Above the Horizon by Linda Cleary

What is being visible?

Being visible as a writer of diverse background is seeing representation of what you do outside of yourself. Seeing books by working class writers, or stories and poetry, that you can identify with. Seeing and, after that, building a feeling and a knowledge that literature is an open door and access to it is only about stepping into it. That you can be from any background and take part. It is also about being invited to come through the door of literary festivals and events, to have your voice represented – not just as a token – but as a necessity and a part of the foundation.

Yet still, in 2020, there are many challenges to open access in all areas of the Arts and the working class are still under-represented and within that classification there is further under representation in terms of other marginalised groups.

As a working class writer myself who was brought up in Manchester and came of age in the agitation and dissatisfaction of Thatcher’s Britain and a post punk landscape of protest and music in the mid 80s I found energy and inspiration from reading Spare Rib, studying the theatre of Joan Littlewood, the plays of Rona Munro and the writing of Jeanette Winterson as well as the work of European counterparts such as the playwright and activist Franca Rame and the punk performance work of the American Lydia Lunch and Germany’s Nina Hagen. I left school and left home in the same week, at 16 years of age, and when not hanging out with the music scene in the city I was on the road doing rep theatre, attending free festivals and protests and living in any number of buses, squats and bedsits.

I spent many years travelling through and living in many countries, living on my wits and arriving on one way tickets, and also sustained periods of study and work achieving certificates and awards –   a life lived as a creative in the midst of creatives. Precarious incomes. Unguaranteed outcomes. I most recently lived in Egypt, where I gave writing courses and ran an arts residency from 2009 to 2015, being present and witness to its Arab spring – but also its rich arts scene, its diversity, its vastness – as well as its regime and its struggles. I now live in Cornwall, however, no matter the beauty of the nature here which certainly softens and nurtures one’s entire being, I do not like the hype of this county as a picture postcard idyll for I find that too limiting and it can lead to a parochial perspective. Neither do I identify with the industries that Cornwall is often referenced for, especially that I am a vegan. Where I get my kicks, other than being rewilded as a human being, is via the network of writers and artists here creating work of literary and creative value – work that is not holding the usual gaze but is looking somewhere else.

Yet, here as within UK as a whole there is still clique. And division still shows up. Essentially those that have, property and steady incomes, essentially have a very different lived experience from those that have not. And it starts to seem a luxury to be able to focus one’s mind on one’s writing career or other creative career options and self employment – for it is difficult for a mind to be free when it is fixed on literally putting the bread on the table. Also, within UK the administrators running the organisations are so often coming from the old paradigms and there is still often an emphasis on needing an academic background or having previous inclusion in prime publications in order to be welcomed into the circle of love.

I feel the modern age has ushered in further suppression of the working class voice. The people in power require us to speak in their language, use their key words, fill in their forms their way – they talk about dialogue but only if we use their words and their tone. I’m interested in other ways, other histories, other backgrounds, other accents – and in us having the right. The right to be seen.

With thanks

Linda Cleary

 

Linda Cleary lives in Penzance, Cornwall. She is a British born Irish heritage poet – writer – performer from a northern English working class background. As well as her written work being published in various journals and outlets she has also produced work in spoken word, audio and poetry film. She is a Literary Arts Consultant and Director of the Free Writers Centre delivering online and live Creative Writing courses, coaching for writers, editing services and literary events: https://www.freewriterscentre.org/about.html

 

Please read on for five of her works:

 

That’s Not My Name – Linda Cleary

a ghost story in post punk Thatcher’s Britain

(excerpt 2020)

They called me a primadonna, even though they didn’t know what it meant. It was just another term to throw like when Nick’s mum said, ‘You think you’re so clever don’t you – with your high falutin’ words,’ before throwing me out of the house. They didn’t know I’d adopted the dictionary as my first book because words were all I had to try and communicate with an absent father, far away in another country. The school bullies liked me because I disrupted class with my questioning of lesson material. The clever ones thought I was odd. Miss. Benson’s Classics class was the best thing; a time to get lost in myth – to change my name – to be a goddess. I was never interested in Bible stories nor stories from any punishing book, instead I travelled with Odysseus and became Circe on the island of enchantment and the birthing Venusian waters of Cythera. Circe, who did not cackle, who did not jump from rock to rock like a Demented, who did not have a haggard face nor bent body, nor lured any man to do anything. Circe who was a proud dark haired wise woman, who knew the ways of herbs and how to speak with the elements, who did not like that tumble of crude men upon her peaceful island yet even as a wise woman she could not stop her heart and fell under the spell of Odysseus. Later he would say it was her, of course he said this, for he was married and so – how perfect that men have witches to blame. Circe whose name I took, impressed by what I knew was under the glamour and slander.

I’d try to take some of that magic back inside of me when I went home, back to the pub in Stockport and its yeasty smell and the insectocutor zapping flies into its tray with a death ray blue light and Dave the Brick and the guys playing darts and the women bringing dinners in and throwing them at their husbands and my mum dressed up in a posh dress from Saudi that one of her admirers bought her that worked on an oil rig over there and upstairs the plastic sheeting on the windows because Mum said it was better to be warm and ‘it’s shit out there anyway’. Like a lot of people in the early 80s we had the plastic left on the lamps and the sofa, in order that it didn’t suffer wear and tear – but putting plastic over the windows was a depressing step too far.

I got thrown out of English Literature because I called Mrs Stack a twat and Mum wrote a letter to her saying if I thought she looked like a fish she could do nothing about it – she’d found that definition in one of the encylopedias that we had upstairs. Mrs Stack didn’t let me back into the lesson though.

Most of the time I daydreamed about being famous. People said they got discovered and I would imagine how that happened – like would someone watch me in a car and then realise I was the next big thing. If I was beautiful and had a coloured mohawk like Nila and Shila the punk twins maybe being discovered would be easier. In the meantime I was careful not to step on cracks when I had all my thoughts and to make sure I said some of them three times and to learn as many plays as I could  by heart, in preparation, and to try to type on my orange typewriter even though that was always hard with Mum and Don shouting and Mum being angry after the gin and having to help her throw Don’s clothes out of the window.

The flat above the pub, though large, offered no escape: the kitchen had been painted neon green, was rarely used for cooking as most meals came out of the downstairs freezer and into the pub microwave, and it had an array of sticky paper hanging from the ceiling covered with dead flies. The living room with its windows covered with opaque plastic was always a scene of tension, dissatisfaction and anger. The hallway led to the bathroom, where one could never rest due to a knock on the door asking how long one would be, and our separate bedrooms gave shortlived respite. Above us was the floor of terror, the staircase where the ghosts came on their nightly haunt, the ones my mum said weren’t there and to stop bothering her.

above all else

I remember the penetrating stare of that woman in green

skirt bustle haughty carriage plotting murder

with the lover

the night terror that called upon me

I’m terrified of what they tell me to do

 

 

The Social Inclusion Zone – Linda Cleary

after a phone call with an arts organisation 2007

excuse me are you in the socially acceptable bring it on bubble got enough of everything don’t want have no needs nirvana where the taxes are low and you’ve got affordable housing and was that your secure relationship I just tripped over as you were showing me your certificate of sanity and all your medical reports state that you have no deteriorating conditions no prescriptions and your family genetic line does not include any blood of another national because well we’re quite particular about who is in here in this circle of inclusion oh I’m sorry did you have the impression that you could come in no no no you must stand in line stand in line then make your application in writing with joined up writing yes folks cursive strokes for the boys then fax it after you’ve looked at our online demands did you hear me I said demands we do not want your type we don’t like the look of you we cant understand your accent why don’t you just speak English properly and when we said that we had bursaries we meant that we’ll give you fuck all

 

The Compliance – Linda Cleary

during the Arab Spring, Cairo, Egypt 2011

in the human silk factory

the weavers do as they wish

kisses of stealth upon their treasures

thieves plucking feathers

ensuring no more flight

they unravel the bloodied yarn

whilst crowds gather and applause

satisfied that their own clapping hands are clean

the garments are made

the parade begins

no camouflage needed with so much acceptance

‘let’s watch as each praying mantis takes a bite

for the heads that are rolling should never have been there

and now is the good fight’

but the people forget the coat needs many threads

a shroud upon the nation

with each name obscured

 

The Cherry – Linda Cleary

during the Arab Spring, Cairo, Egypt 2013

The morning air did not dare to breathe, the trees tried to hide and even the birds kept their songs in on that day, on that day.

The man from the kiosk who always clapped his hands and shouted happily was counting anything he could count, his face turned into his work.

Some people ate breakfast, watching non stop television, aching for live death. Others waited. Waited to die.

And now the jazz piano plays, making you remember, what do you remember, what will you say you saw.

I went to the closed shutters, looked out onto the army tanks, row upon row, as they started to move. Each with a young man atop, like a cherry to the gods, his machine gun aimed.

We knew where they were going, we all knew. And we followed their path, watched and stored what we saw. We said We will not talk about this. We did not say anything.

I heard the sound of tear gas canisters exploding one by one and automatic gun fire scattering opinions yet still there was silence. I saw photographs of burnt bodies sat as charred husks and blood upon blood yet still people said there was nothing to see.

And now the jazz piano plays, making you remember, what do you remember, what will you say you saw.

I saw the tanks return, and those young soldiers were somewhere we could not see them, faces of the underworld forever turned to the dead they had created.

Some people celebrated. Others were quiet. The talking ones were taken away. And they renamed everything to make it clean and right.

But the air saw, and the trees saw, and the birds saw and the wrong stayed alive.

And now the jazz piano plays, making you remember, what do you remember, what will you say you saw.

———————————————————————–

 

Lest we forget

Rabaa massacre 14th August 2013

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2013_Rabaa_massacre

American Flag  – Linda Cleary 2006

 

No one remembered the definitive moment that the baby’s screams stopped clawing the afternoon heat with rips of anxiety

They just became aware of the silence which struck to the gut with its sickening reason

The father’s hand fell away from clutching her dress

Family blood running familiar

clotting in the sidewalk

Her small body hit his as they both went down

down

with no opposite ever to occur again

The police chief wiped his brow, thinking of the paperwork

Lucky they were Hispanic; less money to buy trouble for him

but the baby getting shot was still going to take some explanation

The mother was being sick on the molten tarmac

smell of trauma and city mixed

Hitting her head with empty hands

forever empty hands

feeling the rip in her womb

The sound of that internal scream was rising, forcing its high fury and pain out through every pore

On all fours

swaying incoherent hurling incantations to curse her husband for using their baby as a shield

A shield against what?  Life?

The marksmen exited to waiting vehicles

with debriefings to get the official line

they did not even exchange a look

but one looked at her

and felt repulsion for this outpouring

out there in full view bare and raw

He wanted to fuck her

Fuck her on the road, ram her ass and throw her down so her head split blood red gash

Then she turned and caught his eye

knew what this white policia was thinking

Seen that look before, felt those grabbing hands

heard the insults, been hit by spit

She caught his eye and hurled her ancestry

and the power of the grandmothers flew to avenge

first they ate those dead eyes

then they pulled out his dead heart

and cackling reduced him to slivers of flesh

the American flag to hoist high