Friday Poem – ‘Consider’ by Angela Graham

~ Seren Books

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Consider’ by Angela Graham from her collection Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere.

Sanctuary is – urgent. The pandemic has made people crave it; political crises are denying it to millions; the earth is no longer our haven. In Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere, Angela Graham and five other writers from Wales and Northern Ireland, addresses the many meanings of sanctuary from the inside. How we can save the earth, ourselves and others? How valid is the concept of a ‘holy’ place these days? Are any values still sacrosanct? We all deserve peace and security but can these be achieved without exploitation?

With Phil Cope, Viviana Fiorentino, Mahyar, Csilla Toldy and Glen Wilson

Consider Why do you still call me ‘refugee’? Do you want me to be forever fleeing? I have fled. Now I am here, trying to keep both feet on the ground and find my balance. Sometimes I feel I have two hearts. One, the first-created − taut as a drum-skin in my chest − trembles at far-off shifts of energy in the fault-lines of the home I left. The other has grown itself around the first as lymph spreads on the surface of a wound; as albumen, fragile, tremulous, helps a new life mesh itself together somehow. I was a refugee. Now I am here where I have to do so much explaining, where I have to live so much on your terms and I am growing this second heart as bravely as I can. Where I came from will always be where I come from and now I come from − and so let me be − here.

Sanctuary: There Must Be Somewhere is currently: £4.99 in our January Sale

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Watch Angela Graham reading her poem ‘Home’ on our Youtube channel:

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