Photo exhibition // High Volume: Bristol Sounds

 

Soon here in Bristol, as part of the Photo Festival.

I've met Mark many times, he's adorable and had followed Bristol music scene from the early 1990s! 

Looking forward to this.

High Volume: Bristol Sounds

Photographs from Mark Simmons

 

Autumn 2021 (TBC) | Venue: Strange Brew

 

 

Photographs documenting Bristol’s music scene since the early 1980s by Mark Simmons will go on display, many for the first time as part of Bristol Photo Festival.

 Studio portraits of artists such Massive Attack and Roni Size & Reprazent are shown alongside photographs capturing music events and venues across the city, ranging from St Paul’s Carnival to Aston Court Festival, Malcolm X, Trinity and Easton Community Centre. 

Collectively, these photographs demonstrate the diversity and energy of music in and across the city.

 

I really didn't expect this for this month of May 2021, already full of good news... But one of my poems has been published online by this lovely new website: Thawra.

I've been writing poetry for decades but rarely dared to send any...

Very grateful for this opportunity !

You can read here.

An extract here:

And the whole poem: 

Heavenly Gardens

An enemy of our future

Is walking by at dawn.

Our city, darker and darker,

Violated by a gesture,

All broken, drowned and done.

Paris floats like a dreamer.

Its people have become ghosts,

Lost in fear and in terror

Due to men whose hearts turned to stone.

Our meaning has gotten lost

And we no longer can honour

The promise we’ll never be alone.

After death should have come heaven,

We could only find blurred limbos.

Our children will have to look at a glow,

For a path cast away behind a forgotten garden;

And, you and I, we don’t know where it goes.

I only fathom my soul’s salvation, far below.

But the victims are sometimes silenced,

And the real perpetrators masquerade as saviours.

They have buried the traces of the past and distanced

Themselves from their old guilty crimes and dishonours.

Lost lives are all mourned,

But only some get to defend their dolors.

Deep inside my heart, I feel another world breathes,

Way underground, or over the rainbow,

And you and I can reach its gates if we drive

Far, far away, along the right way, beyond death.

Under a wreath, I will carry a crown and take a bow

While you will be able to catch the beat where we thrive.

By Melissa Chemam

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Thanks ever so much to the literary magazine Thawra for publishing my poetry... 

Thawra in Arabic means Revolution, a key word in my life! 

'Heavenly Gardens' was inspired by my experience just before, during and after the Paris attacks in 2015, and the love, inspiration and rebirth I found by coming to Bristol after spending 3 months in a war zone in Central Africa, weeks working on news from the Middle East - and especially Gaza and Turkey, then these terrible terrorist attacks and their aftermath... 

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And do check their website for more poems.

melissa x  

#FreePalestine

 Bristol, Saturday 15 May, from 2 to 5pm 

 Castle Park

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Just a few photos, really... There is so little we can do from here.

London had a big march too and the Palestinian Ambassador spoke strong words on the BBC. I really wish the UK would take responsibility and recognise the imbalance in the conflit, the utter injustice for the Palestinians, the horrible breaches of human rights, and the current situation of apartheid..

#FreePalestine

Photos from other marchers:

GAZA: TMR Call for Submissions

 

The Markaz Review is open for submission on this theme: 

GAZA 

- Call for Submissions, Pub. Date 15 July 2021

 

No place is safe in Gaza but everyone dreams of better tomorrows—every Gazan is looking for the sky and access to the sea. As the late Anthony Bourdain once remarked, “The world has visited many terrible things on the Palestinian people, none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity.” Make no mistake— Gaza is Palestine and the subject of TMR’s July 2021 issue.

The siege of Gaza is the longest siege of a city or a major land area in modern history. Even the worst, most brutal sieges of the 20^th century, in Madrid and Leningrad, lasted less than three years, while the siege of Sarajevo stretched on for four. Meanwhile Gaza struggles into its 14th year, often without electricity, sanitation and proper food and medical supplies, even in the face of Covid. In March of 2018, desperate for major relief, Gazans organized the Great March of Return, an organic protest movement along the barrier fence with Israel that lasted until December of the following year; while barely getting the world’s attention, thousands of Gazans were injured by Israeli sniper fire, and hundreds were killed.

 

As we write, Gazans are waiting for the next war. It could come tomorrow, next week, or next year. No one knows when, but dread remains in the air the people breathe — their fear strangely co-existing with hope — hope that it will be possible to be a human being and a Palestinian at the same time.  

 

TMR seeks essays, short stories, poetry, videos, podcasts and art that helps us think more clearly about Gaza and see Gazans as Palestinians and as a people fighting for freedom, the freedom we all deserve. 

Please submit your query to editor-at-the-markaz no later than June 30th. The deadline for copy is July 10, 2021:

 

https://themarkaz.org/submissions

Submissions range from 750 to 3,000 words, but please query with a one- or two-paragraph pitch, writing to editor@themarkaz.org.

 

Podcast Ep. 37: With artist Susan Thomson

 

New podcast episode!

This week, focus on how the arts responded to the past 12 months...

To do so, I interview artist Susan Thomson who gives us her thoughts about the pandemic.

She talks about her recent film essay 'The Cytokine Storms', in which she explores the colonial echoes of the UK government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

You can see the film here on CIRCA Art magazine's website. 

CIRCA is delighted to host on its website 'The Cytokine Storms' (2020, 38 mins), a film-essay by regular contributor Susan Thomson. Written and directed by Thomson, this lyrical essay film explores the colonial echoes of the UK government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The film looks at colonial responses to the Irish and Indian famines, laissez-faire economics and indifference to marginalised lives, interweaving contemporary personal and geopolitical events. The film is accompanied by a newly commissioned essay where Thomson takes us through the genesis of the film.

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ALSO on this episode - we've got a stunning brand new track Willing from Lady Nade - she says: 'Willing is a message of acceptance, loyalty and friendship, particularly poignant after this prolonged period of separation. All too often we try to be the person we think other people want us to be rather than ourselves. Willing is a celebration of who we are and we can support each other.' 

PLUS - we bring you our usual round up of positive responses to the virus from around the world.... 

Music: 

-'Willing', Lady Nade 

-'Hot Flu', Seb Gutiez, The Old Bones Collective - opening music 

Hosts and Producers: 

Melissa Chemam and Pommy Harmar 

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To listen:

https://the-quarantini.captivate.fm/episode/a-quarantini-with-susan-thomson

A Quarantini with artist Susan Thomson

Wangari Maathai & The Green Belt Movement

 

My latest piece for I AM History:

Celebrating Black History

Wangari Maathai 

& The Green Belt Movement

by

MELISSA CHEMAM

Though these past few years have brought improvement, too often Black voices are left out of the conversation on environmentalism and sustainability. So is the Global South in general. In mainstream western media, white activism is celebrated, even from places where the climate emergency has so far had a smaller impact than in parts of Africa, America and Asia – ravaged by floods, droughts and other disasters affecting biodiversity.

A symbol of this appropriation was the photograph where the young Uganda activist Vanessa Nakate was posing with other teen activists including Swedish school-striker Greta Thunberg… A photo entirely media cropped to feature ‘Greta’ at the centre, erasing Vanessa altogether!

Nonetheless, environmental researchers and activists have been doing an incredible job from the Global South for decades. And one of the most admirable voices in that field was certainly Wangari Maathai, who was a pioneer from the 1960s and has left a mark with her work.

Wangarĩ Muta was born on 1 April 1940 in the Nyeri District in central Kenya, under Britain’s colonial rule, in a kikuyu family, the ethnic majority. She was taught English at a young age and sent to a Catholic school. She was sheltered there during the first years of the Mau Mau uprising, which later led to the liberation of Kenya in December 1963. 

Luisa Neubauer, Greta Thunberg, Isabelle Axelsson, and Loukina Tille, as they appeared in the photo initially posted by AP. Markus Schreiber / AP

The uncropped photo featuring Nakate that was later uploaded by AP. Markus Schreiber / AP

In September 1960, she was chosen to take part in a programme to study in the United States with 300 other Kenyan students, receiving a scholarship to go to Kansas. She majored in biology, with minors in chemistry and German. She then studied at the University of Pittsburgh for a master’s degree in biology, where she first practiced environmental restoration. Wangari received her MSc in biological sciences in 1966 and returned to Kenya, where she was supposed to start a position as a research assistant to a professor of zoology at University College of Nairobi. Yet, on arrival, the position had been given to someone else, which, she always believed, was due to gender bias. 

Portrait of Wangari Maathai taken in 1989 by David Blumenkrantz

After two month, she was offered a job as a research assistant in the School of Veterinary Medicine at University College of Nairobi by Professor Reinhold Hofmann. There she met Mwangi Maathai, her future husband, in 1966.  She soon started a PhD at the University of Giessen in Germany and, from 1969, worked as an assistant lecturer. In 1971, she became the first Eastern African woman to receive a PhD, from the University College of Nairobi, which became the University of Nairobi the following year.

Once married and a mother, Maathai continued to teach, as a senior lecturer then associate professor, also the first woman in Nairobi appointed to these positions, and started campaigning for equal benefits for the women working at the university. Her interest in activism grew and she joined numerous civic organisations in the early 1970s, including the Kenya Red Cross Society and the Environment Liaison Centre, established in 1974. 

To her, environmental degradation soon appeared at the root of most of Kenya’s problems, and when her husband became an elected Member of Parliament, she started campaigning for more jobs in environmental restoration and tree planting.

Only a few years later she founded the Green Belt Movement, encouraging women especially to create tree nurseries. The indigenous, grassroots, and non-governmental organisation, based in Nairobi, took a holistic approach to development by focusing on environmental conservation, community development, capacity building, and women’s rights. 

Wangari Maathai

In 2003, then divorced, she herself became an elected Member of the Parliament of Kenya, serving as assistant minister for environment and natural resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki.  

A social, environmental and political activist, Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. She passed away on 25 September 2011 but her legacy is immense and unforgettable, an inspiration for environmentalists in Africa.