My new poem, about football: “The best bruises”.

June 18, 2013 Football, Poetry No comments

I played a game of football once.

It was on the furthest field from my college;

To get there,

You had to walk off the edge of the map of the town.

Of the eleven men on their team that day,

I only remember one:

A centre-back, his ankles thick as my neck,

Thighs twice as wide as mine,

His flesh the faintest shade,

Like two drops of blood in a pint of milk.

Squat and broad, topped off with a scalp bearing rusted grass,

He had a careful fury about him;

After each challenge,

He slowly, thoughtfully wiped his right boot on the grass,

A butcher cleaning his cleaver.

He carved at me many times,

But found little meat into which he could cut deep,

My legs being two shivering stalks of black bamboo.

Maybe I feared him,

But I was lured back always

By the promise of those fifteen yards between his heels and his goalkeeper,

The most exciting patch of land in sport.

Late in the game, which we were leading by now,

I finally found myself there,

Surging into the headwind, my ambition stronger,

Tearing beyond that last, fatigued slash of his limbs,

Then rolling the ball low, firm and decisive.

My team-mates gathered around me like brothers,

And their smiles meant as much as a father’s.

Later, I limped slowly home,

Proudly bearing the best bruises

I had ever earned.

Charles Saatchi and the language of deflection

June 18, 2013 Culture, Society 2 comments

Note: This post was inspired by “Silence and Violence”, a TEDx talk by Jackson Katz, Ph. D, in which he drew attention to a compelling feminist analysis of how society often uses language to diminish the importance of men’s violence against women.  Very helpfully shared on Twitter by @RoughEstateDate, it is excellent viewing, and well worth nineteen minutes of your time.    

 

Charles Saatchi has accepted a caution for his conduct in a London restaurant, where a photographer took pictures of him holding his wife Nigella Lawson by the throat.  His acceptance of caution was an admission that he had committed assault.  He also issued a statement which, though brief, I found of particular interest.  It read as follows:

“Although Nigella made no complaint, I volunteered to go to Charing Cross station and take a police caution after a discussion with my lawyer because I thought it was better than the alternative of this hanging over all of us for months.”

Though a short piece of text, I think that it contains a great deal of interesting detail, and I will swiftly take its two elements in turn.

  1. “Although Nigella made no complaint” – The implication here is that the incident was not of sufficient seriousness for his own wife to register it formally with police.  However, his own acceptance of a caution contradicts that implication.  By coming forward in this way, he has tacitly acknowledged the grave nature of his actions.
  2. “I volunteered to go to Charing Cross station and take a police caution…because I thought it was better than the alternative of this hanging over all of us for months.” – This is framed as if an act of altruism, and not limitation of damage to his own reputation.  The language here – “hanging over us [my italics] – ” is of note.  He could just as easily be talking about an accusation levelled against his family as a whole.  However, there is nothing hanging over him and his wife: it is his act which led to the caution, and she is not complicit in it.  There is nothing hanging over her except public sympathy; on the other hand, what hangs over him is the finger of guilt and reproach.  In using this language, he seems to be trying to sidle out of an uncomfortable spotlight.

Nowhere in this statement is there an expression of regret.  Perhaps this is something that he feels that he should express in private, and is not a subject for public discussion.  In any event, his words give the impression of someone who is not wholly contrite, but who rather is trying to deflect attention from the very serious nature of what he did.

A problematic discussion of Saatchi

June 17, 2013 Uncategorized No comments

The photographs of Charles Saatchi with his hands to Nigella Lawson’s throat were, in his own words, “horrific”; though he was quick to state that they “give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place.”  His subsequent explanation of this altercation with his wife as “a playful tiff”, when taken together with his own admission that she was in tears, lacks credence.  What is also problematic, though, is how this incident was treated by Mr. Roy Greenslade in The Guardian; and it has implications, I think, for how the media treat their coverage of alleged acts of domestic violence.

Mr. Greenslade’s article is primarily concerned with the media’s behaviour, condemning their “rush to judgement” upon seeing the pictures.   Yet Mr. Greenslade has rushed to a judgement of his own, stating – without foundation – that following this incident “the couple went on living happily together afterwards”. [My italics]  There is no evidence for this assertion, which implies that whatever happened was summarily shrugged off in the following days.  It is simply presented as fact.

This assertion is problematic, if not dangerous.  It can have the effect of brushing what looks to be a very serious incident under the carpet; and, ironically, is a textbook example of how the media should not have responded to the emergence of these photographs.

New poem, “The Wilderness”, on dealing with loss

June 12, 2013 Uncategorized No comments

I go to the wilderness -

Where the loneliness, and the stillness is:
I go to the wilderness,
Where the knives end, and the silence begins:
I go to the wilderness,
Just me and my suffering, I’m filled with it:
I go to the wilderness -
It’s there that I recover
The will to live, where I recharge,
Let new wounds quietly subside to scars:
I’m here at the wilderness, the verge
Where lives drift by, and I observe;
Here I shield my heart from the worst,
Then, once healed, to the world return.

To J. Cole: an open letter from a faggot

June 7, 2013 Music, Society No comments

Dear Mr. Cole,

I have just listened with interest to the first track, “Villuminati” from your new Born Sinner album; and my attention was caught most not by the excellent beat or your finely-tuned flow, but by a couple of lyrics early in the song. They were these:

“My verbal AK slay faggots and I don’t mean not disrespect
Whenever I say faggot, okay faggot? Huh, don’t be so sensitive
If you want to get fucked in the ass
That’s between you and whoever else’s dick it is, pause
Maybe that line was too far
Just a little joke to show how homophobic you are
And who can blame ya?”

Well, let’s take this line by line.

• The first thing is that I’m not sure that you mean no disrespect. Calling for my slaying, whether metaphorically or otherwise, isn’t the most cordial of greetings.

• There’s also the issue of the word “faggot”, which when said in such an apparently aggressive fashion as this is pretty much the same as a racist cop calling me “nigger”.

• There then follows a blanket assumption about what gay men do in bed. Of course, an ignorant heterosexual man’s analysis of gay sex between two men is about as welcome as a woolly sweater in a steam room, but thank you for giving us your two cents. Actually – wait. No thank you. No thank you at all. Please close our bedroom door, we didn’t ask you to open it.

• It’s a strange claim that, by drawing attention to your prejudice, I myself am prejudiced: “Just a little joke to show how homophobic you are”. I would also suggest that, when you have more than 3.8million Twitter followers as you currently do, then such a “little joke” is not in fact so little, and that’s why I am responding to it.

Mr. Cole, two things are almost entirely certain about this letter to you. The first is that you will not read it. The second is that you will not care. As a result, I have decided to write it merely for the record. The truth is, of course, that two gay men having sex is absolutely no threat to your career. What is a far greater threat to your career, at present, is the pressure to produce outstanding material in the lull helpfully provided by the absence of Jay Electronica. That should be the greatest focus of your attention.

It’s early days to say so, but your views on gay men may do some damage to your legacy. Of course, two of the reasons that you enjoy the platform you currently do in the USA – “a young black man with a college degree” – are James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin, two great human beings who knew a thing or two about the word “legacy”. They were both gay black men, and their names ring through the ages. Time will tell if yours does the same.

Regards,
Musa Okwonga

Poem: “What’s In A Name?”, with The King’s Will

June 7, 2013 Uncategorized No comments

I wrote this short poem, which Giles Hayter made into a track with The King’s Will, for a BBC Radio 4 documentary about names and the effect that they have on our lives. I hope you enjoy it.

“What’s In A Name?”

What’s in a name? -
There’s lots in my name:
Three African syllables tossed in my name:
Many refugees fleeing gunshots in my name -
One father, to us long lost, in my name…
Some people frown when they jot down my name:
And often the spelling is botched of my name -
I forgive them. Its rhythm was born not on this plain
But one where the sun soothes the crops with its rays.
We have achieved lots with my name:
There are poets, musicians, doctors with my name:
A name some find odd, but I bear not with shame
But as proudly as some wear a cross on a chain.

On drones: “Monotony”

June 6, 2013 Poetry 2 comments

This is our monotony:
They bring the most hateful of rainfalls,
And don’t make apologies:
They send storms from the jaws of a drone
To slay those who’d take the USA off its throne -
So each day, we’re preparing for rain;
For these drops not of water
But rage;
Wait –
All you’ll hear is the hum as they’re closing
A teenaged male isn’t safe in the open –
So we’ve taught them to run,
Our daughters and sons –
Taught them something most terrible:
That here in Yemen, it is never wise
To gaze up and daydream into our own skies:
This is -
The only way, we are told;
That’s not so bad as it goes:
No:
Shattered bone,
Shattered hope,
Shattered homes,
We all raise our eyes at the drones -
And so:
In many decades, our youth will explain
Why, when about town, they still walk with necks craned

Rod Liddle, “black savages”, and Louise Mensch

May 30, 2013 Culture, Race, Society No comments

So I need to write this quickly, for two reasons. The first is that my blood is up, and the second is that I am swiftly moving beyond a deadline for an article that is currently lying open and sorrowfully untended elsewhere on my laptop. But back to the first reason. My blood is up.

My blood is up because of an article recently published by Louise Mensch, in which she stated that people should not rise to Rod Liddle’s Spectator comment, since redacted, about the “black savages” who killed Lee Rigby at Woolwich. Her thoughts were that we should not “feed the trolls”.

In her article Mensch recommends practical action to dismantle these structural prejudices that people face, as opposed to getting wound up by the deliberately provocative pronouncements – or “race-baiting”, as she correctly calls it – by columnists such as Rod Liddle. I see her point, but – with the greatest respect – I disagree. I am stating the staggeringly obvious here, but it is possible both to challenge phrases immediately such as “black savages” and to do the hard, long-term work of changing perceptions that she recommends in her article.

For what it’s worth, I used to believe, like Louise Mensch, that we should “not feed the trolls”. Thing is, though, that these trolls aren’t hiding under some digital bridge on Twitter with an egg avatar and only a handful of followers. They are being published regularly by some of our country’s most influential media outlets. That’s a pretty big megaphone.

When bile such as “black savages” is sent unchecked into the atmosphere, it poisons the air. In this context, after all, “black savages” suggests that beneath the thin veneer of the apparently civilised Western-born black male lurks an irredeemably violent thug, and that all it takes is the right triggers to unleash him. That is precisely the same thinking upon which imperial attitudes were, and indeed still are, proudly based.

Rod Liddle is absolutely entitled to such views. What I find more interesting, as I tweeted the other day, is the platforms from which he is continually commissioned to project them. He once edited BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. He came very close to editing The Independent. These are two of the most prestigious jobs in journalism. His success is worrying evidence that it is possible to retain proudly the prejudice that he espouses and still reach the very peaks of his profession.

Now I’ve calmed down and I fear, for the second time in a few paragraphs, that I am stating the staggeringly obvious. So I’ll try to wrap this up soon. It’s like this: a young man gets hacked to death in Woolwich. Rod Liddle then uses this utterly horrific event to peddle appalling racial stereotypes. That’s not a good look in any shape or form. In fact, it actually makes the work of people like Louise Mensch harder, because it reinforces the same attitudes that, in her article, she is committed to challenge.

That’s it, really. I need to get back to this other article, which is sitting there in a neglected window and looking even more despondent than before. I don’t think that we are “feeding the trolls” by replying to them and making them acknowledge the wilful ignorance – and, in some cases, overt racism – of their critiques. After all, judging by the prestigious positions that they hold in the media, they are pretty well fed already.

“Beckham”: a poem

May 17, 2013 Football, Poetry, Sport No comments

With the news of David Beckham’s retirement, here’s my new poem, “Beckham”; I’m recording it for the BBC World Service, to be broadcast on the morning of Saturday 18 May.

Beckham.
He went from a football man
To a global brand;
From Manchester United,
To, maybe, a knighthood;
To get there, he did two things; first he ran, and he ran, and he ran;
And secondly, he made a weapon of his right foot.
If you were a target on which its red dot was placed
Then not until you’d marched back seventy yards
Were you safe.
Madrid, LA, Paris, Milan: his career sounded like a catwalk;
He had charm and the national armband,
Was one of the few men that women might cat-call.
His style was
James Bond meets sarong.
As if they were blond curtains,
He brushed aside his harsh critics;
You could trust him to bring home cups
Or free-kicks in last minutes.

BDS, and why manners may be overrated

May 15, 2013 Politics, Society No comments

Lately I have been thinking that maybe manners are overrated.

Yesterday, on Twitter, I was having a vigorous yet polite online debate with someone about the right of same-sex couples to adopt. My opponent was unsure about the wisdom of letting gay people raise children, and wanted to see research that children would not be adversely affected by the experience. I was in the process of patiently deploying my arguments when, all of a sudden, someone else who had become furious at my opponent suddenly interjected.

“Fuck off”, he tweeted.

After a short and angry exchange, their conversation ended, and we returned to ours.

Here’s the thing. I was raised to believe that he who loses his temper loses the argument. But every now and then I’m not so sure. As I continued the debate, it rapidly became clear that my opponent wasn’t as interested as I’d hoped in the empirical data that I was offering him. There was ample and recent research, after all, that gay people can raise kids just as well as straight ones. What my opponent seemed to be doing, in the face of the facts, was expressing his discomfort at the rapid pace of social change. Yes, same-sex marriage was absolutely fine; but same-sex adoption just seemed a bit much, a bit too soon.

In my gut I felt rage at the implication that my sexual orientation, of itself, made me less fitting a parent than someone else. Nevertheless, I chose to argue my case with remorseless logic. However, I am not sure what I achieved. I don’t think that I came remotely close to changing his mind. And I fear that my relatively placid tone may have made him feel that this was merely an energetic disagreement, an abstract matter for elegant after-dinner debating contests. I may, in my own way, have enabled an enduring and casual prejudice.

In the hours that followed, I long wondered whether “Fuck off” is sometimes the most eloquent response. Fury can be a tool for progress. It may not score intellectual points, but it may have a greater value in certain cases: it lets people know in the most visceral way of the daily oppressions and disadvantages that people suffer.

This is why, though I can’t bring myself to embrace the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) campaign against Israel, I can see its power; and, moreover, its value. Temperamentally, I don’t really do boycotts. My instinct is always to engage in conversation, to drive relentlessly towards consensus. After all, at least these sides are interested in meaningful conversation: as opposed to, say, the bloodbath in Syria, or the situation brewing nastily in Bahrain. The problem with my approach, though, is that it presupposes a desire for social progress, as opposed to what increasingly looks like the eternal delaying tactic of vigorous, polite and elegant after-dinner debates.

By contrast, the academic boycott of Israel represents a “Fuck off”. It represents a refusal to deal in any intellectual way with a state that refuses to address adequately the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948. I believe that the longer this refusal continues, the more that the gangrene of anti-Semitism will continue to fester in the wound, taking that land further from a peaceful long-term solution. I have also believed for much of my life that constant engagement in debate is the best way to address this problem. But I look at the urgency with which BDS is being received, at the speed with which it is shaping the public conversation, and increasingly I am not so sure.

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