Madeline Collin, a 24-year-old activist with Gaucher disease, worries that patients like her will suffer deeply if Britain leaves the European Union (EU), as scheduled, at the end of this month. Collin is an expert on the subject. For her University of Bathdissertation, she analyzed Brexit’s long-term impact on the 3.5 million people in England,…
via Brexit Could Have Real Effects for UK Rare Disease Patients, Experts Warn — Ehlers-Danlos News
I have written a number of poems about Theresa May and her policies over the years. This included when I was a women’s worker heavily involved in grassroots and party politics myself and she was Home Secretary. I have grappled with myself many times over my feelings towards her. I analyze and judge myself because she is a visible representation of women in power, still such a rarity in the UK. Two British Prime Ministers have been assigned the same sex at birth as I have, and I’ve not been a fan of either. But, do I, as a longterm equalist and feminist pull her down? My answer, as someone who has been involved in politics and been a women’s worker, is complex.
I have done and will criticize her policies and question her moral compass, often passionately. I have queried her actions and even at times her basic ethics. I get angry when her womanhood is attacked but I wonder if I do it too. I’ve been involved in helping make harassment of women recognized as a hate crime in my county but I wonder where the line is when criticizing someone whose ethos as well as their actions often seem abhorrent to me. Is it different because I am a woman and a feminist? Is it unbiased because my poems question the acts, ethics, and judgments of other politicians across genders, including the leader of the opposition? Or, does the volume and nature of my criticism veil a different or concurrent story? In all the poems I have written there is one controversial line from 2014 I still now wrestle with, but I will come to that.
Poems like Shoes? and The Poisoned Cup and A gender very clearly and firmly explore my anger at criticisms of her as a woman rather than a politician, whilst still raging against her policies and political acts. Too many talk about female politicians’ appearance, which is irrelevant to their politics. This is a kind of bating and belittling no heterosexual man in politics has to contend with. It morphs into analogies of sticking high heels in and other suggestions that certain behaviour is ‘unwomanly’, whatever that is, or because we have no children, or because we do. I’ve lived this toxic bias myself. Told as the only woman on a panel that I was talking too much, asked if I have children or what my husband thinks. Told I should not be standing because I have a man in my life. I was stalked and verbally abused. All this rubbish no politician from any party should have to contend with but they do, and they have to deal with far worse too. A diabetic heavily pregnant woman having to postpone a cesarian to vote in one of the most important parliament ballots in a century. Another pregnant woman receiving death threats for being Jewish. A serving MP stabbed to death. Straight white abled males that make up most of our parliament don’t experience this type of abuse.
I left my own political party citing discrimination, having been involved to some extent at local, regional and national level voluntarily in the years I was a member. No, I didn’t receive death threats or anything so horrific, but I left shaken, unwell and soul-weary, treated as a pariah despite having got some of the party’s best results in the 2015 elections. I was not alone in leaving. The party concerned is not remotely unique in this, but I had ploughed in everything I had and expected fairness for myself and others. All parties have discrimination in their ranks, politics and human society generally is full of it, but it’s what they do about it that counts. I’m not convinced either of the main political parties or many if not all of the smaller ones have yet developed enough self-awareness to tackle the different forms of racism, ableism and, for the main part gender bias within their membership and leaders. Do I have the self-awareness to recognize bias in myself? Perhaps. Hopefully.
I have written a lot of poems about Theresa May; more than any other single politician except perhaps Tony Blair many years ago. I’ve asked myself why and I do sense a bias in me; I think I expect higher morals from her because we have so few visible female leaders and those who would chain us in homogenous misogyny blame her womanhood and so in a way all women for her failures. In this, I have internalized the sexism and must be careful of that. Will it stop me being angry and speaking out against burning injustices. No. Very, very no.
Dear Ministers, Lies in Old Westminster, What the Dickens? and The Big Riot (a political satire) are all pretty scathing about a number of politicians from across the house. There are many others. Yet I am often provoked by my emotions to writing about Theresa May. A large part of this is because she is Prime Minister during a time of steeply rising inequity, homelessness, hunger, and insecurity where acts of terror and racist policies hold hands. She is the Brexit PM and I have strong feelings about Brexit and the lies that warped the referendum and what came after. In The Poisoned Cup I talk about her inheriting an unanswerable problem, but I think she helped create that problem too, long before the rise of calls for Brexit.
I’ve become aware that for me it is personal. When I was an interfaith women’s worker active in politics in squeezed spare time, I saw for myself some of the affects of her Home Office policies. Just one example of this was a wonderful Malawian nurse who had been in this country and active in her community for 14 years snatched off the streets and taken to Yarlswood, where all the guards are white and all those detained are black or minority ethnicity. It was an oppressive place to even visit and they took visitors fingerprints. She was not given vital medicine and was in hospital when we finally managed to get her out. Getting her legal help – even getting clean underwear to her, felt like a battle. This is one of many stories I know, including of a woman, who when 14, having lived in this country since infancy, had to fight to stay. I was and am angry at this.
I feel this, together with David Cameron’s capitulation to other pressures, put in place the foundations for many present ills. The farcical process of Brexit spurred on by, amongst other things, spreading lies about immigration as a smokescreen for the real reasons too many are struggling. The racist policy of exiling citizens of the Windrush generations. The attacks on the wellbeing and security of those whose ill health or disability prevents them from being able to work. The undermining of women’s rights through the disproportionate effects of austerity. The failure to act as pledged in their 2017 election manifesto to handle the burning injustices of our time, including those linked to seriously tackling domestic violence and the exploitation of tenants and workers.
My experiences as a witness in 2014 of Theresa May as Home Secretary has placed her as one of the main authors of our current climate of insecurity. Furthermore, watching her undemocratically limiting parliamentary debating the shape of Brexit for nearly three years while the flames of burning injustices rise across the nation has not gentled my ire. Brexit, to my mind, was always going to be a vicious beast, but her actions are among those that have potentially sharpened its teeth – if it happens. May’s bad deal, created after years of negotiations with the EU but near none with Westminster until the eleventh hour, has put us at greater risk of a disastrous no deal Brexit.
My thoughts on her approach to governance can be found in poems such as Democracy, Goatskin, Alternative Arrangements, Contempt and in the 2014-2015 poems Dear Theresa and Securing A Bitter Future. Of all of them, it is only the last and Madame Dictator in which I question whether I have projected internalized misogynistic undertones. In my heart of hearts, I am ultimately unhappy with only one line in which I suggest she should be hushed up. It is in the context of her pushing a piece of legislation in 2014 that effectively hushed up everyone who had widely different opinions to her own. Legislation that potentially left millions voiceless, including myself and the women in the organizations I was working with. The idea of hushing an outspoken woman up is deeply problematic. Mary Beard, in ‘Women and Power’ draws our attention to the fact that silencing of women in public life has been normalized in art and politics from the times the Classics were written. In this, I am a bad feminist.
Yet, where does my moral compass point when I am talking about someone who was with the non-violent extremism act hushing up others? It is a difficult one. Writing it I was thinking only of her as a politician not as a woman. Yet we live in a gendered society where that will be misused and / or misinterpreted by others. In that particular phrase and that particular poem I used gender-neutral phrasing to help distant it from gender rhetoric but I’m not sure, when the person is such a prominent figure, that this unpicks millennia of ‘hush hate’.
Never-the-less, I counter myself in this internal debate, the mirrored context of the others she was hushing up raged in my mind, with the knowledge I was not about to expect less from her as a politician or not say things, just because of her – and my assigned gender. I think it is telling that I would not choose to reuse the phrase, ever.
I feel Theresa May does actually believe she is doing the best for Britain. I feel more strongly than I have felt most things in my entire life that she is very dangerously wrong and misguided by prejudice, her own or other people’s . I do not believe this is because she was assigned female sex at birth, or because of her clothing choice as a woman. Most certainly May will have had a much tougher journey getting where she is now than her male colleagues and contemporaries. I do recognise that this places pressure on a person but it is no excuse for policies and processes that alienate, disenfranchise and impoverish millions while curbing parliamentary debate until there is no other option. I will not let any person or administration singe democracy for fear of being impartial but I must choose the words I use wisely. Perhaps at times, I think unfairly she should be more astute because so few women have gained her level of influence as well as because the stakes are so high in the present political, social and environmental climate.
My fear and experience of being arbitrarily judged as a woman against a person I feel little affinity with does tint my own assessment of their actions. One woman’s social crimes become, in the eyes of many, the crimes of all women, and so we are taught to judge fellow females more harshly than males. Yes, I’ve written critically about male MPs, No Discrimination, Making Progress? and Johnson & Drones being prime examples. However, I think I’ve ingested some of the shame poured on myself and others assigned the same sex at birth, regardless of how they identify. It is the mechanisms of misogyny, not Theresa May I should be furious at for that. Even when I take this into account, there is plenty to be angry at Theresa May about, but I should be equally angry at others. I am.
Now, to turn that anger into fuel for justice and the only way I can do that is to link it back to the love I have for those people, including myself, that I feel have been put at risk. I must choose my words with both care and fire.
Madame Dictator, have you not heard
Your deal was voted down historically
And yet you resurrect the interred
Proposal repeatedly, delay after delay
Burning our security & democracy away,
Your office not conferred
By any political majority,
You do not listen to a word
From any, except, perhaps, the ERG
Who need an ECG
To find out if they have a heart
Because they seem intent
Only on ripping us apart,
But you, Madame Dictator,
Like a modern Bonaparte
Say you hear
But you do not!
Stirring up terror
By running down the clock,
Perhaps it’s said best by Andy Serkis;
Your attitude to this rambling failure
Akin to Gollum’s with his ‘precious’;
A gold that deserved the fires of Mordor
But instead you throw our futures in
To that furnace, knowing it will make this nation so much poorer
As the homeless line the streets and food bank ques get longer,
And the extremists get stronger
And injustices reign – those you said you’d bring to order
Yet you disengage to build walls of fire at our borders
And, as for climate change …
You focus only on Brexit
But do so without debate
Hushing up all the elected
Tying nation states up in red tape
More than
Two years!
Two years
And more!
In a cabal of your own
Prescribed parameters,
Your negotiations
In closed door deliberations
And perambulations
As you ignite more tensions
With another deadline gone,
I have literally lost count!
Every time you tell the Commons
There will be later debate
Then roll the calendar on;
The dates for meaningful votes
Eternally postponed,
Except that historic one
Where the deal was trodden on,
The same deal you resuscitate,
All the while that lie ‘secure and stable’
When there’s nothing on the table
And security service cutbacks
Coincide with terror attacks
And there is legislation against
Generations told to go back
To the commonwealth after decades of life and work in the UK,
So, just because they are black
You citizens to go away,
And now, will more Europeans face the same?
I visited Yalswood, while you were Home Secretary,
Children and women fearing their fate,
Caucasian guards, all black and ethnic minority
Detainees – I thought, mine is a racist state,
My friend was denied vital medicine
They took my prints before I could go in
The package of essentials I left
Was only passed on after five days,
She had to fight for legal representation,
Hers not an uncommon story,
I’ve known others, one girl just fourteen,
Britishness part of her identity –
Her humanity you refused to see,
How dare you, in self-righteous glory
Proclaim you understand democracy
If you can’t see their lives matter!
Now,
Your promises in tatters;
When you said you’d listen,
See how skilfully you didn’t,
Your cabinet found in contempt
Of our disjointed constitution,
This is wrong! The is so very wrong!
This is becoming authoritarian
And very, very, very dark!
You have polluted
“Safe and Secure”
“Meaningful”
“Democracy”
“Listening”
“Vote” –
All convoluted
By you
Until the words stick in my throat –
And you call this your mission;
To re- enforce your indecent proposition
After the worst historical democratic defeat in the entire history of any Westminster government!
All you are reinforcing are the fault lines of division,
And, for the record, I’m not impressed by Corbyn
So, please don’t read this as propaganda
For a weakly lead, anti-Semitic opposition,
Though I will state I’m firmly left of centre
This is less about sides and more concerned
With the slide towards totalitarianism,
Only idiots will say it is because you’re a woman,
Though they do, pouring on scorn
For all the agelessly wrong reasons,
As they try to make you dance,
Or comment on your complexion,
In this alone I come to your defence
Yet my complaints could fill a lexicon
From your term feeding hate in the Home Office
Displaying a personal distaste towards migration
To this cutting off of deliberation in Parliament,
It’s not gender defining each subverted action
So, I will not hold back because I’m a feminist;
I will call you Madame Dictator,
A title not up for discussion
Unless you decide to govern better
And return the dignities you’ve taken.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
I shared a Britain Europeans could call home
In the four decades my skin was called my own,
One day I’ll tell our Islands’ descendants
I shared a Britain Europeans could call home,
Before the dice of jeopardy was thrown
And all that amity was gone and done
In the four decades my skin was called my own,
I shared a Britain Europeans could call home.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
This is the second Triolet I’ve written in as many days, inspired by a challenge set by a wonderful poet whose diverse work can be seen at https://reowr.com/ . My first triolet was 48 Percent Life, which is perhaps a better poem structurally than my second attempt at this form, but I’m enjoying this particular type of poem.
You say you’ve had enough;
This is a storm in a teacup
But we are the teacup, my love.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
into the loaded silence, I write
all about a 48 percent life,
while the globe spins on a knife
into the loaded silence, I write
as i watch, gross injustices ignite
my body immobile, thoughts in flight
into the loaded silence, I write
all about a 48 percent life.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
Hello All,
Hoping your year started peacefully. I started 2019 listening to ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance‘ by Irving Berlin, sung by the great Nat King Cole. The song for me captures the spirit of making merry no matter what troubles may be ahead and finding joy in life and love. I was not feeling well earlier in the evening – I have complex disabilities and chronic health conditions – but by the time we saw the fireworks from our open bedroom window and read out Tennison, I was warm and hopeful. The story about how we ended up reading the classic ‘Ring Out, Wild Bells‘ is shared in a new poem I wrote the next day. It centers on the story of a woman honouring a beautiful tradition her mother kept.
I’ve submitted this poem together with one other and three art pieces into an International Mental Health & Wellbeing ‘Postcard’ Show. Another poem of hope is written today:
A January Sunday morning,
After my ritual of washing
Dan comes in with the Guardian,
While drinking tea I’m listening
To desired reports, hope glistening;
In the USA diverse representatives sworn in
In the UK, political rebellion against fracking
And I hear, deep inside, a caged bird sing
While doors with rusty iron locks are slowly opening.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
Meanwhile, a piece I wrote last year on disability and access has been published:
So, these are my offerings for hope and determination going into 2019.
i laugh at falling;
so i laugh often,
my spirit strong,
my body broken,
my breathing,
my movement
dependant on medicines,
that may not make it through
with a bad Brexit or a no deal,
i have specific needs for food,
i fear their obstruction on route
as blockades slow the turning of the wheel,
and prices rise with extra duties,
the threat to the chronically ill, the elderly
and those labeled disabled is all too real,
i have lived with disabilities
for nearly four decades,
but extra barriers disabled me
in unspeakable ways,
there are millions reliant on meds, like me,
those with asthma or diabetes,
melanoma, DVT,
depression and anxiety –
the conditions are plenty
and so must be the treatments
for all of us
from a health service
free for ALL at the point of delivery;
The NHS.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
Hi All,
Hope you’re keeping warm and safe. This post is a bit different to my others. I wanted to share some of the songs and artists that keep me going. One of my earlier posts; Brexit Playlist is a poem that references some of the music I listen to when I feel angry about what is happening in the UK and around the world. This collection is different – only uplifting melodies and songs of hope and unity. It makes me happy to think it might put a smile on some of your faces. There are links to videos on YouTube. So, here goes:
Win Or Lose, Sink Or Swim
One Thing Is Certain We’ll Never Give In
Side By Side, Hand In Hand
We All Stand Together
Play The Game, Fight The Fight
But What’s The Point On A Beautiful Night?
Arm In Arm, Hand In Hand
We All Stand Together
Keeping Us Warm In The Night
La La La La
Walk In The Night
You’ll Get It Right
Win Or Lose, Sink Or Swim
One Thing Is Certain We’ll Never Give In
Side By Side, Hand In Hand
We All Stand Together.
8am,
The grieving wind
And sirens in the air,
An icy 18th of December,
The future forecast
Still nebulous; unclear
As destitution stings
The atmosphere
And each gust calls
Like an anguished mother,
Where do we go from here?
Then, through the thin walls,
The chimes of a child’s laughter
And my heart hurdles to my throat
In that breath and beat of hope.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
We are living in dark times
but know this,
half the nation is by your side.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
This is my playlist
For the farce of Brexit;
Illusion, by VNV nation
From the album ‘Judgement’,
Momentum, Song of Return,
From the Trajectory EP
The Writing’s on the Wall
By Sam Smith,
Under Pressure by Queen & Bowie,
Then Thunder by The Prodigy
From the album ‘Invaders Must Die,’
Mixed with a little Prey
From The Neighbourhood,
Both of which seem now to be policy,
So I play Some Kind of Joke
Courtesy of AWOLNATION,
Destroy Everything You Touch
By Ladytron – the end –
Of Disk One,
My playlist for Brexit continues
With AfroCelt Sound System’s
‘Dark Moon, High Tide,’
Imagine Dragon’s Battle Cry,
Renegades by X-Ambassadors
And Time is Running Out by Muse,
Their Supermassive Black Hole,
And a little I Feel it All by Fiest,
Sleep to Dream by Fiona Apple,
Pompei, and Blame by Bastille’s
Album, Wild World,
Invisible Empire, KT Turnstall,
Grey Days by Chelsea Wolfe,
From her Abyss Collection,
And The Wrong Direction
By Passenger,
(By this point, I’ve cranked the volume
Up much louder, )
Then Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
We No Who U Are,
And Lauren Aquilina’s Wild Fire
From the album Liars.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
To the fool who said I wasn’t British,
My father’s, father’s father was Cornish,
From a long line that worked the pits,
There’s a whisper of Welsh,
And a good dose of Essex –
64 sixth great- grandparents
For each human to exit –
Bring on DNA tests for xenophobes,
Extremists and racists,
To the fool who said I wasn’t British
Because I use the name Zenkevitch
Not Brown, Jones or Smith –
Though my ancestry has names like this
Along with Eastern European and Sephardic,
I am proud of my name and heritage,
I use my maiden name even after marriage
To my love of Northern parentage
Whose own ancestry goes wide and deep
Into this land and, at some point, overseas,
To the fool who said I wasn’t British,
Each one of us is multifaceted,
Every human has a wondrous mix
Of choice and cultural inheritance
And you and I are no different in this,
To the fool who said I wasn’t British –
Do you really know what British is?
A mix of Saxon, Norman, Viking, Pict
Was just the start of part of it,
To the fool who said I wasn’t British,
I was born it, others chose it
As they’ve done for countless centuries
In our interwoven histories,
To the fool who said I wasn’t British,
It is far from true, though they might wish it
For the Arian vision of their kind of Brexit,
I say to them; stop it, you’re being a twit.
Antonia Sara Zenkevitch
Hello All,
Welcome to a poetry site dedicated to the 48% of the UK who voted ‘Remain’ in 2016 and still believe and to the EU and world citizens who are too often scapegoated by politicians simply because they cannot vote, so are an easy target. Likewise, it is dedicated to those who were too young to vote for the shape of their futures. If you voted ‘leave’ but radically changed your mind you are just as welcome, though may find one or two of my poems triggering.
I was heavily involved in politics up until a few years ago and have always been a bit of a writer and poet. I live with a complex collection of disabilities which make going on marches for me presently out of the question. This is my march.
Feel free to share. Please excuse the fact some comments are closed, I’m simply protecting myself from abuse from the few those who use the small Brexit majority as an excuse for all kinds of extremism and hate. (A few times bitten, you learn that lesson.)
I hope you enjoy the poems. Even more importantly I hope you, whoever you are and where-ever you come from, find the best way through this political chaos for you and all you care about. Remember, we’re still stronger together and you are not alone.
Antonia
The 48% 