Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His second collection, After the Formalities, is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize. The following poem is taken from the award-winning writer’s recently published collection, Heritage Aesthetics. Channelling his family’s migratory histories between Cyprus and the UK, Anaxagorou’s restlessly experimental work interrogates how nations, citizens and their bloodlines continue to be shaped by the twin forces of colonialism and patriarchy
Sergeant Clerk is the Acorn’s clerk
But is prone to get in rages.
If the Wogs give any trouble
He puts them into cages.
– The Grenadier magazine, published in British Cyprus, 1958
Boy at the back, why have you come here
the wrong way round & why do you struggle
to tell the group how many of the tribe
you’ve brought along with you?
I love this country (I do)
but its yesterday is father-terrifying
we swapped a cage for a cage
as you do
both grandparents splitting mops & bruised plums
Christmas ’88
that was my family living with the family
from next door the kids by the barbed
wire fence playing with prayers they couldn’t use dressing
me in a flag that was unlike mine
(God grew into a secret way of admitting trouble)
each Remembrance Sunday I knelt
in a field behind the house where only twigs
found it in them to bend a shot rabbit running
from what I couldn’t see
most of life happens behind us or has happened in a different colour
the TV in our kitchen lost its mind
at my mother’s immigrant face
despite her best shepherd’s pie
my father his briefcase
made of genuine leather said boy
wherever you stand make sure
you can be seen
&
don’t move
don’t say another fucking
thing
Heritage Aesthetics by Anthony Anaxagorou is published by Granta, out now
This article is taken from Port issue 31. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here
