Mission Statement
My poetry is the practice of expressing the human condition as if one were an alien.
Remarking with curiosity and wonder, like I've never lived before now.
The words never quite fit- or fit too well, unearthing the connective tissue that exists between it all.
I feel most me
When I write poetry
(How twee)
An outsider
Experiencing everything anew
February 2021
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Let me show you (abridged)
What I mean
What this means
Let me speak to you
In poetry
My natural tongue
Away from the boxes
Of essays grammar boredom
Let me contradict myself
Intervene into my own argument
Leave spaces in
Line breaks
Words unsaid
Thoughts unfinished
Meaning is contingent
I trust you to know me yourself Warwick
I hope you create beauty
From the words I channel to you
In a work where I
I is not Ky
I is more Ky than they have ever been
And still I is not Ky
Let me show you what I mean
And create something new
Like we have a home in these lines
Like we trust each other
Like we can see each other
Without boxes
(...)
I cannot show you what education means
Creatively or critically
It is a box
It is breaking the box
It is what lies beneath the box
Education defies definition
All that is solid melts into air
So forget definitions
But explore them anyway
Nothing matters
Everything matters
Find joy in the freefall
Imagine Sisyphus happy
Imagine yourself happy
Your education is different to mine
I hope you learn to learn
Love
I guess I’m not trying to show you
More ask
Can you feel me
Can you touch me
Can you see me through the boxes?
For ten weeks I have learned to sense you
I hope that you accept my vulnerability
My beating heart
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I don’t really do recordings of poetry (sorry for the really low-tech setup), I much prefer spoken word live but hope this is enjoyable to someone
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A prayer for pockets
Dear you
Who lives in this world
I have something to share
Please hear my
Inside this hellish world
Made to break us
I have found me
I have found mine
When I let myself break
And cry aloud
Never hidden
But publicly
When I know I deserve better
And so does everyone else
Together
I have learned to use my voice
Become intimate with its cadence
Whispered or projected
I have a voice
I can tell you now that
I am Ky
I am a multitude and I am beautiful
Because I write poetry
To make art out of an ache
Because when I shout
University House will shake
Because I am joyfully loud
When I call and respond with a crowd
Me and mine are fighters
They have embraced welcomed educated me in the ways
Of survival as struggle
And struggle as a promise
That things don't have to be like this
Because something inside always knows
You deserve better
We deserve better
As we struggle for better
My friendly fighters are beautifully alive
Some are soft and bake cookies
They nourish us
Some write words like a knife
But hold you when they speak
Some are simply there
Always there no matter what
Some are angry and tired
And show you how to just have fun
Some know the unspoken things
So to trusted ones in secret rooms they
Explain how to report, or get support, or comport
Yourself in a sticky situation
There are pockets
In which heaven hides
Full of love
Voices heard
Decisions made radically
At the root
Democratically
Unlinked from capital
Power made visible and challenged
Liberatory for all oppressed people
Or at least it’s trying
It isn’t perfect
But it’s trying
We’re trying
You can find heaven
If you know what to search for
And heaven trusts you
To love
To love enough to be kind
To love enough to build something better
To love enough to join the fight
Yes, this is hell
But my friends are in it with me
Even some of my academics too
But we’re making moves
Creating spaces, seeking changes
For this hell to be a little bit more heavenly
Maybe one day we’ll remake the whole place
Change every system all the structures
I’m sceptical but can hope
I can hope but don't bullshit to me
So tell me
Tell me we’re not free
And you don't know if we'll ever be
But we'll try our best
Tell me you believe we should be free
Tell me we'll fight together to be free
And maybe in your actions
I can let myself believe you
Tell me that we must act as if we are free
And maybe oh gods maybe
Because of us
One day someone can be free
Until then
Even in the most hellish of places
I promise you
My dear you
There are pockets
Of life
Real life
Consider me a flare
Transient
Not the main event
But bright and bold enough
Calling you home to a heaven
Tell me you've dared to dream
We can be free
May 2019
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Ode for the Wakeful
My university is utopia.
Look at our facilities, they’re
State of the art.
Well, at least for everyone but Humanities,
But what more do they need?
So long as the art kids have the basics, they’re fine.
I know better, and study Engineering.
I’ve got a job lined up for me
At Jaguar Land Rover
Because I have studied tirelessly.
I love my degree
And my university is utopia.
Even when it’s exam season--
And I haven’t slept properly for days
Constantly preparing
For a project, or exam,
Or when I took my society on a night out
And didn’t get back home from Pop
Until 4am--
There’s so much to do,
I’m still having fun.
See the destress pups
And street food on the piazza,
All here to cheer me up.
I love my degree
And my university is utopia.
I graduated with a First
And I know it was all worth it
As I stand in my new clothes
Beaming to my mum
From onstage.
We haven’t talked in months,
Me and mum,
I’ve been so busy
But I know she’s proud of me now
For pushing through all those sleepless nights
And doing everything I need to, no matter how.
I love my degree
And my university is utopia.
My course has finished,
I’ve even got a summer internship from it,
In fact, I have an inexhaustible list of opportunities.
And
I c a n ’ t s l e e p .
By day you’d see a zombie on the job,
By night an untiring wanderer
Through the halls of my house.
My mum worries, bless her heart:
What’s wrong?
When did this start?
I love my degree
And my university is utopia.
My university is utopia
For insomniacs.
I paid so much to study
I felt guilty for sleeping.
Sleep no more
I have murdered sleep,
Learned to walk
While dead
Without rest or remorse
Always walking-- working?
But if you ask me about Warwick
The words still spring out
Through fatigue, unthinkingly:
I̴̛̳ ̴̗̀l̸̯͑ȍ̴̤v̷͍͊e̸͓̅ ̸͈́m̴̮͂y̵̨̓ ̸̜̃d̶́͜e̴̺̋g̵͔̿r̴̤͛e̶̝͋e̶͓͐
A̷̜̚n̷͎̑d̶͇̈ ̵̗͋ḿ̸̞y̸͖̽ ̵̻̉u̶̦̇ṋ̵̒i̷͉͛v̴̰̾e̴͈͝ṙ̶̹s̶̙̒i̷̬̿t̸̩̂y̵̥͋ ̷͔̐i̴͙͒ș̷͗ ̸̥͌u̵̯̇t̴͈̽o̴̻͌p̶̗̐i̶̭͌a̴̪͆ .̴͚̀
May 2019
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How can I
Learn
Be educated
Become knowledgeable
Of anything except the pressing screams
Of my sisters
The bathrooms warn me
Of inevitable betrayal
How to deal with a date gone wrong
Ask Angela
Because we know
A date will go wrong
It must
And we can only rely on staff in student bars
Because we cannot trust men
And the uni’s systems let us down
Will next there be a sink for
Blood from young wrists
Installed too?
How am I to show up
Sit down
And listen to anything
But the testament spoken loud and true
Our university
I am restless for justice and
Giroux, hooks, Foucault- can wait a while
I don’t know or care if they’d mind
If I miss classes
From a fever induced by
Mould in a cheap student house
And organising harder than I ever have before
Will I fail my degree
Would I miss out
Or am I learning
Exactly what this university has to teach me
That girls suffer
They carry the burden of experience and resistance
And that poor girls
Girls who aren’t really girls
Girls whose skin marks them out
Girls who like girls
Girls whose movement and thought is different
Girls will always be there through thick and thin
The girls I know are the most solid of them all
The girls I know are sisters in solidarity
I learn to struggle and survive and fight back
We’re feminists
We’re loud
We make our sisters proud
It turns out
I am learning
Everyday something new
Something I did not think was learning
Do you know my black friends
Avoid campus security at night
And their breakdowns
May warrant cops being called
I learn to ache for my friends
Who live a life of colour
Vibrant but
Marked out
Who are tired in ways I cannot imagine
Of learning to be apart from themselves
Who see only
White faces
On pale pages
We need liberation
Decolonise our education
So much to fight for
And energy too
But so much reason for fear
I learn
Privilege
I can fight the uni
Only because I feel safe
In the knowledge I can cry
And they will see a white woman’s tears
Even if I’m not a woman
I can still pretend
Cause my womanhood, innocence
Is not automatically under threat
So I’ll probably be okay
But gods
I want to be free
I want everyone to be free
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all
26 black female professors in the UK
There are only
26 black women employed as professors in this country
But
What is queer life without
Throwing bricks
What is feminism without
Intersectional justice
What is the world without
The subaltern speaking
What can I say for an education
If it has been bleached to death
Learn unlearn
Unpick unpack
Undo Undermine
Privilege
This uni cannot educate me
To become
Power’s enemy within
Something more than ally
I must learn so one day
I can be called
Co-conspirator
When it only cares about rewards
Cookies for diversity
When it is still violent
Because the violence never ends
In the library
I learn too
I learn they will never listen
Men and Women's Toilets
I splutter
The task force queer students fought with
For more years than I can count
Queer students have fought
And they couldn't even get the signage right
I learn I cannot even pee
Without being political
There is no rest for the freaks
Monster-gender
Pronouns ‘it’ and ‘spit’
Who they’d rather stay at home
Or better yet
Didn’t inconvenience them
With such awkward existence
Just disappear
Never have been there
Vanish without a trace
But we’re here
We’re queer
Nothing can make us
Disappear
Well then dear Warwick
In the words of a dear friend
I will piss all over this uni
The ground is fertile for
Genderqueer rebellion
Feminist insurrection
Anti-racist uprising
Disabled revolt
Mad riot
They tried to bury us
They didn’t know we were seeds
I want to learn
Collaboration
As I become so much more than myself
No one is free
Until everyone is free
More than me
Past the limits of self
There’s a brave new world
That’s raging inside of me
I have learned to swallow this uni
And spit it back out
Fuck it
May 2019
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The flow of capital
I weave between their bodies
Rushing
Here there
Away towards
Always busy never stopping
To notice the stream they wade through
The stream ever flowing
Which has created everything
Cities are built on rivers
This is my home
My ideal
I am unchallenged
Unchallengeable
Sitting in too-small rooms
Mouths open
And water rushes out
Every action here is watery
And speech that is not
In the language of the flow
Is a curse
An incentive
To drown the heretic
The one born of earth
I must
Convert
Seep past their skin
Into their flesh
Through organ and bone
To become the blood of their veins
Life force
This flow is life
Resistance is
Deathly
But possible
But secret
I am always
Making remaking reifying myself
Until all here are aquatic
Countless bodies of water
With no land in sight
Covering the ground
Most do not see
Me
Because they have already seen me
Everywhere else in their lives
Half aquatic
How would they see the water
When it is what they
Breathe
They drown
Water is not meant for human lungs
But the ones
The ones not constantly surrounded by
A flow
Notice the water at their ankles
Rising
Quickly
Would they resist
I am the melted ice bergs
Their tears nourish me
I am plentiful
I am their pain
I will flood all of earth
My name is
Capital, Terror of the World
May 2019
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No more/ Flowers (IV)
I told you that you were the sea,
A wave of water forever crashing over/into me,
And that I was the land,
The earth, solid, ever-present,
And that you could nourish me.
But my love
You
Have been absent,
And when you were here it was
So fleeting that I have
Cried over you more days
Than I care to describe.
But
All the tears I have shed
Are watering flowers
I have found them
Growing in my heart
Flowers
That only I can
See and smell and touch
And maybe taste
Even hear
Flowers I have been
Watering for years
Flowers without thorns
Flowers for my love
Flowers for me
You weren't the sea,
You were just a person;
A person I loved
Of flesh and bone-
And oh so full of flaws.
It's true
I am too
But in me
I have found
Wonders
Unimaginable
I am the land and the sea
And the river and grass
And everything in between
I am maybe even the heavens too
I make myself happy
December 2018
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And so on, the sea (III)
Let me let me let me listen to your ebb and flow,
I'll not complain that stepping into your great expanse still makes some wounds itch
Because they're long healed and no longer at risk-
And I've forgiven you, so I'll dip into your deep pool.
I don't need to be with you all the time,
In fact time away makes you all the more pleasant to my mind,
But I can't deny that I loved that proximity,
When you were never too far, and I could run into you
When life got too hot to bear.
And dear watery mass, this summer has scorched my body of flesh and land,
Return to me again, flood the plains and thunder down and crash over/ into me.
The desert needs its rain,
And the rain should always return:
I know you'll always come back-
Unless our world is dying-
In which case please return
For one final storm
Before earth gets too warm.
You may go but I
I will always be,
And I'll miss you.
October 2018
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Nobody can heal you but you (II)
Oh we had the most wonderful night together but now they won't reply.
Sound familiar? Of course it does, you know the story- you've been the story.
What's wrong?
What went wrong?
What did I do wrong?
Why am I wrong?
We shift the blame onto ourselves because the idea that their attempt to heal us, broke us?
It's too much.
But would you believe we didn't have sex?
Would you believe our clothes were firmly on and
Our lips didn't touch and there was no spark of lust and
We didn't go to anyone's room and
All night we addressed each other strictly platonically?
Would you believe that if we had had sex, that night would have
Hurt me less-
Would have meant less?
Because I've had a love for them for
Oh so many months and I don't know what to do about it.
I've picked at my skin to try and reveal
The goodness inside me, to show that my inner qualities
Are desirable, but all you saw was
Blood rising from my arm.
I've stitched myself back up and promised that
My insides deserve to be protected from
The likes of you, but every time I
Looked at you and you smiled, my stitches came undone.
And when we laughed together, well I think they
Flew apart entirely, leaving me with just my
Open wound and puncture marks.
But I would always sew myself together again because
That's what is to be done. And it hurt but it was done.
Again and again, and it was done.
Then one night, I think you thought you would heal me.
You told me "I love you pal" and we stayed together for hours:
Your hands were along my back, around my shoulders, in my hair, on my neck-
And running beside my wounds.
I think you thought you had healed me-
I think I thought so too.
But instead, like water to an open wound,
You made me bleed again. All my
Hidden traits flooded out, dying to meet your touch
After so long wanting, aching to be with you.
But when the water stops, and the soothing
Flow of your presence left, your handiwork was exposed-
I had been rubbed raw, every wound leaking of 'me',
And this time I did not want to put myself together again.
After this I wanted you more, to show you more of
What I had to offer, to bleed myself dry and offer up what I had to give.
But you weren't a vampire, and I think you didn't know what to do
Now that you found hadn't healed me.
I forgive you.
Nobody can heal me but me. I am
My own disinfectant, healing cream, needle and thread.
You were a wave of water,
Soothing but never meant to be permanent,
A hazard from continuous exposure,
A force of nature that only cast me astray,
but I wanted to drown in you.
I forgive me.
Nobody can heal you but you and that's okay.
This isn't some bullshit like
No one can love you until you love yourself-
I know that's false because I love you and I don't think
You love yourself. This isn't a claim that you don't deserve help,
Because darling you do deserve help and support and friendship and aid.
This is me saying that you should pick up your disinfectant,
For it will sting but will make sure the wound is clean.
You should take your healing cream, and cover over
That which pains you most.
You should hold onto your needle, sometimes the way to heal yourself
Is to hurt yourself again.
You should find your thread, and close up
That which was open.
This is me knowing that you didn't mean to hurt me,
This is me knowing I will hurt myself again,
This is me taking up my healing tools and setting to work.
August 2017
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Fluid/ Desire (I)
I rushed along a body of rock,
And gushed over a break from norm.
I've dripped over the edges and become
One with the land
We used to know.
Filling up crevices and
Making landscapes lush.
A hush falls and I am still,
But only to your displeasure;
Make me move.
Passion ebbs and flows,
But you are solid, and
Taught me balance.
Hold onto me,
But not so tight I slip away.
September 2015
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What is Queer?
Gay 1 told me to ‘settle down, our lot can get married now so (I) should
Stop complaining- and while (I’m) at it, get a job and stop dyeing (my) hair weird colours.’
I gulp down my imperative to scream at his condescending tone, and walk away.
To be Queer is to be looked down upon, but to know one’s value and try to be better.
And the teacher stuck in the 70s hasn’t realised yes, I can study Queer Theory at university
-And even as a word itself, it is one I treasure:
Can he not tell I’m not slurring it across a room like his other student did just last week?
Just as the grassroots informed the naming of our theory of life,
The tensions of which branch of non-normative identity one takes up
Is present in its constituents too. But Gay 1 runs our Gay Straight Alliance,
And important politics are formed in the process of making a capital-a Ally so I play nice.
It seems the Allies want to join the acronym too now,
And the Lesbians and Gays are in pieces over how respectable they should be today.
Being an Ally isn’t Queer, sorry, we say, but they never wanted to be Queer anyway.
Being Queer means knowing that co-operating is sometimes useful to the movement,
But that ultimately your aims are totally disparate, and it is more useful to
Find a group on the margins too for totally different reasons
And find where the struggle does overlap- and in the space it doesn’t create mutual aid.
Grinding my teeth in the fifth meeting this week- with staff, or my own constituent students
That tell me, maybe I’m too militant for liberation and should focus on
Going to the raising of the flag at University House instead.
Queers look to total liberation, that is tied up in the liberation of everyone else too
So we will demonstrate: against racism, to end the thinly veiled neo-colonialist war-
For any cause that drives humanity towards a utopia, no matter how useless
Such an endeavour feels. To be Queer is to actively oppose harmful structures.
No, this does still not make Allies Queer. Show me their action extending past
A GSA meeting, into the streets for us and others, or to their homes- their bedrooms.
Point to how they Queer their movement through the world.
Could a Heterosexual person be Queer? Queer 2 replies, ‘maybe if they are Trans.’
While I do agree, being Transgender is as much a way into Queerness as being
Attracted to multiple genders, the implied definition for Queer (as told by Queer 3)
Is simply non-normative gender and orientation, nothing more and nothing less.
We are a politics against purity, but did you see the same logic of
LGBTQUIAP+ (and endless formations even less useful than that)
Shining through? This is not who we are meant to be, damn it!
Let’s Queer the pitch and challenge these outdated lines of gatekeeping. What of the
Ethically non-monogamous? What of those who practice kink and have
Non-normative sex? What makes their variety of relationships not Queer?
What even is Queer? It has dead bodies in itself, but birth and celebration too.
And I know that the cisgender heterosexuals in those communities
Are still prone to shouting abuse or laughing at us or denying us access:
I am adamant. Those ones Queer nothing. But some still do.
Consider the limited parental rights of those categories, or the working opportunities.
Sexual violence is laughed at when other pain is consensual. There are powers at play
When a BDSM scene creates a culture of consent stronger than its vanilla counterparts
And when non-monogamy undermines the premises of an efficient nuclear family.
At my first social, I am told to use a fake name, and call the one I am under protection of
‘Amy’. The name stumbles across my lips but it is for our protection, no one can know she
Studies … No one can know I’d teach if I could one day.
Is anything solidly Queer? Queer is a verb, I am Queer because of how I choose to
Act in my life. I am Queer when my sex(uality)/ relationships/ gender undermine
That which is the norm. When I struggle in solidarity and revolt against the logic of this world.
Gay 1, or Lesbian 4 are not Queer because they uphold this Straight hegemony.
Queer is anti-capitalist, so join me on the streets in the march to Grenfell,
Or smash your way to the top of Millbank
Or mask up for when Mark Duggan…
The Queer cannot beg to be ‘like everyone else’, with a normal family and marriage,
Or ask to join the army and kill some brown (queer) people for their country.
We are a set of demands alight in a Molotov Cocktail- and if our flame makes the sparkliest rainbow,
Then so be it. Queer is a potential found across gender and orientations, embrace it.
In a room full of the closest friends, she admits that maybe she too is a bit
Queer, a bit genderqueer, that these norms do not fit her either, but she is afraid
To come out- to family yes, but to the community of letters who should judge her not enough.
I am not a subcategory of anything or anyone, not even the Gay and Lesbian group.
Queer means so much more than a simple identity, it is a statement of intent,
A set of demands and constant striving to have made oneself who we needed as children.
We are the eternal collective of Dykes, Fags, Trannies- and above all else- filthy Queers.
And we are here, we will eternally fuck this shit up in the name of glorious revolution-
My beautiful body that pleasingly straddles binary gender and sex is its own small
Revolution. It is yet more beautiful when the binaries dissolve under the weight of
A gender pluralism that recognises gender’s present importance but eventual death.
To kill gender and sexuality and leave only pleasure and people is our aim, for now we fight-
February 2018
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