The Immigration Handbook E-Book

Caroline Smith

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 43

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

"These poems are very moving and it's hard to do justice to the way Caroline Smith conveys the anxieties, hopes and disappointments experienced by immigrants. She never allows the reader to forget that behind the refugee statistics there are suffering human beings; very often the victims of a seemingly insensitive and overstretched bureaucracy." – Lord Alf Dubs "The detail is magnificent ...there is an implicit tenderness and stoicism inthe lives of these characters which shines through." – Angela Platt, Orbis Vividly detailed and emotionally powerful, The Immigration Handbook is as revealing as it is timely. Here we meet with the individuals that the news stories only speak of as numbers. These are lives fraught with violence and tragedy that Caroline Smith has encountered in her work as the asylum caseworker for a London MP. We journey with them through the labyrinthine government bureaucracies they must navigate to survive. With clarity and integrity she lays before us stories of stoic resilience and humorous forbearance, of kindness to others and of joy in the midst of sorrow. These are poems that step out of the headlines and into our hearts.

Leseprobe

for Barry

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

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The right of Caroline Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Caroline Smith 2016

ISBN: 978-1-78172-321-0

ebook: 978-1-78172-322-7

Kindle: 978-1-78172-323-4

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Cover Artwork: ‘Panel 57: the female workers were the last to arrive north, 1940-41’ copyright Estate of Jacob Lawrence. ARS, NY and DACS, London 2015.

Printed in Bembo by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow.

Whilst the lives represented in these poems reflect actual events and experiences, all names have been changed and no individual is identifiable.

Contents

On Hold

The Boxer

The Scarlet Lizard

Lime Tree Honey

I.S 96

Brook Court

Teenager

Eaton House

Citizenship Ceremony

Luck

Selection

Red Road Flats

The Pilgrimage

The Jumper

Asylum Documents

Mrs Shah’s Complaint

The Administrative Removal Officer

Jozef Rexha – salesman

Judicial Consideration

Settlement

Delay

Pro Bono 1

Pro Bono 2

Fault Line

Tangiers

Spouse Visa

Removal

Valerie

Answer Machine

Apology

Judgements

The Strange Tale of the Immigration Judge & the Carpet Seller of Kampala

Note on Home Office file

Domestic worker

Home Office Files

Nativity

Ali

Removal Directions

Heron Flats

Advice Surgery in the Methodist Church Hall

Letters

Mr Giang

Nursery Tales

Father

Omnipotence

Dr Gopal

Surgery Note 1

Surgery Note 2

Appeal Judge

Asylum Interview

New email address

Promise

Chance

Stamps

Acknowledgements

‘It reduces the weight otherwise to be accorded to the requirements of firm and fair immigration control, if the delay is shown to be the result of a dysfunctional system which yields unpredictable, inconsistent and unfair outcomes.’

– Lord Bingham

I have found myself judge in the Court of King Shahrayar

A thousand and one tales of despair poured before me

From an un-stoppered jar

Stories of perilous journeys made over desert sands

Of palaces that rise up overnight only to disappear at dawn

A speaking bird serves a dish of cucumbers stuffed with pearls

This woman with no documents has only the eloquence of her words

On Hold

‘There is no timescale for dealing with this application.’

He was just twenty-three,

Arjan Mehta, when first he began

calling the Home Office

from a red phone box

on the corner of Preston Road;

would push against

and let fall behind him

the heavy creaking door,

into its stale, vacated, smoke smell,

stand on its concrete, littered floor

his fingers twisting through

the plastic snake cord,

dragging round the metal dial,

eager about his application.

Seventeen years have passed

with no answer.

He is now forty.

The sealed-up phone box

long out of service,

the black cradle

within its sepulchre,

silent as an obsidian urn.

The Boxer

As if I’ve moved a board from the grass

and uncovered white, straggly, bolted strands,

this one-time Russian boxer

has emerged after years of hiding.

His nose undulates, the tip protruding

from his flattened face, his pallid skin shows

the scars of fights and drifting,

as he gesticulates the story of his last fight

in 1997 against Gary Stone-Face Henderson –

former middleweight champion –

a warm-up act in a half-full, blue-lit arena

an unequal contest he couldn’t win.

How, as his gumshield was removed

and water splashed over his swollen head

and as the crowd surged to its feet roaring

the entrance of the hero on the main bill,

he had slipped away from his minders

his fixers and the restrictions of his visa

into the urban undergrowth of bus shelters,

the shredded hessian of unlocked sheds.

Somewhere in the damp holds of the Home Office

a scrap of paper with his name was lost,

overlain with the heavy files of newer conflicts

and the years, like a soothing poultice,

began to break down his identity,

braille his documents with mildew and

the wet, black gills of fungus; crumble

the pages into the soil he’s become a part of.

The Scarlet Lizard

Nothing moves

except the evening light

crossing the Judge’s room.

The lawyers’ skeleton arguments

lay piled on his desk.

They seemed to him brittle

as bleached poppies,

tapped of their seeds.

He longed to see the quick movement

of a scarlet lizard weaving unexpectedly

through the parched, cracked hexagons

of a legal phrase, to hear the snapped stick

fritter away from a hiding place;

to feel the cold, diaphanous weed grip

in the black current of a border crossing.

He needed to sense some quiver of

indecision, an odd detail

that would open the truth of their words;

chinks of light shining

through shuttered doors.

Lime Tree Honey

The regulation for Citizenship demands proof that an applicant was in the UK exactly five years before the date of application.