A blog post by our volunteer Fatima who supported Commonword’s #HardPressed project from March to September 2024

” My first venture into Commonword Cultureword was inspired by a spontaneous open mic. Propelled into this creative world, I was in awe of the poetry performed by individuals from Commonword’s longest-running workshop called Identity. The poets talked about anything and everything ranging from their cultural backgrounds, love, grief, friendship, loss, and the current affairs of the world. The environment curated by the Commonword staff was so friendly that I too ended up performing my own poem on what it means to be in your 20s. Needless to say,  I was thrilled by the work Commonword was doing and was excited to join the team as a volunteer afterwards.

As a volunteer I’ve played part in organising and cataloguing selections of poetry and prose for Commonword’s project Hard Pressed: Mapping Manchester’s Small Radical Presses. The purpose of the project is to highlight Manchester’s rich literary heritage showcasing the work of writers from underrepresented backgrounds. I have meticulously sifted through numerous boxes consisting of hundreds of pieces of literature spanning all the way back to the 1970s. Afterwards, I carefully organised this literature into the relevant piles and catalogued these works into an archival database. Other members of the team have been digitising this data to construct an interactive Google map which will be open for the public to access and view the spectacular works of writers across Greater Manchester. Working on this project has showed me how important it is to archive and digitise work because with the rise of the digital age, these works risk being lost to the passage of time. The magnitude of such loss would mean the erasure of essential parts of Mancunian history.

I’ve also had the opportunity to work closely on poetry publications such as Rain Dog and Citizen 32. I’ve proofread many of the poems in these anthologies so they can be added to a new anthology Commonword is working on. Working on such poems was really incredible as it allowed me to see how these anthologies have evolved over the years. The contributions to both publications increased throughout time and Citizen 32  also started attracting writers from international waters. The Citizen 32 magazines were particularly insightful to read due to the timeless nature of the political poems. In fact, I noted that the magazines didn’t have a date of publication which made it feel as if the poems were speaking about the current political state of the world. The themes covered everything ranging from class division in the UK, issues of poverty and racism, and petroleum politics.

Working with these publications was really beneficial as it allowed me to appreciate the work that goes into producing successful publications and how one can have different writing styles from poetry and prose side by side and still produce a cohesive publication.

My favourite day I’ve had as a volunteer so far would definitely be the Kashmiri Youth Project (KYP) workshops which were led by Mahboobeh, the project’s Digital Literature Coordinator. Mahboobeh led a series of 4 workshops with women from a Kashmiri background focusing on all things art such as poetry, dance, and colouring. Prior to the workshop I had stumbled across a book called ‘Barbed Lines.’ I was instantly drawn to the unique layout of the book and was pleasantly surprised by the back cover which contained a black and white picture of several South Asian women. What struck me the most was that every single one of these women was smiling.

Belonging to a South Asian heritage myself, seeing a Black and white group picture of women, from the late 80’s, all collectively smiling was something which I had rarely seen, and this is a sentiment several women shared with me at the KYP workshop.

Barbed Lines is a book containing poems and prose from numerous Bengali women sharing their experiences of arriving in the UK in the late 70s. Although these poems detailed the Bengali immigrant experience, the themes of belonging/unbelonging deeply resonated with me and I imagined would be relatable with members of the KYP workshop. I had the pleasure of conversing with the workshop members in Urdu and sharing one of the poems in a mixture of Urdu and English which the audience enjoyed hearing. It was truly a rewarding experience getting to express myself in Urdu because I don’t often have the opportunity to speak with others in Urdu.

 Languages are so important and to be able to communicate in my mother tongue and that too to talk about my favourite thing of all time (poetry) is honestly an honour. The ability to speak Urdu is a fundamental part of my identity and to be able to express myself in it, and that too to a full capacity, fills me with joy.

I spent the rest of the workshop listening to the wonderful group poem the KYP workshop members had written and also spent my time capturing the beauty, laughter, and joy of the event on camera.

My time at Commonword has been amazing and has allowed me to push myself out of my comfort zone, see an insight into the creative industry, and help contribute to the phenomenal and ongoing work the staff at Commonword are doing.

Follow Fatima over at @fatima_speakss

Written by Alex Harvard (volunteer for Commonword’s #HardPressed project)

Containing complicated discussion of sexuality through radical poetry and art from the early 2000s, Citizen 32 is an offbeat time capsule that strains against conformity. This third issue, Sexuality, provides an insight into the minds of a diverse crowd of artists, centring queerness and the subversive power of owning one’s sexual identity. As a queer person, there is much to relate to, and perhaps just as much to find issue with within these pages. 

A Rich Tapestry of Talent 

We hear from powerful, renowned poets such as Vampire Queen Rosie Lugosi, Aoife Mannix, and the infamous Scouse socialist Chloe Poems, alongside lesser-known emerging writers and poets. The issue contains a healthy mix of interviews, poetry, reviews, stories and artwork, providing enough variety to keep you reading, and ensuring you will always return to the magazine remembering where you left off. 

In these interviews, poets address a wide range of topics, including (in less contemporary terms) queering queerness, intersectionality, the political power of art, gentrification, and various branches of feminism. In the poetry itself is just as much politics laid out alongside uniquely personal experiences within short form prose and personal anecdotes. The collection is testament to the power of the written word, urging the reader to connect on a deeply personal responsive level, underscoring the importance of art in times of social upheaval. 

Paging through this magazine is to be tripping out of a deeply insightful metaphor into filthy, punchy social criticism and back again within a single spread. It is to be educated and uncomfortable and often left without an answer. And it is most certainly crammed full of opinions. 

Having fallen away from my childhood love of poetry for an ever-growing handful of years, here I found myself rekindling my love of words, and admiring these poets and their ability to transport anger and shame and hope from their own hearts into my own. Tempered by the force of feeling pushed upon me, I could now imagine no better start to the day than rising to meet the world with poetry clenched between my teeth. After all, art begets art.

The talent sprinkled through these works may not be to your tastes, whether too political, too flowery or simply too much, but no one can deny the mastery of craft in many of the works produced. 

Solidarity: Defending Against Unrest 

“Can’t we use our energy to write rather than kicking each other in the teeth?”
Rosie Lugosi, p.5

Rosie Lugosi speaks on the problem of divisions between performance poets and poets who only publish, condemning the infighting of the poet community, as do all the poets in this issue. However, it is a statement that may reach further afield than its intended context. Can this statement about creating art rather than tearing each other down not be applied to much of the queer community, even now? 

This issue sees a huge emphasis on the power and importance of solidarity between writers, between women, between classes and between those who have nothing in common at all. Poets such as Mish Green argue here against the idea of pigeonholing minority groups into only writing on their own most political issue. Why should women have to constantly create feminist art? Why must queer artists announce their queerness to the world before being allowed to create? 

“Feminism should dig power out of the hidden places it rests and push it into the light for all of us to have a look at – it should help to challenge inequalities of all kinds and spread that power around to those who have the least”
Mish Green

Green goes on to acknowledge the societal push towards homogenising minority groups. Their feminism means acknowledging that there are many factors in each person’s life, and these will affect the way each individual lives and what opportunities they may be able to access. The poet’s intersectional approach sums up the overall feeling of this issue – that support for each other is infinitely more powerful than constant criticism and snobbery. 

Poetry – The Fist of the Issue 

“For me, the point of art is to raise questions… A question is always a challenge in the sense that it asks you to consider something, possibly in a new way or from a different angle”
Aoife Mannix 

What brings this issue to life however is the poetry itself. One can have as much commentary and interviews as fit in the magazine, but without the art itself, it is merely theory sans praxis.  

Poets in this issue seemed to have a huge diversity of approaches when it came to their art. Some explicitly argued that the shock value of a performance sharpens the edge of its message, whilst others took the tone of more traditional poets, condemning unnecessary drama and focusing on the subtler prising open of the reader’s mind. However, I found that works dotted all across the breadth of this spectrum had their own merits and potency, simply necessitating a headspace that was able to hear out all the tones these voices take.  

I find it hard to condemn or even dislike the visceral anger and disdain some of the cruder poetry conveys so effectively. Should poetry only be on easily digestible topics, served with a smile and soft word? Surely if so, this issue would have nothing much of worth to be dug out. Some could argue that contemporary poetry often toes the line between free verse and prose, but I would rather congratulate the poets in this magazine for finding the perfect medium for this dynamic and label-defying style of art. The form and the ideology sit happily hand in hand in this issue, subverting the reductionist ideas of art, gender, sexuality and personhood.  

“Poetry has power to move people which is why it is often used as a political tool. If poetry lacked potency then poets wouldn’t be persecuted in countries that deny free speech”
Helene Thomas

Regardless of what may call it, I believe there is a huge range of topic and quality found amongst the poetry of this issue. Here I pull out some that particularly delighted: 

Rachel Jury — It’s Complicated — p.14 

Highlighting some of the barriers and vulnerabilities encountered when trying to navigate life as a lesbian. Specifically carrying a bitter longing and grey kind of hope around connection, this poem hits all the boxes, about family, friends, lovers and lack thereof, coming out and going back in the closet, and having to constantly reimagine who you are when you stumble across old heartbreaks and fresh fissures in your stable life every time you step out the door. The morality of avoiding pain and pursuing joy as a lesbian in a heteronormative society is written in a harshly relatable way in this poem. 

Aoife Mannix — Trying To Sleep — p.20 

Mannix weaves a story of longing and fear and fragile love in this beautiful poem about the comfort to be found in a lover. The speaker pulls us into their world of magic and music almost effortlessly, sharing their misgivings whilst showing us their inability to not be pulled back into their dreamings. This poem is a beauty and a delight that flows from finish to end. 

Chloe Poems — What is this thing called Gay? — p.25 

This work of art is a triumphant call to arms and celebration of pride as it was meant to be, rejecting the rainbow washing of modern day corporate June. Poems (now performing under his real name, Gerry Potter) speaks in solidarity with all his fellow queer warriors, all of those falling outside the norm and all of those who were never given a chance. A poem that is distinctly Mancunian, it dances through Canal Street and unpleasant corners of the gay community screaming that pride is for everyone. 

The Banality of Man: A Criticism 

Whilst this magazine is truly a delight to read, there is a handful of criticisms to be dug up about its contents. Of course, any anthology must have its weak points, and Citizen 32 can be no different.  

Steve Lyons — The Anti-Vagina Monologue Song — p.29 

This seemingly anti-feminist poem is confusing, in that I think I understand what it is trying to convey, but don’t understand how its message fits into this piece of work. This man condemns the performance of a woman he lays with, and bemoans his lacks of empathy. It seems to victimise men overall, but bookended with strong feminist voices who are fighting the patriarchy, not individual men, it comes across as a punch swung into open air. 

Paul Blackburn — To Be A Condom — p.48 

This poem has a strong element of silliness and absurdism, but I would argue does not bring much to this anthology. The work does not seem to bring greater depth to the discussion than simple musings, nor a particularly unique take on sexuality. 

Cath Nichols — The train from Chester is on time — p.49 

This poem is a pretty though simple thing about the observations and worries of the lover of a trans man taking the train home. An endearing point to the family connection found in all parts of life, it does face the issue of speaking on behalf of the cisgender stressors, possibly taking up the space needed by the transgender artist. Is this the space to be centring the very cisnormative worries of a lover, or should we give voice to the joy of finally fitting into the body you always knew you should inhabit? 

Ever Growing: The Take Away 

This anthology was really eye opening to the merits of literary magazines, and coming away from this I truly believe that everyone should keep a handful on their coffee table or in their bathroom, because even a flick through pulls out gems of meaning and hilarity that brighten up an afternoon. 

As a queer person, these works that pull together the community voices are a huge source of validation and connection, especially when they are locally situated and so very human. The work of independent publishers cannot be overlooked in upholding the standards of the community and working as a platform for small artists to start their climb to success, or simply reach out a hand to connect with us, the readers. Being queer can be lonely, even surrounded by people, so these pockets of safety are not to be so easily found. Art is for everyone, and as these poets suggest, it needs us all to read, reflect and most of all create in response for these works to keep flourishing.  

This issue is the perfect jump off point to really practice your skills in that, forcing you to look inwards, and look deeper. Not everyone is right, nor everyone the most skilled writer, but all these artists have the capacity to convey something new regardless. And you might just find your new favourite poem, who knows. 

Alex Harvard (they/them) is a young queer person volunteering on the Commonword Hard Pressed project. They enjoy cooking, drawing and writing convoluted essays at 2am. Living and studying in Manchester since 2022, you can likely find them in Whitworth Park on a Sunday trying to pet the squirrels. 

 

The Small Circles project is how I first encountered Saad Choeb’s work: we were paired together, writer and artist. I’d been tasked to write an interactive dystopian short story within the universe of The Bloods, a future setting of the UK as country divided between a religious-fascist regime and its opposition. My story, The Voice of Whiteness, is about a person who needs to use their half-forgotten mother language to resist propaganda beamed directly into their mind; the tension is that the protagonist is also chaperoning a Language Seer, whose lack of any English renders her immune to the propaganda. In the worst-case scenario, the narrator falls into Voice Madness and compromises the Language Seer’s safety.

I thought of it as a reflection of one of the core frictions of a migrant’s life: that of languages and where they sit within our identities. This is a deep anxiety, and one that is often laying under the surface amongst Arab communities. Think pieces on the demise of Arabic as a world language; reinvented ways to engage children in this language; arguments over language purity against colonising French and English; laments over Arabs without Arabic: these are common discourses that our communities cycle through. The feeling we sometimes have, of Arabic being ‘feeble’ against English or French on the world stage, is really a reflection of our despairing anger. Modern, recent, current Arab history reads like a series of tragedies. (NB: There is hope too, there is always hope, but we were situating ourselves in dystopia at that time)

All this preamble to say that it was not my words but Saad’s art that realised this short story together. The black backdrops; the pastels; the chalk-board effect – these draw our eyes to the protagonist’s haunting despair. In one artwork, the character in blue and his ward, the Language Seer, are divided by a red line. A spirit like a screaming ghoul seems to emerge from the narrator, threatening to overwhelm him, commanding the attention of the viewer.

The most arresting piece – reserved for the worst scenario – depicts the protagonist clutching their forehead, the soft curves of their hands turning into claws tearing at their head. The eyes and mouth are curled inwards with despair. When our eyes drift to take in details from other corners of the piece a yellow arrow, like a migraine, forces our attention back on the forehead.

In its brutal defeat, it is not just despair depicted, but the despair of the colonised mind. An understanding of the concept of the colonised mind is something I was still developing; I was charging towards it in this short story, but it was Saad’s art that saw the real heart of the piece and evoked it.

This collaboration was all the more poignant because Saad was, at that time, in Lebanon. We were working in late 2021, and the Beirut Port explosion in August that year had shaken Beirut, Lebanon, and indeed the Arab world to the core. We were still in the wake of that explosion when we collaborated together. Electricity and internet were intermittent, local currency was worthless; life for Beirut’s residents was bleak. When we launched Small Circles in January 2022 with a live Zoom reading, Riana Richani, another Lebanon-based artist, remarked that it was grimly easy to evoke dystopia in her art because Lebanon was already a dystopia. Saad, who should have joined me in our portion of the reading and Q&A, missed most of the event – his absence caused by Beirut’s spotty internet.

It’s been nearly three years since I encountered Saad through this collaboration. He’s made an impact in the UK with his art – as with his exhibition in Hackney’s Space Studios in 2022, following his receipt of the Don Bachardy Fellowship.

I come back to The Voice of Whiteness at least once a year since it has been published. But it’s not for my text that I return: it’s for Saad’s art. And it is especially that final artwork which for me touches on a frightening, abysmal despair that claws at our hearts, that exists within every Arab of our generation who has witnessed wars, brutality, corruption, theft and coups define our region and felt useless in the face of it – even when actively working against it. More succinctly than my own words, this drawing captures the terror of the colonised mind. I am sucked into it because I wish to reject it. I see a reflection of my own worst qualities and I wish to change it.

That, in itself, is the real quality of dystopian art – it is not there for us to wallow in our darkness, but to experience it frighteningly, and then reject it.

– Ali Al-Jamri

Play ‘Voice of Whiteness’ by Ali Al-Jamri & Saad Choeb

In June 2024, we lost Jackie Hagan. She had been ill for a very long time, conditions with complicated manifestations and names to match.  

Before

A lot of people remember the first time they met Jackie, but I don’t. We were at the University of Manchester at the same time, around 1999, 2000. She was in a relationship with a young woman I fancied from what was then called the LGB society. Some years later Jackie revealed she’d had a difficult time visiting her girlfriend’s unfriendly folks in their Lancashire mansion. I’d dodged a bullet, but Jackie took the hit. 

She introduced me to so many writers and poets. I saw her perform many times in places like Sandbar and The Green Room, so often that I could mouth along to some of the lines. The first time I performed poetry was at a short-lived night she ran called ‘Hiya Luv’ (silent ‘H’), complete with its own button badge merch, in the dark damp back room at The Crescent in Salford. Jackie encouraged me to perform, as she did with so many other  nervous novices. Her references to pop culture (we both grew up with Button Moon and The Wombles) and utter lack of pretension made poetry accessible. A possibility for new writers as I was back then.

When she facilitated writing workshops she always brought that encouragement with her. That, and being non-judgemental and accepting. It helped people to shine and grow. I think this came from her experiences of healthcare and disability, of the welfare benefits system, of growing up working class in Skelmersdale, of being skint, of being queer and non-binary, of all kinds of pain. She brought her openness and willingness to be vulnerable, more than I could ever be.  

2024

The covid pandemic drove a lot of people away from each other for too many years. Running the Hard Pressed heritage project at Commonword gave me an excuse to get back in touch. My contact in the last few months of Jax’s life seems mercenary because it was work-related. I didn’t feel good about it. I knew she could see through me. But I also knew it was important to try to capture some of this history because it’s so fragile. As part of the project, I’d asked her friend the writer John G Hall to run some workshops based on issues of Citizen 32 (a 2000s magazine of political poetry and fiction) in Wythenshawe. I came to some of the sessions and Jackie was in attendance. One session was on the theme of war. The theme was too upsetting for her, so she coloured outside of the lines and wrote something completely different instead. She blew us all out of the water. Her brilliance came to her so easily and quickly, just like the way she made her observations.  

John and I had talked about putting together a zine of poetry from these workshops that would be available at a poetry showcase at the Manchester Poetry Library in May. Jax had talked about doing a cover for the zine. 

Shortly after the last Citizen 32 sessions, she went into hospital. The chances of her putting some of her magic and sparkle into this zine were dwindling. She messaged me on Facebook, quite last minute:

“Is it alright if I send u a poem for the zine or has this shit [sic] sailed”?
“No not at all.” I wanted anything and everything she wanted to send me.
But then a few days passed and I heard nothing. Looking through her debut collection that Citizen 32 had published, I dangled a proposal in front of her. 

“How about this one?” I asked. A real woman. She didn’t recognise the title. The poem was probably around twenty years old. I took a picture of it and sent it to her. She wasn’t the same person who wrote it, she said. I told her it was still moving. She wanted to rework it. Thoughtful as ever, she didn’t want to get rid of anything that suggested the only real woman is a cisgender one. She made edits which I dutifully implemented.  

I’d wanted her to do the zine cover too, but health and hospitals got in the way. Even so, she provided a cracking bio, all whilst being on a communal ward where it was kicking off “imagine molotov cocktails and beds against doors me on floor typing with one finger off it on morphine”. She’d lost feeling in her right hand (she is right-handed).  

I described the in-progress zine to her. For a change, I was using software this time, not scissors and Pritt Stick. Serif font, monochrome and dead classy, automatically generated page numbers.
She replied to say she didn’t like the sound of it. 

John had put her down to read at the showcase. I included a list of poets performing at the showcase. I asked if she was gonna be able to make it.  

“Fuck yeah,” she wrote.
“Best thing I’ve heard all day,” I replied.
She was out of hospital one day before the showcase.

But on the evening, she was too tired to make it to Manchester Poetry Library. In my heart of hearts, I knew this might happen.  I’d hoped that she’d be able to perform again, be on stage, have an audience, have a mic stand wrapped in fairy lights.

A few weeks later, she was back in hospital where her life ended. But that’s not how I want to remember her. She was so strong.  She hid discomfort and pain a lot more than I realised. I think she was just trying to get on with her life. She wanted things to be nice for everyone, especially for the oddballs and misfits who miss out. She was sharp and funny as hell. Her honesty put a lot of her contemporaries to shame. Her honesty made people uncomfortable, but it was on the road to putting them at ease, giving them relief they didn’t know they needed. And I will miss her greatly for that.  – Heena Patel