Publish and be damned

More - a poem

Greetings from Suffolk and welcome to each and every one of you kind enough to share your time with me in this space. A special welcome to new subscribers reading their first newsletter today. I am a little like a magpie with my writing, I pick and mix subjects as they take my fancy or grab my attention so you can expect something different every week. Lovely to meet you! Thank you for being here.

Poetry is fast becoming a new love, I like to practice my writing most days, mostly short haikus which I can scribble down and tweak whilst making tea or watching the tv in the evening. Researching deeper I have been drawn to the patterns, the syllable counts and rhythms in the words that I pay attention to more and more when reading or listening to poets. One of my lovely readers, Vicky, thank you Vicky, pointed me in the direction of Hollie McNish, an established poet who unfortunately isn’t on Substack (find her on Instagram and TikTok) and listening to her poetry has been a revelation. I had never heard of free verse, and finding Holly and her poems has opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for me into my foray into the poetry world.

This week, the world’s news has been headlined by the sinking of the yacht Bayesian last weekend in a storm whilst anchored near Sicily. Any loss of life is a tragedy and I am sad to read the latest news that five more bodies have recovered, may they rest in peace. Whilst rescue efforts are still ongoing (at the time of writing), and being reported on, I couldn’t help thinking the extensive coverage in the British press is a sharp contrast to the interest shown in the loss of hundreds of people in June last year after the fishing vessel Adriana sunk off the coast of Greece, carrying approximately 750 passengers.

I use the word passengers purposefully, the term asylum seekers appears to have a strange affect on people, the mention of them divides nations and neighbours, but here I am referring to people, the same as you and me. Human beings with hopes and dreams, who bleed when cut and laugh at funny cat videos.

Apart from the fact both ships sunk in the darkness there is not much else that links these two tragic sailing disasters. The Bayesian, a luxury 180ft superyacht was carrying 12 passengers and 10 crew. Passengers were the guests of an English billionaire, invited for a holiday in the warm waters of the Med. The stunningly beautifully £30m yacht was struck by a freak summer storm and sank rapidly just before dawn. Fifteen people survived including, miraculously, a one year old girl. The search and rescue has being ongoing for four days with updates relayed by the world’s media at every twist and turn.

The other vessel, Adriana, was an old rusting fishing boat about 70ft long. She sailed from Tobruk in Libya carrying up to 750 people, each paying around £3,500 for the privilege of travelling in filthy conditions five hundred nautical miles to Italy in search of a better life. Approaching Messania, Greece, the ship’s engine failed and after a botched rescue attempt the boat capsized in the early hours of 14th June. The search for survivors was called off on the 15th June, after 82 bodies and 104 survivors were found, none of them women or any of the approximately one hundred children on board who were kept in the hold.

Perhaps you remember reading about it or seeing the harrowing scenes on the news, I don’t. Perhaps the media think we are too sensitive to hear about so many deaths, although it is more likely the general public have become accustomed to news of failed boat crossings, nothing to write home about, just another few dead asylum seekers. The plights of people from far away countries whose names and faces mean nothing to us are perceived as less important, less interesting than the fate of a multi million pound yacht and those aboard her. The media feeds the celebrity obsessed public, so fascinated by the lives of the rich and famous, what they want; more details, more pictures, more stories.

I feel for both parties, the asylum seekers who are ignored and forgotten, taken advantage of by unscrupulous people smugglers and embarking on unimaginably hazardous journeys, eventually, if they are lucky, reaching unwelcoming lands far away.

The vulture like focus on the Bayesian and her passengers and crew, the picking over of lives, pictures of body bags on rescue boats, the interviews, opinions of countless ‘experts’, theories and hypothetical explanations as to why the boat sank, could it have been prevented and no doubt questions to come on who, if anyone, is to blame. There are people grieving here, family members have been lost and the media are digging up long lost friends to find out anything they can, posting photos and charts, anything the public can pick over to satisfy their insatiable need for more.

The media coverage would have us assume the wealthy are more worthy of our attention, their lives are more interesting than ours, their misfortune gives the world a chance to be nosy, to rummage around in their baggage. I find it fascinating and at the same time repugnant that as a society we can value one life above another, that somehow wealth makes a life more important, even in death.

The world is not a level playing field, there is no point pretending it is. For as long as we have been around there have been people with power and those without, rich people and poor people, leaders and followers. Some spend their whole lives fighting this dynamic, many with reasonable cause. I choose to go about my daily life not judging others by what they have, but more by how they act and treat other human beings and creatures on the planet we all share. Basically, if someone is kind to their fellow man and respects this earth we call home, they’re OK, no matter how much money they have or don’t have, what they look like or where they happen to live.

This verse was written in response to a feeling I had while reading the news this week, it comes from the heart so it is a little raw. I did think twice about pressing the publish button on this post, but after a lot of thought I came to the conclusion that if I am not brave enough to write about the things I care about then I really shouldn’t be writing here at all. So here we go, a poem called MORE.

Does it shock more, hurt more, mean more because it’s worth more.

The papers seem to think so

with every front page

bursting with words,

words written to be devoured by the hungry masses

whose last supper will not be lobster

washed down with champagne

served in crystal glasses.

Three days of prime coverage on the BBC

minute by minute accounts from doctors, divers, updates on survivors

and those not so lucky.

Where were the clicking hoards at Messania,

the long lenses hunting for morbid tidbits

to feed the readers at home.

No spare room on the front pages for those ragged souls

whose last meal was stale bread with salty water,

served in dirty cupped hands.

Where were the details of the sobs and the stories of

sleep deprived women

locked in the

hold

of the Adriana.

Hold

a strange name for a room where so many spent their cramped, pitch black last hours

clinging onto babies too hungry to cry and tired children who had forgotten what bedtime meant.

Their black empty eyes tightly shut to keep out the fear,

dreaming of a quiet room to lay their heads

where they could listen to their mother’s lies and lullabies in silence.

Five hundred names lost to the sea

five hundred names that didn’t make the morning news

five hundred bodies with loved faces not worthy of a mention in the daily papers.

Papers spread on breakfast tables with choices of cereal,

three types of bread,

four flavours of jam,

five different milks to pour in morning black espressos served in pristine white cups.

Five hundred mouths

who would have been content to start their day alive

under the sun

shared by everyone

with a glass of clean water and slice of good news.

A poor mother’s tears do not burn less,

her heart doesn’t break less,

she doesn’t love less the child wearing all he owns on his back.

The sea doesn’t care less or more whether a son or daughter read politics

or was read stories in a tent,

whether a mother used a bank for money or for food to feed her child.

The impartial sea will fill the lungs of a father

whichever prophet he worships.

Hungry fishes will feed on the fat and the thin,

the young and the old

there are none who lose or win

in the battle for a better resting place on the ocean floor.

Whether soaked in sweat or the scent of an exquisite perfume,

death smells the same wrapped in finest silk or roughest sack.

It cuts into the lives of those left behind

who fill the ocean with their own salty tears.

Death, the leveller, or so we’ve been taught, but not for all it would seem.