In Conversation with Queen Mary University
In 2020 we were selected by Queen Mary University London Arts and Culture to take part in ‘Queen Mary Conversations: Conceiving Change through Artistic and Academic Public Engagement’. The project commissioned 27 exchanges between artists and academics, bringing the gap between the cultural and academic sector in the hope to gain new insight through the exchange of knowledge.
Our Associate Artist, the poet, rapper and actor Arji Manuelpillai engaged in conversation with Dr Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram, Senior Lecturer in World Cinema at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film. The result of their conversation was the poem ‘before you are a refugee’ by Arji and an academic response by Dr Devasundaram (download here). Below Arji reads his poem and reflects on the conversation and process that produced it.
Before you are a refugee after Danez Smith by
Arji Manuelpillai
Download a text version of the poem here.
It has been a real pleasure to work with Kazzum Arts and Queen Mary’s University on this project. It was such an open, and thus a creative process which can be broken into three major stages for me.
The first was speaking with Ashwin Devasundaram, a senior lecturer at the Queen Mary’s. The conversation’s direction was left largely open but Ashwin and I to develop and that proved so fruitful. Through Zoom we were fortunate enough to share an hour and a half of insight. We spent the majority of the time speaking about migration. How it affected us and our families. What it meant to be a migrant, and how we can make social change through our artistic mediums. The particular interest for me, is attempting to change the focus of conversations connected to migration, to have that focus not be obsessed with tragedy but instead with the culture and history that migrants arrive and live with. I was surprised at how quickly the time flew by, it felt somewhat rare to have two South Asians with an interest in art in the same space at the same time.
When I finally sat down to write I reflected largely on two major works. One was the film ‘I am no longer here’ available currently on Netflix. A story about a Mexican immigrant moving to New York. The story is a refugee story but doesn’t really have that as the focus. The focus was the protagonists love for dance and music. I loved that idea as a concept and so I started to think about all the young migrants I work with through Kazzum Arts. How many of their histories can I really comprehend? How many of their stories do I really know? I’m not talking about hardships, I’m not talking about the war and suffering, I’m talking about the history and culture that make them who they are. I’m talking about the music, the dance, the literature, the things they used to do on a Sunday night with their friends, the laughing, the joking. We as practitioners spend so much time focussing on the negatives in these young people’s lives, we forget that there is often many other parts that make up a young person’s life. I realised quickly that I knew little to nothing about the culture in their lives. I wanted to create a piece to capture the stuff outside of the war and persecution. The things we never hear about.
When thinking about being radical, we often think of rioting and speaking out at huge rallies, or smashing up an advert we disagree with, but sometimes radical acts can be tiny, minuscule and seemingly non-confrontational. I often turn to the poet Danez Smith. Their latest book ‘Homie’ creates a new narrative for gay love which is radical in its own right. One particular poem ‘Acknowledgments’ is my favourite in the book. It is my favourite because it feels the most powerfully radical without any form of protest or violence in the writing. The act of writing about gay love and creating a space for that without any thought of violence or awkwardness is such a profoundly beautiful thing. I urge you to go have a look yourself. In the poem Danez swings some unbelievably specific detail, drawing on his own ancestry, as well as touching on some of the difficulties they face being gay but the majority orbits around his shared love with his partner. My favourite of all of them is ‘i call your mama mama’ for its subtle but particular detail. If you look closely at the piece you may realise that Danez is talking about multiple partners, he is thus pulling together the acknowledgements of all the relationships he’s had. But I loved the simplicity of the lines. I wanted to create a narrative using this idea, and see where it would lead me.
I wanted to try to stay away from gender and try to leave it firmly open to reflection, though ‘drag’ suggests otherwise I try not to mention sex in the poem itself. I wanted to also draw on themes and feelings that were relatable to everyone. I knew I wanted the ending to have a feeling of two people parting ways so I worked a few references to build up to that. I wanted to undermine the violence of those lines with humour. I think this captures a very human response to tragedy. I remember being in Sri Lanka after the Tsunami and being surprised at how quickly people were cracking jokes about the carnage. It’s a coping mechanism and it is something I wanted to build into the poem. Finally, I came to the last line. I wanted it to be open, the idea that no one knows where he ended up, or whether he is even alive.
Overall, this project has been an absolute joy. In a time of Tory statistics and a need for artists to prove their worth, I feel honoured to be given the opportunity to speak to a fellow South Asian about an issue that is central to the future of the world. I hope you enjoy the poem as much as I loved writing it.
http://www.outspokenldn.com/shop/muttonrolls
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4323594/ - ‘I am no longer here’ trailer.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/148357/acknowledgments - Danez’s poem Acknowledgments.