Afterword, Joanna Brown

AFTERWORD

AFTERWORD

Poet and writer Joanna Brown attended a workshop run by Poetry Vs Colonialism and Culture Mile London for culture and heritage workers at the Museum of London. Our workshop attendees bought artwork or heritage item connected with colonial history, and together we looked at how we could creatively tell the stories bound up in these items. We discussed what decolonising could and should mean for the culture and heritage sector and planned events to explore our history of empire.

Let the light in . . .

Joanna Brown for Poetry vs Colonialism, December 2021

What does it mean to decolonise? To navigate our way from colonising state to decolonising statement, And voyage towards a vision of a fairer future?

From collectors to collective, we move forward together. Let there be care in curation. Let objects claim their rightful restoration. This is a more compassionate exploration.

How do we tell a fuller story? How do we free from the vaults of history Those voices weighed down by silence?

Courageous curiosity is key. Now is the time to unbury the archive and set free Those truths, however uncomfortable they may be.

Listen. Can you hear them? A wealth of stories whispering in stone, Pressing against the walls of a bordered, bounded history.

Listen. A composer, Born on a slaving ship sailing from Guinea, lands in Greenwich. An African grocer in London, the goods he sells - tea, tobacco, sugar - Steeped in the unfree labour of those from whom he has been severed. A painful irony. His name, Ignatius – flame. He writes. His words sparkle like stars. His letters sail on a Westminster wind, His voice calls for Abolition - he casts his vote. His music is a gift of gold to dance to. A joyful noise of resilience and warmth and light, An invitation to join hands and step into the circle, It sings his legacy across the centuries . . .

Listen. Take this pencil. Its hue, named for an artist: Fondyke brown. (Van Dyck, renowned From Antwerp to the English court, Consummate maker of kings and queens in colour.) The wood, the gum, the pigment, all, From Africa. Origin is the glue that binds us. Hold the pencil between your finger and thumb. Consider the thing in your hand and the hand itself. Let them dance together and notice how your finger guides the wood across the page To make your mark and tell the tale anew. Pass it on.

Listen. Take this map. A cartographer’s view of Empire at high noon. Africa – a continent fragmented by men in moustaches flicking flags Like toys across a conference table in Berlin. A cavalier act of divisions drawn with ruler and pencil. Carving up cultures, cutting tongues in two. Here, history did not begin with the arrival of booted European feet. It was interrupted. Centuries of civilisation Kicked under the imperial carpet.

Go back and retrieve it.

Kumasi - a kingdom crafted in gold. A sacred stool: a seat for a royal king, Snatched, displaced, dishonoured In an unceremonious severing of culture from the root. Power unseated by an act of vengeance, Gazed on by those blind to its true sovereignty, Its poetry lost on those who do not speak its language. An empty entertainment. History hollowed out and unmade for exhibition.

What happens if History and Geography never speak to one another? How can we make sense of the world if we try to separate space and time?

This conversation is not an erasure or a disappearing. Not a silencing but a reckoning with the past. It is an opening up of the past’s possibilities. Discomfort is the door.

Sometimes we have to face the darkness to let the light in. Let us be brave enough to know what we do not know, And understand that we cannot know everything. Whose knowledge is this anyway? Who gets to say ‘This has value –Or that’? Perhaps we should begin again at the beginning, with the child. Foster curiosity, nurture confidence and watch creativity shine. Show the child themselves reflected, valued, honoured in these spaces We call archive, museum, gallery. See them rise up! Hand over ownership. Give learning space to breathe. See them rise up! Watch that child’s back straighten, Watch their chin lift, Their eyes light. Let them listen, learn, wonder, question, challenge, confront, craft, imagine, imagine, imagine and make new their sense of the past. In this space let them speak their whole self with pride, and Rise up!

Let us refashion the past so that it may speak to the future in a truer tongue. Let us make space for new questions and conversations. Let us craft a language to say what has not been said.

We are all of us collectors, curators, custodians. Like Anansi, we carry our own stories within us In the webs of language and culture and history we spin.

The stories we hold are limitless. It is time for them to sing. It is time to let the light in.