Clarity: two psychogeographic snapshots
(It seems so
clear: clones,
lookalikes – when
you press that stop button
on some narrative called life)
I. eave icicles, Abbeywood (south east London) c. 1980s
who ever looked up at a naïf bedroom windowsill?
only ever ahead, to a front door,
once smash-run through by a toddler sibling.
Much later, inside, in summer, I surmise,
that parked ice cream van recalled thirty years later –
visible below, declaring with ready-lit sign,
side window ajar:
‘CHRIS’S ICES’.
As children,
we were protected; a-
lone in the front yard, a macrocosmic
snow globe – adequate winter babysitter
for the working class. Paddington Bear coats,
cable-knit scarves, Aran sleeves
posing as fingerless gloves:
snow pretending to be powder
nature’s beauty is suspect
when transparent—
these beginnings of lone chaste lust
pulsate in ache, once home melts,
for drought-stricken, tropical climes.
II. outer west Melbourne methamphetamine epidemic, 2010s
Not all poetry rhymes:
think on graupel – snow,
captured in rime form,
cheating us;
within – light’s tricks;
without – suggesting reflections.
No crystal ball can prepare
you for this weekend. Not snow – but ice,
(mmm, Panzerschokolade!)
meth; impotent addiction warnings.
Through windows, what family looks like yours ___:
[magnifying lenses:
married to slick, scientific glares –
demanding symmetrical,]
un-white;
what colour
is transparent now?
three decades still not enough
for the invite to club ‘naturalized’.
Hop from constant gloom, drizzle, and snow;
skip to typhoon rage & leaking tin roof cacophony,
then ozone-void sunshine, you
redden & peel,
taunt melanin deficiencies.
“…within the year, expect the two family
cars to be torched… ”
impassive onlookers’ eyes:
(this used to be a safe neighbourhood)
it’s as close
as we’ll ever get
to witnessing
twin imploding stars;
(we all
start
in the
dark)
Vidya: Tell us about your current artistic practice.
Gemma: It depends on the work. Usually my serious and more autobiographical poems come from a line or a ‘hook’, or sometimes even a joke I’ve made with a good friend. The rhythm of that single line will set the tone for the lines preceding and following.
For work where I want to play with placement of words and/or letters on the page, I’ll usually have a non-poetic element or form in mind. An example is a collaboration I’m working on with an independent game designer and I’ll be more conscious of trying to arrange letters, words or feelings about specific objects or phenomena (e.g. rain, or tumbleweeds) and how they look on the relevant medium.
What prompted you to write ‘Clarity’?
I was thinking a lot about the play of light and objects and how we make those personal. It doesn’t really snow anymore in London, but when I was a child there, it did; despite how cold English winters can be, it still remains such a fond memory. It led me to think of the play of light on things like icicles (and a horror story my father told me about how if an icicle falls from a high enough height, it could kill or decapitate you!).
In another part of the ‘Clarity’ suite that I’m working on, the Provincial Hotel (in Fitzroy, Melbourne) upstairs chandelier seems like a magical object; objects we can take for granted unless they’re not part of our everyday lives, even if its home city is. I’ve spent most of my life in Melbourne and a lot of time in Fitzroy… how did it take me so long to realise that the Provincial had an upstairs room, and that it was so beautiful? Poetry seems like the best place to muse on these sorts of questions.
I love how the poem connects attempts at memory with attempts at belonging.
In remembering the places I’ve lived or now live, there’s fondness (though with Melbourne, that’s been a very recent thing. I’ve always loved Melbourne, but felt like it never really loved me back?). And being born in the UK in the late 1970s/early 1980s was also like that (sectarian and racial violence and vilification).
In the second part of ‘Clarity’—I remember in 2015 a Bangladeshi woman telling me about how she’d lived in Australia even longer than my family, and both her family cars were set alight. Which just seemed horrible given that I felt she, and her family (sons), belonged here. Not having been born in Australia, I’ll always feel a sense of alienation, which I also felt when I briefly lived in the Philippines on account of my ‘mestiza’ status. Many Filipinos told me they think I am beautiful, but that’s largely due to fair skin privilege rather than other attributes or traits I might possess which compounds the sense of not even belonging there.
Who are some poets you commonly turn to?
Linton Kwesi Johnson, Fred d’Aguiar and Maxine Beneba Clarke. They give me access to a part of my Indo-Caribbean (though they are all Afro-Caribbean) heritage through West Indian English. I don’t get to learn about or get told about my Indo-Guyanese-born father’s heritage or ancestry unless he wants to talk about it. It’s sad that I have to learn about it in such an indirect way, but it does make me feel less lonely. I get really excited to learn about Indo-Caribbean authors and poets generally, as we mainly only hear about Afro-Caribbean ones, and the accent—its rhythms and musicality—really influence the way I hear or read poetic lines in my head in a way that is different to Indian diaspora literature or poetry, because again, stories of my Anglo-Indian paternal ancestry isn’t something I have access to unless my father happens to be in the mood to tell a good yarn.
About the author
vidya rajan is a writer, editor and performance-maker. she currently lives in melbourne and is a writer in residence at the malthouse theatre. you can get in touch on twitter.