Sarah Lasoye

(she/her)

‘Printworthy’

Sarah Lasoye's poems, displayed in black frames against a white wall at the Give Over exhibition.

Printworthy is a sequence of five poems written in response to racist media reporting on immigration, following time spent thinking about: different forms of written accounts, who writes them, what they each intend to do. Shorthand reflects on journalistic writing as a system, and western journalism training as one structured by abbreviation, collapse, and the obfuscation of power. Stenographers of Power reflects on the vastly different positions of journalists within the West and in the Global South. So, I’m Told reflects on the borders Western media creates around its readership.

First Hand reflects on a personal racist encounter, and my own laments about transforming experiences of violence into into ‘art’. Bustcard (An Ode) draws on the resources and work of Anti-Raids Sheffield - a community group working to resist the hostile environment in the UK. This poem draws attention to where and how language can and has been used materially, to intervene and prevent immigration detention and deportation.

These poems were written while witnessing the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel, actively supported by the UK and US. As I’m writing this we are witnessing Israel’s escalation of violence, invasion and bombardment of Lebanon, and military assault on Yemen and Syria.

These poems were also written through a period of violent far-right, racist, Islamophobic mobilisations across the UK in August 2024.

The title ‘Stenographers of Power’ is taken with thanks from Maryam Jameela, quoted during the first meeting between the Give Over team and commissioned artists.

Order of Poems

1. Shorthand

2. Stenographers of Power

3. So, I'm Told

4. First Hand

5. Bustcard (An Ode)

1. Shorthand

(Plain text version)

Loves, this is not my kind of writing system. Any kind of collapse is slippery. I am not dedicated to abbreviation because we’ve both seen it, that seductive red slit between articulation and manipulation. It has been bored like a mine. Immigration is [MASS] The flag is [OURS] A raid is [RESCUE] A removal centre is [SAFE FINANCIAL FLOW] Every day I wake up and make a coffee and read someone’s attempt to collapse violence between their thumb and index finger - grip it, granulate it, caster it - so that if you were to close your eyes and open your mouth, if you were someone at all susceptible to or interested in hatred, you might mistake it for poetry. Some people do. You could call it a headless, heartless, soulless ‘art’ if it were not a mass grave,balanced on two stilts, simplification and speed. * Sometimes I read a sentence and wince. I think of the branches of a tree I know, like limbs snapped off and glued back in the wrong place, presented to me as correct, complete. Always, I read this sentence and wince. ---

Shorthand is a writing system. It uses symbols and abbreviations to represent a word or phrase, used especially for taking dictation. Until recently, it was widely practised in secretarial, police and journalistic work.

2. Stenographers of Power

(Plain text version)

STENOGRAPHERS OF POWER There are those who document our burning earth. Some report from the inside of a bunker, others from outside of it. Those inside of the bunker use shorthand for the purpose of reduction in a mathematical sense. To minimise, hold words back against their will. Words do of course have a will. They would like to be assigned correctly, to feel rightly applied to an event, object, act, or condition. Those who report from inside of the bunker use shorthand as a tool of domination. They detain language, seemingly in order to tighten our collective aperture, taper our field of vision and police the enclosure. They see this as their role and as a form of security. Those outside of the bunker understand the risks of their work. The hot sky and soil make things difficult. Still, their aim is to slip the truth through the eye of a needle. They use shorthand for the purpose of reduction as in the culinary tradition. Isn’t that incredible? Make the writing more potent. They relieve us of words that would bloat or paralyse. Instead, they blow hot air on their side of the glass (this gets more difficult by the day) and draw symbols. Sometimes it's as simple as a plus for go, minus for stop, it's not safe. Sometimes they are able to squeeze very helpful questions through the needle, like: How can there be a grave without a digger? or If an agent of the state is the state And if a state holding a gun is a gun What then do we need to disarm? How, hypothetically, might it be done?

The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek, stenos (narrow) and graphein (to write). Stenographers are trained to type or write in shorthand methods.

3. So, I'm Told

(Plain text version)

So, I’m told that: Here, where I am, this is happening and There, where they are, that is happening When, actually: Here, where I am, that is happening. That is happening here, everywhere, always. Say it with me: Right now, I have lost every member of my family and my home is being set on fire. Right now, there is water waist high in my living room and there is someone blowing air into the lungs of my neighbour. Say it with me: There is no sanctuary, no elsewhere, no shoreline in sight. There is a leather boot pressed down on my neck and I can feel the cold floor through my grazed cheek. Do you see what I’m saying? If there is somewhere a child can be shot in the head then a child is being shot in the head here, everywhere, always. The boat you are on has capsized, is capsizing, will capsize. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. You have worked, are working, will work a 3-10am shift without sick pay, pension, or having seen your first born in 7 years. Do you see what I’m saying?

You are not allowed to attend your mother’s funeral You are denied refuge and reprieve I’m not saying, hey, imagine, what if it was you. I’m saying it is you. You have so little of the people you love. And I am trying to blow air into your lungs.

4. First Hand

(Plain text version)

I’m walking down Queens Road with Aidan and Jordi. A taxi pulls up and a man steps out. I don’t remember what he was wearing but I could probably still recognise his voice. He’s shouting at the driver. He’s saying a lot of things we’ve all been hearing recently, a lot of things we’re told don’t bear repeating. I wonder if he was outside the hotel in Rotherham. Jordi’s checking on the driver. He just wants to get on with his night. Aidan and I are telling this guy to go home. He's saying things like yeah I’m a racist, I was born here. He’s saying other things that don’t bear repeating. Do you know how you’re supposed to feel when you actually see those words come out of someone’s mouth? That’s not rhetorical, I'm genuinely asking. There was a woman and she was apologising for him being drunk. I thought, does she think that’s the problem? Does she think this is the first time a drunk man has shouted in my face? Left warm spit on my cheek? The last thing I hear her say is that this guy has mixed-race kids then I stop listening. You know what really sinks you? Knowing that those words that don’t bear repeating actually came from somewhere. This guy or someone he knows has read it in the paper, has heard it down the pub, probably for years and years and years. All these words that don’t bear repeating have become a structure, have become the pub, the shared third space, not home or work, somewhere they all feel safe and solid. That really sinks you. Not that I even want to speak to him, or convince him of anything. Just that he’s so far from hearing anything I would say. He’s years and years and years away from hearing anything I would say. For the duration of the encounter, I’m on auto-pilot. He is a racist. He is in front of me. He is the kind of man that says things that don’t bear repeating. Says them over and over like lyrics he’s proud to have memorised. Jordi says there is an intimacy to hostility, one that only the perpetrator and recipient know. I agree, I had that man’s spit in my face. I don’t know what I would have done if he had touched me. I was more acutely aware of where his hands were than my own. I had his whole body mapped out. When he stepped forward I stepped back. There’s an intimacy as well I think amongst recipients. What does ‘recipients’ mean? Why do I keep saying it? Like, 20 minutes later the whole thing's wound down and my body is starting to process. Starting to deep that his hate has targets and I’m one of them. There’s a spectrum obviously, a scale of violence that's particular to each target, but I’m definitely on there. I’m starting to deep that there are a thousand different versions of this night. Since then, all of them are playing out. In my mind and on a street somewhere. Right now, I’m thinking of Aunty Sandra, staff nurse coming off shift, locs let down to her waist, rain seeping into her arch support skechers. Maybe she’s thinking about popping into Lidl and then a taxi pulls up and a man steps out. I don’t want to pick up a pen and write this down. I want to punch him in the face. I want to knock his teeth out. Increasingly, I don’t feel any sympathy for these people. Like, why should I have to dress this up? Translate it into something you find more interesting to look at. What other way is there to say it? And why should it take being said in any other way to reach you?

5. Bustcard (An Ode)

(Plain text version)

Thank you for giving us something meaningful to say to each other as we glimpse cuffed hands and masked faces at the sharp end of everything immigration officers at the back door because it is not enough to witness listen to the choir and say amen it was never enough to know thy neighbour love is an act and incantation repeat after me you have the right not to respond but say: no comment, no caution you do not have to let them in they can only enter with our consent you can’t be searched or arrested you have no personal details don’t walk by, trust me if you refused to answer you’ll be met with bodies on the line remember, we have nothing to lose IN THE CHATS WE HAVE AND THE CHANNELS WE MAKE WE KEEP EACHOTHER SAFE

An image of handwritten black text surrounded by a green border drawn in pastel. It reads "If an agent of the state is the state and if a state holding a gun is a gun - stenographers of power"

An image of handwritten black text surrounded by a border of orange chains drawn in pastel. It reads "What other way is there to say it? And why should it take being said in any other way to reach you? First hand"

An image of handwritten black text surrounded by red circles drawn in pastel. It reads "Don't walk by, trust me. Bustcard (an ode)"

A section of the Give Over exhibition which displays selected works by the three artists together, including framed 'cut and paste' poems, fragments of handwritten ideas, and a comic image that says 'Free Palestine'.

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