Shohrab Jahan and Ruth Kelly getting some space together at Spurn Point on a day for reflection , photo by Emilie Flower, 2019
‘Fieldwork poems’, are a collection of poems written and performed by Ruth Kelly in response to the project and as part of her Phd research looking at how storytelling can help activists re-imagine development and human rights.
Ruth attended the Cheragi Art Show 7 during the project fieldwork and performed her poems in the Baatighar bookshop at the Cheragi Art Show 7 and at Lantern Meet Foundation poetry circles in Kampala.
Spurn Point
I’ll bring you nowhere
To do nothing for a day
Sort of ritual.
After Cheragi
The tug and the tumble
Of all we were born to
And all of the choices we make.
Feet sink into the wet clay
At the edge of the river.
Distant lights glitter.
This far out, birds are still singing.
Your hand reaches out
And sets Mars spinning
And shifting in colour against
The deepening blue of the day.
The tide turns and swells.
Light up the old cinema hall:
The show is about to play.
Bombo Road, Kampala
Hesitate (.) one, two seconds longer,
cars streaming past, gaps must be
larger and an unfamiliar caution,
three, four—fear even—clutches (.)
before I grab a chance and dash
(sometimes drivers take pity and let me pass).
Love is patient, love is kind.
Sometimes it is self-seeking. It slips
accusatory statements in
to make sure you are blamed. Love says: sorry (.)
I didn’t mean to keep a record of wrongs.
Things I have carry traces like a cap
you gave me that I wear under helmets
on the safe bodas I take because
I know you are worried and what do you do
with terror when you don’t pray.
Love is the not unjustified fear
that this most precious person
just won’t come back and—five, six—
the commitment to caution; each time
I go out you know there’s a chance
– one in how many—that I get knocked down.
Love endures all things.
Love’s habit of talking things over can lance
the impulse to write. But that talk can say things
I otherwise can’t; something true that can help
to get all of that back; to write in tongues
less indulgent, pretentious; tongues less abstract
(knowledge and prophecies won’t pass away).
- Initial publication, The Irish Journal of Anthropology
“This poem was composed and revised for the fortnightly poetry circle organised by Lantern Meet Foundation in Kampala, Uganda. It provides a sensual description of my experience of occupying ways of perceiving and being that are similar to those engaged in by the artists and activists I am working with in Uganda, namely negotiating Kampala traffic. The representation of love and risk also reflects the emotive and sensory backdrop against which ethnographic research is carried out.”