Welcome to With Love Grief and Fury!
Thank you to you, my first followers and subscribers. Here is a place I want to sporadically and occasionally share words, work in progress, notes on writing process, some poetry, memoir, stories, notes and news from the 4am Writing Club . . .
So let’s start here, I am sharing a recording of a poem ‘My Heart Is A Boat’ — I just realised I can share audio here, so I’m going to start this substack journey with this poem and memory from June 2023. I was so honoured to be invited by Trevor Nelson to perform and write a piece for the Windrush 75 concert last summer.
I remember I was nervous about it as I knew I wanted to write something new for it. I was not sure where to begin to try to capture this moment in history and experience, and my own feelings about Windrush, about heritage and ancestry, migration, colonialism and empire into one poem to be broadcast on the BBC and performed to peers and elders on such a big stage. I went deep into the themes of this poem and the process. I knew right away that I wanted to fill the Royal Albert Hall with salt, with truth, with the ocean, with timelessness and with the memory and weight of ocean water and our conversation with it.
I wanted to share in that united feeling that we are not all in the same boat, and that so many of us came here by boat, and that many are still arriving by boat, and how we are all connected in blood and saltwater. I wanted to celebrate that we share the same time in history, that we share an ancient resilience and courage.
As some of you know I am currently writing a second Mrs Death Misses Death novel, and so this was setting the tone for me and leaking into my writing. As I wrote this poem I was visualising and dreaming of Mrs Death and her sister Life, filling the Albert Hall with ocean, with ancestors and ghosts, with loss and grief, and with BIGlove, ONE Love.
I intentionally chose to write a rhythmic flowing poem with rhyming verses, as I often have done for show pieces, for protest poetry, for poetry that is to be performed to large crowds and poetry I want to perform to music. Every time I started writing this, I kept writing rhyming verses and coming back to this last verse from another earlier short poem 'No Holds Barred' (published in Pessimism is for Lightweights) and so this became my starting point and here was where I found my chorus and title:
my heart is a boat
my ancestors longships
my grandmothers Windrush
the rubber dinghies sunk without trace
As I performed the piece, we filled the Albert Hall with sea water by playing loops of the ocean crashing to shore, the stage was washed in beautiful watery blue and green and golden lights. There was an undercurrent, a low bass line played by the Chineke Orchestra, Chris Cameron was the musical director, I was so grateful for their help to pull this together and make this vision come true. I kept laughing and singing:
"Now we know how many seas it takes to fill the Albert Hall"
Finally I should mention this: when I received the invitation to do this gig I asked to have a kimono made by artist Diane Goldie with a shimmering picture of ‘Queen Nanny’ on the back. I stood proud on stage wearing this stunning art kimono decorated with Jamaican hibiscus and hummingbirds. I had Queen Nanny on my back: Nanny of the Maroons. Rebel Queen. She who fought for the freedom for 1000’s of enslaved peoples and led a revolution against the tyranny of colonialism and the slave trade.
“If you know your history, then you will know where I am coming from..”
I thank Diane so much for making this spectacular piece for me, for this show, for the poetry, for this heart, I always wear this one very special kimono with pride and with love. Thank you. With the rebel Queen Nanny of the Maroons on my back and my Jamaican grandmothers beads around my throat, I felt like anything I didn’t get into the poetry was empowered and represented in this way visually and spiritually.
So, this was a dream gig. The piece ends with the whole audience slowly singing my heart is a boat, my heart is a boat with me. I won't ever forget the sense of unity. As poets we dream to be invited to share truth and hope, to be who we are and dance with our elders and ancestors and share our bright fierce souls and shine our heart out. Sending thanks to everyone, to all the legends and heroes on stage and back stage and to the warm audiences that one night in Royal Albert Hall and at home as it was broadcast on BBC Radio 2. Thanks to the ancestors that got us all here.
Keep sailing, your heart is a boat,
Thank you,
sgxx
— ‘My heart Is A Boat’ is published in full in ‘With Love, Grief and Fury’ by Canongate Books on 2 May 2024, preorders for both the hardback edition and audio book read by author are available now, hit these links…
ps: This is my first ever substack post, I am going to press send now but have no idea if this is a blog post or a note or an email or a what-what, please do let me know if you can see it and if you like this sort of thing … Have a lovely weekend! Thank you!
My Heart Is A Boat