Get to Know Some of the Southside's Best Poets
Each issue of Greater Govanhill, we have a poetry corner where a local bard shares some of their finest lines. On National Poetry Day, find your new favourite poet.
The Long Road
by Jim Monaghan
To those who despair.
Standing helpless against a relentless tide
of disinformation
of defeats
and setbacks
Those who feel that they cannot ever win
a battle,
never mind,
the war.
Those who play a thankless part
in a process that will lead to change,
maybe not now,
or in your lifetime
or the next.
Your every action and word
have a meaning,
are part
of a whole.
For those who feel they are wasting their time,
It's a long road to revolution.
But without you
it cannot
be done.
You are the ant that carried the leaf,
that blocked the hole,
that saved the nest,
for the future.
Those who do not know
The importance of your own individual act.
You stood up
you took a stand
you fought.
You are the history of the world
The catalyst, the glue.
Without you,
It would never have happened
The Long Road is an excerpt from Jim Monaghan's second poetry collection For Auld Intensive Purposes due to be published in September by Speculative Books. Jim is a veteran of Scotland's poetry and spoken word scene, performing live poetry for over 40 years. He lives in Govanhill, is one of the founders of The Govanhill International Festival and a Director of Romano Lav.
Tidying
by Eddie Kim
The first night you spend alone,
for predictable reasons,
you think about the thousands of books
leading to one. Poems, stories, movies, songs,
and it’s too much.
It’s your family around dinner,
each insisting the same story their own way.
You fail into the couch.
Questions breathe in the details you gasp
after your friends go home.
Kiss the dirt dissolving into your palm
after wrecking your bike.
Breathe in the wonder of healing,
wondering if it will ever take.
Some wounds cannot be healed,
and some wounds, you feel, should not.
You dust off your palms,
but leave the dirt under your nails.
A sigh works its way about the room.
You wonder if you can do any of this.
You get up to wash the dishes.
It might as well start with the dishes.
Eddie Kim has recently opened up Gomo Kimchi on Allison Street serving up homemade, small-batch kimchi with a slice of poetry on the side.
Rum Shack
by Sean Wai Keung
still dont fully know what brought me here [to
glasgow i mean] i just felt some kind of magnetic pull
almost as if i had no choice
in a good way for instance i still remember
the first time we both came here [to southside i mean]
which both of us had previously been warned about
from people we had met who had moved away
from here yet when we walked through here [southside i mean]
down viccy road past the world food shops
and through the parks and tenement-lined roads
and by the train stations and through govanhill
and pollokshields and further along we both agreed
that we felt something good here – it seemed like a decent part
of town – and we went to milk cafe and ordered
a coffee and talked to someone who recommended that
we give the rum shack a try
and when we did give it a try [the rum shack
i mean] we both agreed that our futures here seemed bright
and now its years later and i still live here but you dont
and milk cafe got redecorated and viccy road redeveloped
but the tenements still stand and so does the rum
shack
and i still dont know why i came here [but here i am] [and
i am mostly happy here] [and i hope that wherever you are now
you are mostly happy too]
From the poetry collection ‘sikfan glaschu’ by Sean Wai Keung, TBP by Verve Poetry Press, April 2021
To the Sons of Ghulam Muhammad
by Inayah Jamil
To the sons of Ghulam Muhammad
you came here with nothing
and held tight to brotherhood.
You were immigrants from another country
and a name you made for yourselves.
You couldn’t speak the language
but you learnt it through conversations.
There were sacrifices and everyday struggles,
but you braved those challenges together.
You saw greatness in your abilities
and brought equality to the streets.
You developed fellowship between people
and those people still remember your names.
Ghulam Muhammad is the name of Inayah’s great grandfather, but the poem is about the story of her grandfathers migrating to Scotland.