Cambridge
Creative
Encounters 2024

What thoughts do I have of you, Allen Ginsberg

walking down East Ham High Street

Passed the crowds on the corner —

a coven gathered for a magic trick Passed the butchers

and the sweating meat

Passed the carpet vendor sipping on his

Lukewarm Costa Coffee.

I thought I saw you, Allen Ginsberg,

at Northwest Supermarket

In the aisle with the Bulgarian sirene

and the Bengali sweets

As if it were perfectly natural

to pair pierogi and moong beans

or baklava and jalebi.

(I try to catch your eye across the aisle)

Which way will your belly lead us?

Towards the coconut milk or the mace?

The pickled fish or the plantain?

They leave their jackets by the door

To soak in the smoke

Sticky tables in a cramped room

Full of hungry bellies

They swap stories

Between mouthfuls

He chose this place

Because of the Uncle’s

Wrinkled smile

And the open kitchen

Because of how

The wok hey lingers

On his skin

And in his clothes

And in his hair

Just like home.

In Katherine, in a house set on stilts

on a river that swells

in the rainy season

A family clears the long grass in their front-yard

prepares the dirt that runs like blood

when it rains

                        like

                                the

                                          monsoon

In Katherine, on a bank that floods

A father builds a garden bed

From old timber beams

And dreams of planting a mango tree

Deep in that red dirt

In Katherine, in a house

            an ocean’s away from a home

The seeds, tucked between clothes

that smell like sandalwood and musk

arrived by sea-mail last week

in a trunk packed carefully

by a grandmother’s nimble hands

In Katherine, in a sunroom

That steams like a pressure cooker

Three children marvel at okra seeds

Taken from a grandmother’s plate

Sucked clean between a grandmother’s teeth

Stripped of their stickiness and dried

On the windowsill of an old home

And pray they will thrive in this twin climate.

In Katherine, on a veranda

That holds the house like an

Embrace

The children watch

the Australian sun

raise those seedlings as her own

Until the okra fills the garden

Like a weed

In Katherine, in a garden

That has become her own

A mother plucks the pods

With a kitchen knife.

Green thumbs

Sticky sap

Ladies’ fingers in a silver bowl

In Katherine, in a house set on stilts —

Okra fries in hot oil

Popping mustard seeds and heat

Plants not from these parts

Rooted in a new soil

Give way to new abundance

A new life

In this sleepy heatwave

Caught between the teeth

Of summer and spring

Little Lagos trades her waterways

For High Streets;

Her lakes for fabric shops.

In this sleepy heatwave

While Peckham heaves

Women steer polka dot trolleys

Bursting with groceries

With the prowess

Of a London street-racer

          Dodging cheesy chips

And a chicken-shop boneyard

Today, a side-walk buffet:

Let the pigeons feast.

At a corner store on Peckham Road

Mangoes bruise in cardboard boxes,

From green, to yellow, to desert dusk

Yesterday, an English tartness

Today, mellow in this stickiness

Almost as sweet as home.

The women park their trolleys

Stop to sift

Through star fruit

Peruse the persimmons

Scrutinise the soursop

Nimble fingers well trained

To know ripeness by touch

The women do not wait for a green signal

They drag their trolleys boldly into that

Traffic-jam lullaby,

Cradle of chaos

And down those old waterways

Home.

6 chicken thighs

5 stalks of lemongrass

20g of galangal

20g of ginger

4 cloves of garlic

6 dried chilis

3 tomatoes

3 tbsp of ketchup

1 onion

1 tbsp turmeric

Hokkien and ho-fun noodles?

He shouldn’t need to ask,

But the loose ends of a separation

Leave him unsure if

He remembered to leave

Any bits of himself

At the bottom of my noodle bowl

In this basement restaurant,

on the corner of York Street

He brings the bowls to the table

Familiar stranger:

I watch his leathered hands

Sun-tanned, sun-spotted

Stretched by age

Break apart wooden chopsticks

And hand them to me

In an attempt at tenderness

I wonder if I’ll teach my daughter

One day, over a bowl of laksa,

To prefer ho-fun to vermicelli

Will she find traces of him

Trapped between noodles

Some hint of him lingering

In her taste buds?

Part dusty heirloom

Part live wire

My own leathered-hands,

Sun-tanned, sun-spotted

Breaking her chopsticks in some inherited

Act of love

I

In a tea shop, off Portobello Road,

I stop for scones and a pot of Earl Grey

With clotted cream and jam, please.

Above a tray of day-old sponge cakes

King Charles’ head is on a coronation plate

next to a sign that reads: it's always tea-o’clock

The woman behind the counter

grins, teeth bared, a Cheshire-cat in a Union Jack apron

her voice — viscous like honey,

full of jammy vowels

that get stuck in her mouth

like clotted cream

I tune my ears to her midland melody

she tunes hers to mine, where are you from?

Australia, I say

(I assume she means the accent)

She must mean the accent

because she tells me her cousin was a ten-pound pom

and names a Victorian town

that I pretend to know.

And we bond momentarily, over scones

and Commonwealth paraphernalia

over King Charles’ face

and the Corgi tea-cosy

and my growing addiction

to a cup of Earl Grey in the afternoon.

II

On the P12 bus towards Peckham High Street

I smile at a lady sitting next to me

and she looks into my face

as if she is staring at a mirror

Where are you from?

        (I assume she means my race)

She must mean my race

because she tells me I look like her sister from Mauritius —

who is half Indian, half Chinese

An uncanny mirror-image.

In our newfound sisterhood

she drags me to Greggs

and we bond momentarily, over sausage rolls

and a cup of Earl Grey tea

Over the sister she hasn’t seen for years

whose eyes I share

Over the ghosts

of an imperial circuitry that haunt both our

Features

III

Alaa’s belly is rumbling:

a craving for curry

So, we take the shortcut from Liverpool Street

to Brick Lane

Find a curry-house on the corner

A table for two, please

The host at the door

doesn’t ask where I am from

(but he has assumed)

because he abandons his salesman script

and tells me this place is for Europeans:

The curry here is sweet not spicy

Brown skin coded

I leave

despite the fact I am not Bengali

and my spice tolerance

would put my grandmother to shame.

At the next restaurant

deemed ‘authentic’ by a man on the road

the waiter tries to find community

in my face and my name

And I feel betrayed by

features that lie about a kinship

That is only skin deep.

I find ways back to my body through cooking.

      When I need to feel my fingers

            beyond the ache in my knuckles.

I prefer the solidness of my knees and my hips when I stand over a hot pot poaching a

chicken or kneading dough.

When I need a reminder that my body is not numb

            I start to cook.

I go to the stove, or the pressure cooker, or the chopping board.

I mince garlic, or stir a risotto over low heat,

            watch grains of arborio rice engorge with chicken stock until they are plump and

      starchy.

I feel my heartbeat steady when I pour in the stock, ladle by ladle, cup by cup.

      I like slow cooking.

            Cooking that takes hours.

                  Stews or stocks, risottos or ragu.

Recipes that stick to my clothes, and cling to my hair, that settle beneath my skin and into my

bones,

    somewhere deep,

            somewhere warm,

                  somewhere mine.

I like to take these cooking smells to bed.

      I like,

            when, even after a hot shower,

                  I can still smell ginger and fenugreek on my skin, stubborn turmeric stains on

                  my fingernails,

                        scrubbed raw and still yellow.

Some nights I fall asleep pounding spices in the mortar and pestle I ordered online.

Coriander seeds and black cardamom. I let the mustard seeds pop in hot ghee.

Sensory lullabies send me to sleep. I come back to my body when I cook.

When I was blown up like a balloon, puffy with fluid and tied to tubes in a hospital bed with

a wolf curled up at my feet, I felt someone in my belly, twisting my gut like they were

wringing out a wet, wool jumper.

The consultants prodded this balloon belly with cold fingers, shook their heads at the wolf

and tried to tempt it away with some meat.

The wolf snarled, bared its yellow teeth and dug his claws deeper into my leg.

The consultants, gathered in the corner, pointed their cold fingers at the wolf and decided if

he would not leave, they had no choice but to starve him.

So, they wrote on a small whiteboard behind my bed, in blue marker-pen, ‘nil-by-mouth’ and

let me starve too.

On her daily visits, I would ask my Mum to sneak in some Chicken Noodle Soup from the

Chinese Takeaway at the bottom of the hill.

      I just wanted to taste it.

            I promised not to swallow.

I’d let the hot liquid slosh in my mouth.

Salt and lemon.             Ginger and garlic.             Bones cooked low and slow.

I listened to an interview on the radio, where a man went crazy after years of being fed

through a tube.

I watched Ugly Delicious, Bake Off and anything on the Food Network.

Made lists of dishes I would eat.

            Recipes I would cook.

                  Restaurants I would visit on the outside.

Each morning the nurse would change the bag that hung above my head, and reconnect it to

the line that sat in an artery somewhere deep, somewhere warm, and I would joke that it

looked like a vanilla milkshake and then I would crave a vanilla milkshake and I would miss

the taste of fat

            and cream

                    and sickly sweet syrup.

The wolf left eventually. Emaciated, tufts of fur falling out of his coat. He skulked out of my

hospital side-room, with his tail between his legs, his belly growling.

The consultants looked at my body, emaciated, tufts of hair falling out of my head and called

it a success.

They wrote a paper in a British Medical Journal about a balloon belly and how starvation

might be an appropriate medical strategy to kill off a wolf.

The wolf still visits from time to time. He lurks at the foot of my bed and sometimes, if he’s

careless, his claws sink a little too deep into my knees, or he gnaws at my wrists or my

shoulders a little too hard.

Contrary to the findings of the British Medical Journal, I do not starve the wolf, I feed him

Hainanese Chicken Rice,

            and tarka dahl

                  and butternut squash risotto

                        and mango-upside down cake,

                              and browned butter cookies.

When the wolf visits, I turn to the stove, or the pressure cooker, or the grill. I walk to

Nunhead and visit the butcher, or the fishmonger, or the green grocer.

            and pick out my apples one-by-one.

When the wolf visits, I follow the breadcrumbs, left by my taste buds, into the kitchen, to the

stove,

somewhere deep,

            somewhere warm,

                  somewhere mine.

Once again I cannot sleep

            The cover of darkness is riddled with dead sheep

I count to ten, I close my eyes

            There’s nothing behind them but shame and lies

      Breathe in one...               it wasn’t my fault

      Breathe in two...               I tried to say no

      Breathe in three...           my voice wasn’t loud enough

      Breathe in four...             I just learned to shut up

      Breathe in five...               I DON’T DESERVE TO FEEL DAMAGED

      Breathe in six...                 depressed and yet manic

      Breathe in seven...         WHY DON’T YOU BELIEVE ME?

      Breathe in eight...           I’m not lying nor deceiving

      Breathe in nine...           I hate and love what I feel

      Breathe in ten...             I hope someday I can heal

You have scars, so do I

What happened to you? How can you still shine?

Your light escapes through the voids left behind

If you are beautiful, so am I

^{FOOTNOTE: based on images of the Phantom galaxy obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), that reveal the holes left behind when massive stars die. For more information visit https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_inspects_the_heart_of_the_P hantom_Galaxy}

Some days I feel so small

  It’s all overwhelming, unbearable

    The darkness comes and I find myself asking

      Is there anything out there? Is there somewhere else better?

Most days I’m quite Ok

      Most days I’m distracted

Mesmerised by galaxies and stars

            Puts things into perspective

I stretch my arms into the sky, get lost in the expanse

I feel the movement and the stillness, all within my grasp

                                Yesterday I felt alone,

                                    forgotten in the vastness

                Today I feel like being small

          is actually a kindness

                        Last night I had some nightmares

                                          of falling in the blackness

              Tomorrow, who knows what will come

      I might just find some calmness

Some days I feel so small...

There’s beauty in the darkness

There’s poetry in the void

There’s mystery in the silence

There’s meaning in the noise

There’s relief in being free to learn and make mistakes

but also to love, to feel, to grow, to ache

That I can live my days deciding my own steps

that my life will end when I breathe my last breath

There’s beauty in the motion

There’s poetry in the wrath

There’s mystery in the vastness

I choose the meaning of my path

We stand within the box

The light is bright and sharp

Clear acrylic mounds, smallpox

Dotting this gallery’s hearth

You’ve called us all to here.

Some came from worlds away

Reputations be besmeared

In the zero-sum games we play.

Can one win in museology?

The stakes seem set so high.

Every past is muddled and oily,

And this place keeps tabs on the whys.

Dissenters decry your privilege,

But you can keep stuffin’ your gob.

Spiders wrapping up others’ heritage,

Preserving to feast on the throb.

Come sit within the fire.

Let’s keep it quiet and dull.

Panels will label us liars.

Hear! Stories run warm and swole.

This web sticks to every last shiver.

This crystal cage, delicate silk.

Microscopically spied and deciphered,

We’ll write papers about all the gilt.

Why did they lose at museology?

What stakes one’s claims, not theirs?

Every past is huddled and slightly

Skewed to keep tabs on the rares.

This is a that. That never was.

Come, let’s gaze upon his bones.

A dainty comb. A bit of bugs.

The bittersweet saccharine tones.

Come sit beside the lyre, you,

And sup up bitterer notes.

The webworks welcome all, it’s true,

And the Academy’s all cutthroats.

Its tangles send a signal

To the hub where the watchers wait.

Unsticking and clipping, they’ll wiggle

Barbarians have crashed the gates.

To reseat a king. To return a bronze.

To give back the spirits they took.

The past’s a living book of songs

Who’s a tempo no peace will brook.

When did we make museology?

Surely ‘twas Athens, Shang or the Nile.

Every past’s troubled indubitably

Keeping tabs on everyone’s file.

But the endgame sits on the horizon,

Awakened by daughters and sons.

Loosening the cords that they’ve tied on.

Picked, the catalogs and laws all undone.

There’s a rhythm at work

That pounds in each box,

That crumbles the cork,

That musters the rot,

That splits as it forks,

That scries orthodox,

That births or aborts,

That rewinds the clocks,

That knows the befores

To tend to all the flocks.

That thing keeping time’s place,

Rhythmically set by the winner

They’ll rub out the walls of the space,

Webbing erased, but not the spinner.

That spider draws back from the public fly.

Tummy full, it retracts and lets go.

The objects kept safe from the legion-eyed

Time for others’ stories to flow.

The future dissolves museology!

The game is defunct with fair rules.

You took things for progress and colony.

You took their descendants for fools.

You gain. I lose. You lose. I win.

Again, again, again, and again.

New players can take a spin.

Let’s return this weaving to them.

Where’d you go now, Museology?

Are you nothing when nothin’s in your case.

It stayed safe in the box momentarily,

Innit time to play in a decolonized place?

Aim: to describe the ethics and tension of researching games and museum/collections work as an introductory poem to the collection.

I remember well the first

What’s new in New Coyote?

Pieces pressed in Puebla’s clay.

Teach me lessons, my dear ol’ friend,

So that I’ll catch Coyote one day.

The game’s rules are simple:

Twelve chickens placed below,

One coyote at board’s center,

And you jump to-and-fro.

Coyote’s quick and he’s cunning;

The chickens, we don’t stand a chance.

He snaps us up individually.

His maw makes our feathers dance.

But then we all band together,

Our beaks, all clattering now.

We take the trails as brothers.

Emboldened, we courageous fowl.

Coyote takes a chicken.

What’s one piece from the flock?

We nearly have him surrounded.

Our wings beat a ticking clock.

But Coyote knows the country.

His paths are igneous trails.

We came from across the ocean,

and he’s hounding us into the wells.

Teach me to play, Ol’ Coyote.

This new game leads to unknowns.

“Hey! You said we’d catch Coyote,”

Half the flock just grumbles and groans.

Aim: to describe the relationship between the ‘old coyote’ and ‘new coyote’ games from the introduction of the well device and the concept of trying to capture a vicious opponent with a group of pieces, brave together, but slowly being devoured.

Games are made in History’s mug,

Each turn is a frozen visage.

When Posada sketched upon the plates

He etched an eternal image.

Posed to catch the guileful glare,

Posada’s roosters eye the beast.

The farmers race to bludgeon the crook

In the artist’s imprinted feast.

How does the past play out today?

How can his art persist?

Bored with games, today, kids move on

To virtual lands pixel-kissed.

Black and white like digital code,

His game art comprised each scene.

Known for the skulls and Future’s tolls,

He’s still brightening digital screens.

But he set a tone with inky black,

An artform as telling as a wail.

Bordered frames and folkloric gleams,

His true work’s Coyote’s tail.

A Mexican advent now everyone knows,

Posada placed wells on the board.

Pozos de los campesinos peregrinos

Nuevo Coyote deserves an award—

Its wells transformed the bored.

Aim: Linking José Guadalupe Posada’s art with the El Nuevo Coyote game and the present concerns in traditional board game craft in the Digital Age.

The place Posada worked

When first he pressed a print

Was a shop named El Jicote

A Nahuatl word that meant:

“Bumblebee.”

Mexico’s precious printer

The man died poor and unknown

But Posada left his mark

By lithographic piles of bones—

Plain to see.

Some say they’re negative plates,

The way José inked it out.

His refined black edges acid-traced

Revolting techniques called into doubt.

Subtlety.

He chose a lead-lined process:

Photomechanical artifacts.

Instead of carving out recesses,

It was gelatin-coated zinc plaques.

Humble he.

Well Rivera revered ‘La Catrina.’

Kahlo, she was truly convinced

That Posada made the Revolution,

But that’s not what’s evidenced.

Tumbleweeds.

Was Posada a wasp or xicotli?

An artist or sellout?

Engraved and engrained in the culture,

20,000 plus stings inked out.

El Coyote.

Aim: to relay the history of José Guadalupe Posada’s, impact as a Mexican cultural icon and problematise how others have viewed his legacy. Also to use Nahuatl in a poem.

I.

Open the box.

The fire of finding old fun fully flummoxed us from our first glance.

The conservationist, he’s no bit remiss, taps a toe to show that time is precious. Our time is precious. The priceless cardboard pokes its nose

Above the box, like a crown peeks over a parapet, it sticks its head out just to show that time ticks like tapping toes.

“It’s all a game,” the Museum laughs. “Please place your request at the base of the staff. These toys are not joys that you get to keep. Just leave your quest’ns for the Head of the Board. Our committee reviews each question in time. Now, leave of this box. It is now time to go.”

But the games are on the table, though, something similar to the

cluttered desktop screen that greets me now. My little laptop fiend. “No, friend, please check the catalog online again.” Fine, it’s fine.

No picture needed. Cardboard body, be seated back inside your box.

Forget we talked, forget-me-nots.

II.

But what is this? The next thing shouts. Take out the pieces one by one. I held you less than a child once did. You’re not made for me. You’re made for the lid, guileful kid. So, close it up and let’s keep you safe.

Safe from the Mexico that once knew you well. Safe from the players who threw and moved the dice, like their troubled times,

tumbling ‘round and around. The round chess-people are headed to the parapet now, for the tapping never ceases... yet.

“Wait!” my partner-in-crime exclaims in the silent room. “Keep better care of these clay men. Don’t put them in the bag again. She’s chipped her nose, this iconoclast. Carlotta, Carlotta! Your nose is missing.”

Kept safe from Mexico, her name was Charlotte of Belgium. No one told her her Max was dead. French imperialist dreams were cut off, everyone knows. But Charlotte’s mind declined well before her emperor’s death and the coming woes. The war that swept Mexico away as it swept off with the later mustachioed forever-king.

In her time, though, Carlotta’s muted paranoia gripped her tightly.

She felt hunted by demons, and silently

the family kept her safe.

Was her chesspiece’s nose cut to spite her face? Mourning Charlotte, come greet the dawn. I hold you in my cyan palm. My mate points out another dilemma. “This other one’s crumbling, see. This one right here. Its clay insides are in the bag.” Our quest reveals its face to be a Pawn, nothing more, in this game of spoils. Conserve its strength, keep time at bay. Pawns aren’t worth much and never meant to stay. His toe-taps increase when the object’s in danger. Forget we talked, immortal stranger.

III.

I’m bored with the tapping. Let’s move this along. Let’s pick up the bells and find where they belong. They go with this game, cascabelitos mudos, but they’d not tell us so through my cluttered, beaming screen. The conservator’s facade slips a bit. Seeing the bells piqued his interest and broke his hip. The pitter stopped pattering ‘midst the silent room. Time stands still seemingly struck by the sounds. “Yes, rattle the brass bells. Do they still make a sound? The overseer will watch over, no worries. ... and the Museum won’t mind cuz the Museum’s not around.”

There’s a joke in there somewhere, like a tree-strewn woods we never heard. Keep digging in the box for a sign of the simile. Sacrificing a sense of smell. Falling as a fleeting reign. Accepting a revolutionary. Playing solitaire against time. As if the box that holds us all

keeps us safe from tapping toes.

It’s a maxim I’m still looking for, one resounding and bounding in the backs of the wood box. Something funny like a noisy copse of Poplar that cannot pop. Or a bell that cannot ring. Or a countryside without its toys.

Forget the sounds, mnemonic device.

IV.

Pop! The tapping comes back. The thought clouds have cleared. His toes have no ears, not really, and the conservationist cannot stomach a chattering thought. “It’s a vice.” Just a joke, nothing more. But time fails to hear the fleeting chimes in the silent room from a silent box filled with games glinting bright and flummoxing foreign affairs.

Close the box, anew.

Aim: to explore the senses in association with Mexico’s games and game pieces in the MAA collection, and describe some of the sense of tension between objects, researchers, regulations, museum staff, curators, conservationists, and the ever-present weight of time.

21st century living

Values both

Maths and Creativity.

I

Can only hope

That one day

The need for the two simultaneously

Just

Outweighs any previous perceptions

Of mathematics

As anxiety-inducing or dull.

Instead, we’ll appreciate the thoughts

That race through our minds

As we’re

Sat

In mathematical exploration

Posing problems

And generating solutions

Valued for our ability

To think

Outside

The

Box – Be curious

And consider what lies in maths

Beyond the

Classroom

Where our minds are busy

Working

Through

The multitude of possibilities

Beyond the facts and formulas

And the tidy

Textbooks.

For the mathematically creative minds

May be prepared for more

To address the future challenges

Together and not

In

Isolation.

What a prospect.

Imagine a number line,

That ends at 2 and starts at 9

And counts in jumps

With inconsistent lines

Where 9 plus two

Gives us 5.

It’s gone...

And you’re asked:

What comes after 21?

Without an image

The evidence not there

Your memory’s all mixed up

A number lined despair

And suddenly mere counting

Fills you up with dread

Because the answer to the question

Just isn’t in your head

And if it was it wouldn’t matter

Because that number sense won’t stick

For it isn’t in the order

That the world thinks should just click.

Then how about beyond the count

We consider merely size

And you’re given just two numbers:

1 and 5

They ask which number is bigger?

As you contemplate their size.

(Inspired by the responses from participants taking the maths creativity tasks for one of my studies.)

What is the point?

              Is this an object? A quantity? A conceptual idea?

                    Simply what we see or infinite.

Calculate the flow: of water..     of speed...     of t i m e ...

Calculate...

                  Calculate...

                          Calculate...

Calculate...       Find...             Work out...

Consider...       Describe...     Produce...

Write...              Equate...   Derive...

Find the all-encompassing formula

                                Prove...              QED

Mathematical Problems

This is a garden plan

A door wedge

A table under a carpet

A crop field

      A sheep grazing tethered to a fence

This is a shop logo

A marble in a Toblerone box

A triangular doughnut

A stage for a competition

      Dance choreography

A slice of cheese

      Enough for a recipe?

Societal relations: networked

A body all mapped out

The ball dropping

An infinite pattern:

      Can we put the shape inside itself? Again and Again and Again.

      Can we continue this without repetition, without it ever being the same?

Mathematical Problems

A wonky triangle

An unstraight line

A squished circle

An ‘angel’ too wide

Not the right numbers

Missing information: how unwise.

But most importantly...

Why does it look like a bad depiction of an emblem from a famous movie franchise?

Mathematical Problems:       THIS!