My residency began just after the Brexit vote. As I read through the interviews, looked at the photos, listened to the audio, watched the footage, it struck me that the events of the present were eerily similar to the events up to and after the New Cross Fire. Then in June 2017, Grenfell happened. Institutional indifference to working class lives had left nearly eighty people dead. The Windrush scandal was reminiscent of right-wing calls for black repatriation. The archive became, for me, a mirror of the present, a much-needed instruction manual to navigate what felt like the repetition of history. The most chilling aspect of this was the lack of closure, the lack of responsibility and the lack of accountability at the centre of both the New Cross Fire and Grenfell. And the more I read and discussed, the more vexed the relationship between public narration and private truths appeared. I realised I was one of many who had visited the archives and come to a similar conclusion about the tragic and ill-concluded nature of the case. Many questions emerged not only about memory and history, but about my place in Britain as a queer black person. This opened out into a final sense of coherence: I am from here, I am specific to this place, I am haunted by this history but I also haunt it back.

Arrival

remember we were brought here from the clear waters of our dreams

that we might be named, numbered and forgotten

that we were made visible that we might be looked on with contempt

that they gave us their first and last names that we might be called wogs

and to their minds made flesh that it might be stripped from our backs

kept hungry that we might cry in our children’s sleep

close our smoky mouths around their dreams

swallow them as they gaze upon us

never to be full –

snap, crackle

amen

Ark

Now shall we consult the life of a stranger?

Now shall we see what can and cannot be kept?

I take this morning from its box, see how the years have warped its edges, its middle pages conjoined at the text.

I remove the rusted paper clip, dry-sponge its brittle red remains, unfold a liver-spotted note in copper ink,

date it by the flaking Letraset and amber glue,
press each part to the flatbed scanner,

wonder which words to file

the damp smoke and young bones under.

*

I sometimes recognise a face from a Hi8 film,

am introduced to she-who-squatted-in-the-seventies, who-made-that-speech, who remembers '81

when a crowd black as my hand gathered one morning, came over Blackfriars Bridge, were heckled by the press.

The year was still fresh,
still screaming with its eyes closed,

Mi brudda dead, mi brudda dead, mi brudda dead-o
Mi sista dead, mi sista dead, mi sista dead-o

A white-sleeved hack hung from that ledge to better spit at some kid who recalls it by their cup of archive wine.

*