Pandemic Poems from my 2020-2022 Residency with BBC Radio Devon Arts Show with Sarah Gosling
BBC Radio 4 – Frontrow
BBC Radio Devon “Pause For Thought”s
Kimwei was been a regular Pause For Thought guest from 2017-2020 and has provided more than 45 thought provoking spoken pieces for BBC Devon’s early morning listeners.
Because You Invited Me, for the BBC Home Truths project 2019
Sustainable Future Spoken Word Pieces for XTV
When I Lived With A Climate Scientist – Climate Awareness Series for XTV
I Lost You
My poem explaining why memories must fade, even those we’d rather have forever, and celebrating Tony and Sarah’s Grief Tending work. http://www.loveandloss.co.uk/
So I lost you
like a moment falling into a stream,
lost you
like the last recall of a dream.
I lost you
to time (which steals loss away),
to let me mend again
and I lost you
and the memory of you
to my own graveyard of thoughts
where each day new losses land
and I mourn without remembering
what or who I mourn.
For who can afford to feel
their whole life in sharp detail
forever,
each day cut like crystal:
a dazzling, infinite display
at first joyful
then painful infinity,
blinding to the last,
until such currency is worthless,
is its own paralysis?
I drop a tear in a trickle to a stream
allowing you to fall away
as the memory of a dream
just as an echo gently dies to let the mountain sit tall.
so I lost you
so I lost you
so I lost you.
The Secret Life Of Letters – written for and performed at Exeter Poetry Festival 2018, picture and audio of live performance.
The Age Of The Bards (written for The Bardic Competition in April 2019, in which I was appointed Grand Bard of Exeter)
I have been listening to the city,
to the land and to the people,
because we are the creatives,
the storytellers,
the magic makers.
We are.
This Easter I was called to London, to serve the Earth.
I asked the land what I should do, asked if I should stay with my city or go to London to make music and song in the streets, to serve the Earth. And the land opened as if to laugh, and I received this message “This city, Exeter, is PART OF the Earth. So go – go and bring back stories.”
And so I went for 9 days and nights and I bring you back stories
of a pink boat at the crossroads of Oxford Circus,
from which the truth was told.
of a place at the centre of Parliament Square,
where birdsong and human song intermingle.
of trees that sprang up overnight at Waterloo Bridge
blanketing the river in peace
and of music rippling across Marble Arch,
over a sea of tents, each one housing somebody who has made a commitment to the Earth.
Because all we have is the sum of our commitments.
We do not have what we own,
We have what we commit to.
We do not have what we buy
We have what we commit to take care of.
And so we are in the age of the Bards.
As Bard I have taken an oath to the land and the people of the city, but we all can go to our own homes and make a commitment to the land below us and the people around us. If we do that, we can all have the Earth, to restore, to nourish and to care for.
Wisdom (a found poem, made by collecting wise sayings, created for Exeter Arts Week 2018)