by Elizabeth Hare
ISBN 978-1-9999728-8-2
Price £5
Sold out copies can be obtained direct from the poet's website: http://elizabethhare.co.uk/index.php/publications/
The poems here are concerned with issues affecting the poet’s daily life: her work with refugees, coronavirus and lockdown. Directness and warmth are their hallmark, bringing a thoughtful compassion to bear on immediate experience.
“heartfelt appreciation is exactly what I felt at the end of reading, rereading and reflecting on this beautiful timely pamphlet.” Jane Thomas, Sphinx
Undocumented
In January 2020, The Guardian reported over 600,000 undocumented migrants in this country. The authorities do not have the resources to find and deport them.
That’s how they came here,
no passports, no papers.
T shirts, shorts, flip flops,
everything they had in a plastic bag
– November in the north of England.
Four young men; I never heard their stories.
Hamid spoke a little English,
wanted to learn more.
Later he fell off his bicycle, broke his arm.
The NHS documented that.
Ramon sat in the corner and played with this phone
He didn’t speak, always afraid.
Amin lied about his age; said he was younger than he was.
Lots of us do that.
He got fined for dropping a cigarette end in the street
in Doncaster where he went visiting.
The Council documented that.
Dyar only stayed one day,
cadged twenty quid off someone and went to Liverpool.
The others stayed two years and were refused
the new life, the freedom they came looking for,
so they took it anyway, and disappeared.
They are out there somewhere, falling off bicycles
dropping cigarette ends.
I document them here.