Creativity is non-acceptance, wonder, rebellion
He tells me the long story of trying to cross the border, of looking to buy a life jacket to cross the river at 4am but then changing plans at the last minute because there were gangs there extorting or kidnapping. He's been trying to cross the border for three years, and he will try... Continue Reading →
We Lived Happily during the War And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but not enough. I was in my bed, around my bed America was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house— I took a chair outside and watched the sun. In the sixth... Continue Reading →
Farrah Akbik is a British-Syrian poet based in London who writes to raise awareness of the hardships Syria and Syrian refugees are going through. Al Sham (*another name for Damascus) I want to lay my head in the lap of Ghouta, Dull my senses with pomegranate wine. Drift like Ophelia down the river Barada, Lose... Continue Reading →
Warsan Shire's poems are angry and they argue and rage and weep. As fighting poems should. A British poet, born to Somali parents in Kenya, Shire's poems have been read at rallies, and in homes and not-so-homes. She writes about people who are made invisible in society - often refugees, migrants, and other marginalised groups.... Continue Reading →
Right-wing cartoonist Bill Leak died recently. He had portrayed same-sex marriage campaigners wearing rainbow-coloured Nazi uniforms, Aboriginal fathers as neglectful and more. He also won nine Walkley awards and 20 Stanley awards, eight gold Cartoonists of the Year, and was twice the winner of News Corps' award for best cartoonist. Aussie same-sex marriage campaigner, and brilliant... Continue Reading →
Olka Baldeh dedicated this poem to Orange Face. She's calling her series of poems "Love Letters to Donald Trump".
little singing birds are diving into the fire the smell of burning bird of suicided song is mistaken for a dark day in Australia overcast skies, the weather reader reports (Hodan Yasin and Omid Masoumali, young refugees from Somalia and Iran and detained by Australia, set themselves on fire within a week of each other)... Continue Reading →
Refugees are talked about, judged, imprisoned, abused (to their face, in racist gatherings, in the hoards of naive and nasty social media comments) but rarely heard from. They have the most to tell about their experiences and migration policy. Their opinions and dreamings about life, politics, and humanity are important. Here, thanks to The Refugee... Continue Reading →
Well, I think home spat me out, the blackouts and curfews like tongue against loose tooth. God, do you know how difficult it is, to talk about the day your own city dragged you by the hair, past the old prison, past the school gates, past the burning torsos erected on poles like flags? When... Continue Reading →
resistance words 