presently focused on rest, recuperation, and how she can bring more of this into her poetic practice, and welcomes your suggestions for this over good cake.

K.G. Munro is an author and poet. She has been published in Oddball Magazine, Poetry Potion, Scarlet Dragonfly Journal, Muddy River Review, Splendeur Magazine, The Agape Review, and many others.

Vivian Nicolas is a long-term supporter of Together as One and Empoword. The most senior contributor but has a lot to learn from both groups.

Lalah-Simone Springer is a poet and speculative fiction writer from Dagenham. (she/they). Lalah’s first poetry collection, An Aviary of Common Birds will be published by Broken Sleep Books in August 2023. In 2022, they released the first single from their upcoming collaborative spoken word album, Cyclical Music. Lalah was long-listed for the Merky New Writers Prize in 2021 and has been published on the ANTHEMS podcast, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Onyx Magazine and more. Previous collaborations as a performance artist have been staged at The Barbican, Whitechapel Gallery, Folkstone Fringe and Almanac Project Space.

Diamond Bevell is an extremely talented impromptu spoken word artist and poet. His message to the world is “you are not alone”. Lots of his inspiration comes from the world around him that he sees.

Spoken Word Artist / Music Producer | Sound Engineer

Camille McCawley’s debut pamphlet An Odd Gift was published by Bearded Badger Publishing in 2021. Her poetry has featured in Ink Sweat & Tears, Bent Key Publishing’s Bloody Hell zine, For Women

Who Roar, No Jobs in the Arts zine, Us Versus Virus anthology. She has been commissioned by Apples & Snakes and has supported spoken word legends Joelle Taylor and Matt Abbott.

Sonia Burns is an East Midlands based poet, workshop facilitator and community worker. Her debut chapbook, Umbra:philia, was published in November 2021 by the Derbyshire based Bearded Badger Publishing Company with the support of Arts Council England funding. Her work has appeared most recently in the Ink, Sweat & Tears webzine.

Gaby Koenig - Librarian without a library, sometime poet.

Sophie Lau is a freelance writer and educator (and generally vibing polyglot!). She writes various non-fiction bits and bobs and recently completed a poetry residency with Metal New Artist Network as well as a non-fiction residency with Bothy Project. Sophie also designs and facilitates creative translation/poetry workshops in and out with secondary schools alongside her work as a languages tutor. In her free time, she enjoys hanging out with her dogs, Doughnut and Tiny; solo-travelling with her film camera in hand; and watching Korean variety shows!

Anita Frances Warburton is a 43-year-old local mum of two children. She has written poetry since she was a teenager. Anita really enjoys writing short stories and monologues too and has had her monologues performed in the theatre.

S.H.Latif is a poet from Slough. She started writing poetry as a teenager, sharing her pieces online at first and then in 2015 joined Empoword. With influences from Gothic literature and Romantic poetry she hopes to acquaint tradition with modern life in her writing. Being in her early 20s, Saleha uses poetry to help navigate her experiences; in sharing them she finds catharsis and hopes you do too.

Desree is an award-winning spoken word artist, writer and facilitator based in London and Slough. Currently Artist in Residence for poetry collective EMPOWORD, Desree explores intersectionality, justice and social commentary. Poet In Residence for Glastonbury Festival 2022, producer, and TEDx speaker, Desree has featured across the UK and internationally, including Sofar Sounds, Royal Albert Hall and Bowery Poetry - New York. Following the sell-out of her first self-published pamphlet I Find My Strength In Simple Things (2017), Burning Eye Books published the pamphlet in May 2021. For more info: www.iamdesree.co.uk

Presented by Empoword, with the support of Arts Council England, I See Clearer With My Eyes Closed is an anthology of poems submitted by old and new friends of Empoword. In response to Empoword’s free workshop series Write Away , that began in January 2023, this anthology is an ode to the craft and dedication of writing.