Refugee Week is all about celebrating the contribution refugees make to the UK and honouring their personal stories of survival. Often the events organised to mark the week showcase individual talents and skills that are already well-known and much-lauded – like the performers on the main stage at London’s Celebrating Sanctuary for example.
But Refugee Week events can also uncover new voices and spotlight hidden gifts that may have hitherto been obscured by the shadows cast by the asylum process and the pain of the experiences that led people to flee.
Today, I was lucky enough to meet a Zimbabwean refugee called Blessing, a new literary voice who has just won the Refugee Week poetry competition organised by our Portsmouth team.
Blessing arrived in the UK in 2002 and received refugee status within two years. Just before he received his award today, I talked to Blessing about how he came to bare such a raw part of his soul through his writing:
“This is the first time I have written poetry – or anything really. I can’t really say, ‘I’m a writer’, just like that, as I envisage a writer as someone who has written a mountain of articles and books, and this is my first attempt.
“This poem was written at time when I was at very low depths of emotional sanity. It expresses the frustration an asylum seeker goes through – their suffering. In it, a person is tired of going through all that is to do with being an asylum seeker and in it, he is effectively justifying his impending suicide – as if explaining it to the person that might find his body.
“I’m not the only asylum seeker or refugee who feels like this – many people seeking asylum feel this way. The reasons that asylum seekers come here are like a malevolent cancer – persecution, abuse, war. And there will always be asylum seekers as long as the lack of humanity and respect for human beings that drive people to flee their homes still exists.
“In the UK, everyone is treated as a bogus asylum seeker, and yes of course there are some whose claims are not genuine. But most of us who had to flee their country and seek sanctuary here have usually seen or experienced something traumatic. But there is very little acknowledgement or support from the Home Office to help us cope with the trauma we have survived.
“We already have post traumatic stress from what we have seen back home then when we come here, we go through the gruesome process of the asylum system, which is also traumatic. When you get status, you are supposed to move on and integrate, but we are all still carrying emotional baggage. Who is supposed to get us through that?”
Blessing went on to tell me that the last book he read was Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and there are indeed some echoes of Hamlet’s reflections in this poem.
He also said that he’s looking forward to buying new books with his book voucher prize – perhaps something on philosophy or psychology to better understand the human condition and why people behave the way they do.
Just before I leave you with his poem in my next post, I wanted to share what he said to the audience after he read his poem at the award ceremony today:
“If you are lucky enough to be here with your family today, then hold them tight and cherish them. Because some of us here have not had the opportunity to do so in ten years.”
Blessing, I promise you that is just what I’ll do.
As World Refugee Day and Father’s Day fast approach, thank you for reminding us all of the things that we often take for granted, which many others have lost.
Tags: Poetry, Portsmouth, Refugee Week, Simple Acts campaign, World Refugee Day
Posted by Esme Peach