Climate Change Kwansabas by Sai Murray, Selina Nwulu and Zena Edwards
Introduction
This collection takes race and climate as its central theme. In looking globally at who is most affected by climate change, we see that those disproportionately affected are countries within the global south, people from the majority world who directly rely on the land or the sea for their food and survival. We consider how climate change impacts diaspora communities and how ongoing inequality and historical legacies of colonialism have led to migration and dislocation from ancestral lands. Our collection seeks to engage with dialogues about climate change that take into account the criminalisation of Black communities.
A note on the form:
Kwansabas are an African American verse form developed in honour of Kwanzaa - a seven day celebration of the African-American family encompassing African-American heritage, culture and principles. The Kwansaba, (swahili kwan – first fruit / saba – principle) adopts the number seven from Kwanzaa’s Nguzo Saba (seven principles) and is a heptastich (a poem in seven lines) measured by seven words in each line written with no word exceeding seven letters.
Home is a hostile lover by Selina Nwulu
Remember
Remember when our Delta waters were clean? How we washed our faces in rivers And chased fish with our bare hands? Remember before Delta had its throat slit And bled its oily pipes into soil, When we hummed words into the water And it would laugh and sing back?
Noose
We are burning alive in this village The oil pipes spew open like bowels And stain our home land with curses Our mouths have become coated in oil Drops make liquid nooses round our necks, Our words buried and left for remains We will never speak the same again
Eaten
Look how obese the ocean has become Its waves ingest my fertile land vicious And devours my home to its bones The ocean leaves its off-cuts when sated I am left a half lit emblem Tell me, where does one turn to when their home becomes a hostile lover?
Sinking
They’re all sinking in the Mediterranean sea Our borders have become dense and long And their ships have burst into splints The sea is bloated with people’s limbs Their memories did not make it either They’re all sinking in the Mediterranean sea Watch how the bubbles float and pop
Funeral
Does my alarm clock wake me or The night mares? I often cannot tell Both remind me of a lonely funeral I share a room with strangers, we Breathe in damp and each other’s lungs We are wheezes who will not complain We are still sinking on dry land
Future
I work long to send money home They are sure of the future here At home everything is on quick sand So we speak in the present tense For home is an exposed nerve, waiting I work long here, saving my money Hoping to send the future back home
Danger
You tell me to save the planet to reduce my carbon foot print, buy local and to turn my lights off My foot prints are not wanted here I buy but you think I steal I’m afraid of what darkness might bring You speak like I don’t know danger
Spring in November by Sai Murray
5/11
Bonfire Night. A man hanged, drawn, quartrd. Yet beyond council fences, flames flicker still. This desire. This fire. Within. It burns. Treason trumps torture. Famous anon. take streets A million White masks. Black face unity. Can we turn? Hunt out witches’ wisdom? Seek council with shaman? Lest we forget
9/11
From Guy’s London torture Tower blood flows Colours Israeli Red Sea, clots the Atlntic. Nine eleven. Not Pnochet, not Opium wars, Great War. Heroic death. Brave butchry. Sacred. Pin Vctoria to chests and sing victory. Are these Afghan poppies? Made in China? Or is this drug a British export?
10/11
Black death spawns a White saviour virus Locusts take air, buzz over brown mouths A bread basket is branded basket case Feed the world with helplss needy Africns Do They know it’s thirty-four shoppng days until Xmas? Give Us your fcking money How much a pith helmet Space suit?
10/11
Flying above our planet you may pause How fragile. Where are the borders? Walls? Shudder. Someone has left the gas on. Are those candles for the Ogoni nine? An eternal smogged flame for Saro Wiwa? Bonfire fury night and day where maps are drawn. Protest hung. And village quartrd.
19/11
Back to earth for student sun rise Black history strides strong from October This term, we face race, qstion ugenics Reject their choice cuts, favour ital diets. High pressure sweeps in from the south to reduce recycle replant our server farms. Cold front here to stay. Kettles boil.
25/11
Steam release across Ocean. Sgrgatd city burns. Nothing to see here in post racial society. Black Out this bleak Friday. Buy nothing Mammon clutches mama’s throat. Hands up. Off. Thick smoke revrses the choke hold. Cough. Tears stream. Levees break. In these storms a chance to remembr who we are.
When Earth Speaks Through Flesh by Zena Edwards
And there she is again, vulnerable and brave Body out in the open. Open season. For good reason, light ablaze in her eye She kneels not for absolution but freedom Before growling armoury like dogs closing in. She stands her ground untiring, her flesh Soft, communicating hard resistance, no supplication.She carves a silhouette: don’t shoot! She kneels On the white front lines for revolution Time is no obstacle to her thinking A future imagined for her children, reclaiming dignity of her forbears waking stolen limbs Of lineage, threaded through the black tar. She is feminist activist now because her skin brims
With sharecropper songs pulled from the belly of a nutritious homeland ripe with First Nation ancient pueblo* song that echoed across plains, when prairies were free and mustang grazed When buffalo hoof pounded the grasses fleeing the hunt. There, when enough was enough, And the earth would yield in reciprocation to ritual prayer
Offerings in tune with natures seasonal reincarnation Here was activism rich as the land was lush Here before violence was planted with each seed watered with the wails of human misery and toil The black African, woman, man-made mule Under musket, bible, eugenics, profit, cotton bale Cane and whip, welts and scarring deep
as the future name Ferguson. The season Is ripe with familiar fruit, black bodies plucked from their potential, sucked by hate Spirit succoured by fallen ancestors. Arms open To lightening strike, none but Ogun’s* embrace Will vanish this Oshun* beauty in high-tops And jeans. Clear is her focus. Clean
is her heart like a purified forest after conflagrations of fury, flaring after murder Staring in the face of state armour She kneels in protest before steel and hate Buoyant upon centuries of crescendoing warrior roars of the genocided. The climate is hot: Fermenting prejudice, ripe rot, riot shields. Hot!
Clouds sting her eyes, tears smear, diluting Her fear. Unreal courage where she kneels She, vigilant dissident, in orbit for justice on a land she has walked centuries before She seems ephemeral, blurring reality, wooing bullets That will not taste her blood today. Kneel! Her body told her. Raise your hands Girl!
Praise those knees and hands, Sister!
*Pueblo songs - complex songs of First Nation peoples of the Americas Ogun - Yoruba Orisha , warrior deity of metal, lightening. Often wrathful. Oshun - Yoruba Orisha, deity of Love, Beauty and Diplomacy
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