From Bristol to Glasgow, five poems will be displayed in public on the theme of choice. The writers introduce their works
“Who can she be but, helplessly, herself?” reads a line from Imtiaz Dharker’s Choice, one of five poems appearing on billboards across the UK this week in celebration of National Poetry Day. “Choice” is the theme of the five cities, five poets campaign, and the selected poems explore the choices we make – or that are made for us – about everything from identity, to parenting and appearance.
As well as Dharker’s poem, which is on the streets of Glasgow, the five poems comprise Caleb Femi’s Thirteen (displayed in Peckham, south London), Caleb Parkin’s Shrinking Violets (in Bristol), Marvin Thompson’s May 8th, 2020 (in Cardiff) and Warda Yassin’s Weston Park (in Sheffield). The billboards, which are running until the 17 October, each have tearaway sheets printed with the poems for passersby to take.
I chose Thirteen because it felt like a cornerstone moment. It’s about the first time I was arrested. I was 13 years old, and it was by a police officer who had been at my primary school a year or so before then. The description of the person they were looking for was a man. What was really striking about that moment for me was this sense of not being afforded the privilege – not even the privilege, the fact – of being a kid. And more so, the general lack of a sense of relationship between the community and the police, who are supposed to be one of the most prominent pillars in order for a community to thrive. More than anything, I chose it to underline the fact that, in a space like Peckham, which has changed over the last 10 years quite profoundly, there are still conversations that are just as relevant as they were when I was 13.
When they mentioned the theme of choice, I was thinking about the subject and the way this poem works. The voice in this poem keeps checking itself, with revisions and choices in what it’s saying. The other aspect with the content of the poem was how much space we take up, and the choices we make there. I kind of played up the digressions and the self-corrections, made them even more apparent when I edited it, because that was what I was getting at.
When I wrote Choice, I was a young mother making decisions about a child’s life, thinking about power, the limits of control and the cliff edges of risk. A poem is sometimes a navigation through the anxieties of the world and I think the form follows from this, working through questions, a kind of sifting.
I hope readers enjoy my National Poetry Day poem. The recent BBC documentary about the Cardiff Five reminded me that injustice haunts Britain, haunts Wales. As such, I am proud to have my poem placed on a billboard in Cardiff. This is a city where Betty Campbell and others have lived wonderful lives, championing justice and celebrating diversity.