Refugees

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Britain has a rich tradition of literary diarists, from Samuel Pepys and James Boswell to Frances Partridge and Alan Bennett. We also have a rich tradition of spoof diarists, who seem realer than real to many readers: Charles Pooter, Bridget Jones, Adrian Mole. Canterbury Christ Church University has partnered with the local charitable organisation Canterbury 4 Ukraine – find out more at https://canterbury4ukraine.org/.

And on the subject of Henry, the two of us are on tour together next year when we’ll be coming to: Bexhill-on-Sea, Salford, Sunderland, Leeds, Bury St Edmonds, Stroud and Bath (in February); Monmouth, Exeter, Oxford, Coventry, Wolverhampton, London (in March); Ilkley and Nottingham (in April).Are you intending to be two and a half hours late for all your events, like you were for that one in Glasgow the other week? Activities across the booklets are as consistent, to provide an equal understanding of each poem, and include (amongst many others): Thanks very much for getting in touch – and for choosing my book for your English analysis. Here’s my attempt to answer your questions: On 4 March 2022, eight days after Russia invaded Ukraine, he tweeted it again. Refugees are fleeing bombs. They're heading across Europe, especially to Poland. The men are staying to defend their country. After all that, I’ll be going easy on events for a while, catching up on laundry etc, maybe even writing some poems.

Image: “It is not okay to say / Those are people just like us / A place should only belong to those who are born there” Despite the followers and the social media Poet Laureate accolade, Bilston is still reluctant to call himself a poet. “I’m just someone who writes poems,” he says. As millions of people flee bombing in Ukraine, most media and political comment has been rightly sympathetic. But refugees from other parts of the world, like those escaping war in Syria or violence in Central America, are often described very differently. That scapegoating is turned around in “Refugees,” a 2016 poem by British poet Brian Bilston. It’s a “reverse poem,” meant to be read from the top and then from the bottom—completely changing the framing from suspicion to sharing. I think it's the combination of the topic with the format - read from top to bottom, it's the kind of extreme, uncaring position that makes you - well, me at least - increasingly incensed and incredulous - so the reversal acts as a kind of relief. You've had to go on a journey to get there.Diary Entry’ - to help students to ‘Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation. Make an informed personal response, recognising that other responses to a text are possible and evaluating these.’ The refugee crisis is one of the biggest problems facing the world right now. According to the UNHCR, there are more than 50 million people across the globe who have had to flee their homes. In an age where social media is a tool for self-promotion, Bilston goes against the grain by using the form to mask his identity. The idea of a persona developed organically, with “Brian” starting life as a football correspondent for a fictional newspaper, The Dudley Echo. As many of you know, I will be embarking on a tour over the coming months, on which I shall be reading some of my poems in front of mildly perplexed and bewildered audiences around the UK. I thought I would take this opportunity to answer some of the most common questions I get asked in response to this news.

Here’s one of those mildly boring updates about when and where I’ll be reading poems over the coming months. In his tweet-length poems, he juggles entendres: “you took / the last bus home / don’t know how you got it through the door / you’re always doing amazing stuff / like that time / you caught a train.” But the playful needling becomes a skewer in his longer fare. This week, following the awful events in Brussels, a seemingly dark poem about refugees has been shared thousands of times online. Read it here:Featured image illustration by Daria Hlazatova from Chernivtsi, Ukraine ( https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/) No, it is my intention to be on time for all future events, despite travelling by network rail to most of them. I am factoring in a cushion of 72 hours into my journey times to offset any rail delays. Days Like These joins You Took the Last Bus Home, Alexa, what is there to know about love? and Refugees in being available in North America. Often, giving “both sides” equal weight in an attempt to be fair is a false equivalence. Flat earthers shouldn’t get as much air time, column inches, or lesson time as demonstrable science. The cleverness of this poem is that it uses both sides in a provocative, productive, and positive way. It’s important to remember that this poem was not written about nice white refugees; it’s about refugees of all colours.