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Jim Aitken<\/strong> reviews <\/em>Welcome to Britain: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction,\u00a0edited by Ambrose Musiyiwa and\u00a0<\/em>published by CivicLeicester<\/em><\/p>\n In 2019 CivicLeicester published Bollocks to Brexit: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction. <\/em>This was then followed by Black Lives Matter: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction <\/em>in 2020. Last year they published Poetry and Settled Status for All: An Anthology, <\/em>and this year they have brought out the ironically titled Welcome to Britain: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction. <\/em>All anthologies have been edited by the redoubtable Ambrose Musiyiwa.<\/p>\n This most recent anthology is the culmination of all the previous anthologies, in that Brexit gets a fair mention in this new volume, as do the issues of racism, the dreadful way migrants are treated, and the colonial legacy of the UK that remains silent from mainstream political discourse. The failure to address that legacy enables what Munya Radzi, in her penetrating and insightful Introduction to the book, calls \u2018the myths and fictions Britain likes to tell about itself.\u2019 <\/em>This book contests and subverts such myths in equal measure.<\/p>\n From the first piece in the collection by Sandra Agard entitled Welcome to Britain, <\/em>we are reminded exactly what it was like for those of the Windrush generation (now 75 years old!) who arrived here and tried to find a place to live. As the man asks the \u2018bespectacled English woman in a pink pinafore\u2019 if she has a room, he is promptly told \u2018my boarders won\u2019t take to your kind.\u2019<\/p>\n This level of racism has not gone away and that can often be because Britain\u2019s colonial legacy is not addressed or taught. Children across the UK know more about the first half of twentieth century German history than they do about how it was Britannia came to rule the waves. The failure to address this has enabled the racism that accompanied imperialism to fester.<\/p>\n The poem Ola and Victoria<\/em> by Jo Cheadle explains this perfectly as she notices Ola and her son sitting at the base of a statue to Queen Victoria \u2013 \u2018its gilded roots running deep, through the Earth, touching every continent.\u2019 For Robin Daglish in Cruel Britannia<\/em>, \u2018what a horror story the grab for empire was\u2019 and he goes on to say \u2018Black lives have always mattered.\u2019<\/p>\n Brexit, for many, meant feeling unwelcome. The poem Disciplined <\/em>by athina k tells how the poet was made to feel unwelcome during the time of Brexit. She noted \u2018the repression of emotion\u2019 in England and goes on to confess that \u2018My home is here in Brexitland. I feel welcome and unwelcome\u2019 and explains, having learned how to live here, she has herself become \u2018emotionally regulated.\u2019 For Fokhina McDonnell, her take on the Brexit negotiations were farcical as she says in Going Bananas \u2013\u00a0<\/em>\u2018<\/em>Kafka would have been enchanted by a hard border in the Irish Sea.\u2019<\/p>\n The government, of course, never even considered how their proposed Brexit would affect Ireland, a lack of consideration many would say had been going on for over 800 years. McDonnell puts it more succinctly when she says in the same poem \u2018the yahoos are among us yanking us closer and closer to the edge.\u2019 The choice of the word \u2018yanking\u2019 seems appropriate and in Max Terry Fischel\u2019s poem England is a hard place, <\/em>he tells us, \u2018we are nearly America now.\u2019<\/p>\n Rob Lowe, in his poem For The Good of Our Country, <\/em>we are told that \u2018For the good of our country\/We preserve\/ An imagined way of life.\u2019 Such myths continue to abound in a nation that fails to address its history and in Zahira P Latif\u2019s short prose piece The British Way,<\/em> the myth \u2018about a meritocratic British society\u2019 is challenged when a student asks \u2018the white middle-class faculty\u2019 why they were passed over for a job that was given to \u2018a less experienced British white student\u2019 to be condescendingly told, \u2019You must be mistaken, because that is not the British way.\u2019<\/p>\n Natasha Polomski continues this theme of a mythical nation when she laments in Pity the nation \u2013 \u2018<\/em>Pity the nation whose history is silenced\/whose identity is bound up with lies.\u2019 And Trefor Stockwell, in his poem Welcome to This Sceptered Isle, <\/em>addresses this myth pertinently by saying \u2018Sorry, dear migrants, it is such a shame\/But you\u2019ve become pawns in a political game\/Wrong creed, wrong colour, wrong race.\u2019<\/p>\n The Ukraine war is also touched upon. The poem A Flag Dilemma <\/em>by Matteo Preabianca notices that \u2018every garden has a Ukrainian flag\u2019 but there are \u2018no Iraqi or Afghan ones\u2019 on show. Matteo sums the situation up by saying \u2018Welcome Ukrainian refugees! \/But if you\u2019re Black \u2013 please!\u2019 <\/em>While Ambrose Musiyiwa in What a wonderful war, <\/em>says \u2018the energy companies\u2019 are \u2018doing well out of the Ukraine war\u2019, Barrington Gordon noted that during the Ukrainian mass migration at the outset of the war, the trains were \u2018only laid on for Ukrainians\u2019 and not for black people. \u2018Black children,\u2019 he says in Black & White TV Sound Bites: A Colourful War, \u2018<\/em>now know they are not white.\u2019<\/p>\n And in Tom Stockley\u2019s poem Hummus on Matzo<\/em>, he recalls \u2018Aunt Barbara\u2019 telling him that in the Ukrainian town of Chernigov a theatre now \u2018takes the place\/of the old synagogue\/and laughter fills the space\/that fear once knew so well.\u2019 Clearly, there is not one angle only to this dreadful war and Cathryn Iliffe in I Don\u2019t Hate Russians, <\/em>says she \u2018will always salute the battle tattered Red Army flag of victory over fascism.\u2019<\/p>\n Arrogance and racism<\/strong><\/p>\n This anthology is packed full with keen observation and angled comment and it is impossible to mention all the poems and writers \u2013 as I would love to do. I will limit to only a few more writers whose moving poems \u2013 along with all the others \u2013 make this anthology such an important book for our times.<\/p>\n Kimia Etemadi, in her poem Engelest<\/em>\u00e2n, <\/em>addresses the reader directly by saying \u2018You would too\u2019 wish to leave your country if it meant that your six-month-old baby could grow up and \u2018ride a bicycle despite being a girl.\u2019 Sadly, after coming to Britain the baby had now become \u2018seven years old\u2019 and as she rides her bike she is told \u2018by an elderly white woman\u2019: \u2018I don\u2019t know what they do in your country, <\/em>but here\/ you\u2019re NOT ALLOWED to ride on the pavement!<\/p>\n Such an arrogant and racist comment many migrants will have heard along similar lines. Implicit in such comments is the myth of greatness about the host and the barbarism of the newcomer. It is rooted in not just individual ignorance but in a state-sanctioned ignorance that perpetuates the idea of civilised norms while ignoring the historical realities of the state.<\/p>\n Kimia tells us she had to leave Iran \u2018after five years of imprisonment for being a Marxist.\u2019 She did not want to leave but had to leave, the story of the vast majority of migrants at all times. The Irish and Scots can both testify to this.<\/p>\n What was particularly moving about this poem was the arrival of Kimia\u2019s Persian rug \u2018passed from ancestor to descendant.\u2019 The rug represents all the poet had left of her culture and to fit in, to assimilate to her new country she would allow her \u2018English friends\u2019 to keep their footwear on: \u2018Come in. Keep your boots on. It\u2019s fine.\/Drink your tea and just try your best to not think about it.<\/p>\n The custom of taking your shoes off in the home is a good one for all sorts of reasons. The fact that Kimia is now forced \u2018not to think about it\u2019 simply exposes the lack of value, the lack of cultural tradition of those who claim they are blessed with national exceptionalism and have no need to question the cultural traditions of anyone else.<\/p>\n The poems of Elizabeth Uter are written in stanzas of three lines each and these stanzas are packed full of commentary and insight. In Stitch Up <\/em>she refers to the \u2018hostile environment\u2019 prevalent here with BNP and UKIP along with the Reform Party \u2018tea partying\/with strange bedfellows both across the pond, and, in Engaland,\u2019 In \u2018this green, unpleasant land\u2019 she says \u2018black is seen as deviant, not the norm.\u2019 She refuses to be categorised or pigeon-holed and says \u2018if it\u2019s all the same to you I\u2019m not BAME either.\u2019<\/p>\n Uter\u2019s poems not only reveal the nature of the racism prevalent here but also show how she reacts to it and deals with it. She says she will not be \u2018stitched up by the othered song\u2019 for she is \u2018too clever by half to be needled by you, UK.\u2019 Yes to that!<\/p>\n The collection also addresses the nature of a state that is essentially broken economically. Anna Blasiak in How to be an Immigrant<\/em> speaks for all immigrants when she says \u2018Remember that the black mould in the shower\/Comes out to welcome you.\u2019 Monique Guz in Helpline<\/em> talks of \u2018the death rattle of a collapsing system\u2019 and in a memorable line Nicollen Meek, in She\u2019s never had it so good, <\/em>says \u2018The oak of social security\u2019 is now \u2018reduced to a toothpick.\u2019<\/p>\n What myths the UK has about itself are shattered in this anthology. This is a positive thing to have done because it means there is everything to play for, a new country could emerge. A new country where people are not othered, not classified or categorised by their colour or their faith, their race or their sexuality. This timely collection, as Elizabeth Uter so articulately illustrates, reaches \u2018toward each other as we humans are supposed to do.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jim Aitken reviews Welcome to Britain: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction,\u00a0edited by Ambrose Musiyiwa and\u00a0published by CivicLeicester In 2019 CivicLeicester published Bollocks to Brexit: An…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":15411,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}