poetry – Tertiary

Jude: Human Amongst Robots (Poem)

Jude was born in Brazil, and moved to Italy when he was 11 years old. He moved to England as a young adult, before later returning to his beloved Italy.

When I was 24, I decided to leave Italy and have a ‘London experience’. I arrived there alone, and I had to start from zero – that meant a new job, new house, new friends, and a new culture. It was the most wonderful, painful experience I’ve ever had.

London is amazing – loads of culture, hundreds of things to do…but mostly you are alone. And when you come from a Latino/Mediterranean culture, you are taught to expect a ‘mi casa es tu casa‘ welcome. In the UK, I had to face the fact that ‘mi casa es tu casa…if I want you here.’ I was living with deep depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

For the first three years, I had a love-hate relationship with the country.

I didn’t share my experience with other immigrants that were in my position. It was only after I published my poetry book ‘Words/Wars’ that a few people reached out to me: “I thought I was the only one that lived in that loneliness.”

I would say this: this might not be the last place you live in. Give yourself the opportunity to live more experiences and see more places. Don’t build boundaries; be open, because life changes, and you will change with it.

LND
The fog is in town and
my heart is gone.
I am drinking a hot cappuccino
in Starbucks,
and voices are all around me.
Memories of my life get
louder in here
because this place is so empty,
and people
look like crazy robots.
I don’t miss being a robot.
I am real now.
A human amongst robots.
I have a heart that pulses hard.

Jude tweets at @JsaintJude, and his debut poetry book is for sale on Amazon.

Hannah: TCKs and the Arts

Hannah is a Third Culture Kid who grew up between Ghana and the USA. She is the founder of TCK Art website ‘cUlture MiKs‘.

“My TCK experience was a lonely one, full of transitions and travel and impermanence; and my way of dealing with that was to create art. As a child, I wrote songs and poetry and stories because I believed I was the only one who felt the way I did.”

Hannah spent much of her time in Ghana without the company of other TCKs, unaware that other people like her existed.

In an interview with TCK Care, she explains, “I didn’t know anybody else like me. No one had ever told me they felt like me, so a lot of my art in my younger years came out of that sense of ‘I must write because there’s nothing out there that really expresses me.'”

It was only when she returned to the USA for university that she found a community of TCKs online, who shared her experience and emotions.

“That’s why I made [the website] – to be a resource for people to find other TCKs who feel things similar to them. It’s like, ‘hey, you’re not alone in this, we all feel this way.'”

Now, Hannah’s website is a source of comfort, inspiration, and solidarity for TCKs all over the world, with a wide range of contributors. She’s collected a range of poetry, music, videos, and paintings dealing with themes of identity, home, and culture, and she is still open to submissions! If you like to express yourself through art or are interested in other peoples’ TCK experiences, Culture Miks just might be the place for you.

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton

Kirstie: The Perils of Change (Poem)

Kirstie Sivapalan is a Geordie-born writer based in the south of England. She lives with ME, but spends her time writing stories and poetry, and helping people with social media.

“Change often involves dissolving of ideas, beliefs, relationships and structures in our lives that we may think we are ready to leave behind, but when those changes start to happen around us it can feel like our whole world is falling away. Not only that, we then realise we can no longer go back and even more fright-inducing is the dawning that we don’t know what the world will look like ahead of us […] All you can do is keep moving forward carefully, one foot in front of the other.”

This poem originally appeared on Crystallising Dream, and has been reproduced with the author’s permission.

You’ll find more of Kirstie’s creative work on her blog, which focuses on connection and disconnection with the world around us. She tweets at @KirstieWrites.

Literary Journals Looking for Diverse Writers

Is there anything as cathartic as processing your experiences, identity, and emotions through writing? If you decide your writing needs a home online, it can be a little daunting! Where do you even start?

This list will point you towards a few of the literary journals and e-mags that excel in promoting voices from a range of cultures. Why not just submit, and see where it takes you?

A Gathering of Tribes – In their words, ‘A Gathering of Tribes is an arts and cultural organization dedicated to excellence in the arts from a diverse perspective.’ They publish poetry, prose, essays, and reviews.

The Acentos Review – Latinos, this one’s for you! Accepting work in Spanish, English, Portuguese, or a combination, this magazine is looking for work from Latinx writers.

aaduna – This journal is particularly interested in providing a platform for writers of colour. In their words, ‘aaduna welcomes all work that addresses multicultural themes, and bolsters human dignity. ‘

Apogee – Their focus is identity politics, so if you have writing or art around the themes of race, gender, sexuality, class, ability or intersectional identities, definitely worth checking these guys out!

Callaloo – ‘A journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters’. A very reputable journal publishing poetry and essays by writers of African descent.

Cha – This journal publishes work with Asian themes, and work by Asian writers. They are an English-language online journal, based in Hong Kong.

Human/Kind – This journal focuses on Japanese short-forms of poetry and art, talking about the human experience, culture, and current events. They describe themselves as a community that ’embraces diversity’, and they accept non-English submissions (providing they come with a translation).

Kweli – In their words, ‘Kweli’s mission is to nurture emerging writers of colour and create opportunities for their voices to be recognized and valued.’

Solstice – Solstice is a literary magazine searching for high quality writing and photography from diverse perspectives. In their words, ‘We publish underserved writers, or writers on the margins. We publish writers of diverse nationalities, races and religions, and also writers from diverse cultures within our culture.’

Sukoon – This magazine works to showcase literature and art with Arab themes, discussing the diversity of Arab identity and experience. They publish work in English.

Piroska: First Days in Vancouver (Poem)

Piroska was born in Switzerland to a Swiss mother and a Hungarian father, with whom she moved to Canada as a child. She was a stay-at-home mother and housewife, and now as an ’empty-nester’ is exploring her creative side.

Being an immigrant to Canada changed my life, even though I was young when we moved. My dad’s perception of “us vs. them” came up often – in his eyes, European was often ‘better’. He looked down on his neighbours. Maybe it was his way of compensating for what he thought he lacked.

First Days in Vancouver

I could feel my mother’s sadness–
it filled the room like a thick fog.

I stared out the hotel window
and saw nothing but gloom and grey;
the rain ran in rivulets down the pane,
like the tears on my mother’s face.

Vancouver was an ugly city,
to my five-year old eyes.
The buildings were huge concrete monsters,
and the constant sounds terrified me.

Horns beeped incessantly; police sirens shrieked.
The sound of people rushing about–
the buzzing of busy-ness.

My parents would take us for walks,
but it was hard not to get soaked,
dodging huge puddles,
and I couldn’t get the stench
of worms out of my head.

I wanted to hear the pealing of church bells,
feel the rounded cobblestones
beneath my feet.

I missed the green meadows,
alpen wildflowers,
and going for walks with my granny.

I missed…
my old life.

Piroska posts her writing at Creative Journeys, and you can find her on Twitter @pippirose77.