The Red Suitcase
Under
the bottom bunk was my mother’s red suitcase. It was
battered and covered with peeling old stickers of foreign countries.
Occasionally, on rainy days, I’d remember it, drag it out and go
through its secrets. There was an old photo album with Cyprus
written on the cover in gold lettering. Inside were photographs of my
mother as a skinny teenager, her cocked head looking too big for her
body and her face not yet grown to fit her big smile. She was dressed
like Nanny, the two of them in identical outfits, wearing lace
gloves, standing side by side, squinting in the tropical sun.
My
favourite photos were a sequence of pictures of a wild looking
fancy-dress party. I didn’t recognise anyone but my mother. In one
picture she stuck her tongue out at the lens. In another, a man with
a comic moustache picked her up, twirled her around and he nearly
dropped her. The party people were all laughing and moving, their
elbows stuck out like chickens dancing the twist. My mum was dressed
like a pirate, wearing a beard and an eye patch. I wished I could
turn the volume up on these images, and hear all the laughter and the
music. And later in the album there were the few photographs of us as
babies with Dad.
A
flat yellow envelope held all my mother’s stunning modelling shots
and contact sheets. She was so beautiful; in some she was lying on
sand dunes and in others she was dressed in go-go dancer’s clothes
– a waistcoat, top hat and black, short wig – and looked like
Liza Minnelli. And I remember there was the silk, burgundy and pink,
paisley cravat that had once been my father’s. The material was
crumbly and worn, I sniffed at its musty perfume of roses and
cinnamon.
That
red suitcase was like a Russian doll with hidden pockets and bags
within where I’d discover: Theatre programmes and old bus tickets;
silver glitter stick-on stars and gold eye shadows; handkerchiefs
folded around lost single earrings; bags of beads and hippy jewellery
and four-leaf clovers wrapped in tissue. There was a bag of wigs, a
pair of knee-high banana yellow boots and a tiny
black PVC mini-dress.
This
was the evidence of my mother’s life before I was born. Her
triumphs as a young athlete in the All England championships; her
Olympic dream and her Royal Ballet dream; her Gold medals and Swan
Lake dreams; her teenage years in Hong Kong and Cyprus, and also her
wild go-go dancing days. My mum used to hint that she had partied and
performed with a cool sixties crowd, mentioning the likes of
Englebert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, Stevie Wonder and Georgie Fame.
With her best mate Leslie, Mum was the tall skinny dark one and
Leslie the tall blonde and the way my mum tells it, the world was
oyster-like for the pair of them.
The
truth was it always felt as though my mother could drag her suitcase
out from under our bed and slip back into herself if she wanted to.
I thought of these things as her superhero costume. That she could
stick the glittery stars back on her face, put on the yellow go-go boots and use a bus ticket from before to get back to then and who I knew she really was.
Thank you to all who made it down to LIVEwire #heforshe #artsweekldn poetry party!!
Thank you UN Women and thank you Second Home! Thank you to my comrades
Joelle Taylor, Inua Ellams, Dzifa Benson, Matt Abbott, Michelle Fisher,
Selina Nwulu, Connor Byrne, Lisa Luxx and Sabrina Mahfouz
T H A N K Y O U
some excellent events coming up, booking essential
March 17th | HUH | LSO | ST LUKES | SHOREDITCH
March 29th | MC ANGEL BOOK LAUNCH | KINGS CROSS
March 30th | ALABASTER DE PLUME | PEACH | DALSTON
April 5 | PESSIMISM IS FOR LIGHTWEIGHTS | ARNOLFINI, BRISTOL
April 5 | PESSIMISM IS FOR LIGHTWEIGHTS | ARNOLFINI, BRISTOL
Spring 2018 -
new work and new books
In collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra and Jerwood
Foundation composer Jasmin Kent Rodgman. HUH will feature a brand new work, plus a
performance of Shade from The Good Immigrant with interactive soundscape and music. This exciting line up of poetry and music and live performance premieres at LSO, St Lukes, Shoreditch on March 17th 2018.
A selection of new poems, Pessimism Is For Lightweights, pieces of courage and resistance, by Salena Godden, will be published by Rough Trade Books in June 2018. Rough Trade Books is an exciting new publishing venture in the mould of the pioneering record label.
Out now! Woman poetry anthology was published last week on International woman day 2018. 16 international poets, edited by Rita Osei and Michelle Olly, 50 poems on themes of birth, growth and adolescence, available at amazon now.
Mrs
Death Misses Death is a work in progress, a fiction with a
soundtrack composed by Peter Coyte. Early drafts of this book were
shared at a sold out show at Last Word Festival, The Roundhouse, June
2017. This project is in development, supported by Blah, Blah, Blah
at The Bristol Old Vic and The Society of Authors. A BBC documentary
Mrs Death Misses Death is scheduled for
broadcast later in 2018.
New anthology successfully crowdfunded with Unbound, with all net profits
going to charity.
A collection on the theme of ‘other’ and a spectacular line up that includes work
from Damian Barr, Noam Chomsky, Rishi Dastidar, Salena Godden, Colin Grant, Matt Haig, AL
Kennedy, Kamila Shamsie and many other-others, edited by writer and psychologist, Charles
Fernyhough, due for publication later in 2018.
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