Eggplant.place

3d

The bell that tolls my syllables can tell
An underwater tale, clang how there fell
Suddenly out of a surface shouting world
Into dumb calm doomed children…

—“S.S. City of Benares”, by George Sutherland Fraser (1915–1980) – born #OTD, 8 Nov.

On 18 September, 1940, at one minute past midnight, the SS CITY OF BENARES was torpedoed in the Atlantic. Of 134 passengers, 90 were child refugees bound for Canada. Only 13 children survived.

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WarPoetry #WW2 #refugees

G.S. Fraser
S.S. City of Benares
(Drowned refugee children, 1940)

The bell that tolls my syllables can tell
An underwater tale, clang how there fell
Suddenly out of a surface shouting world
Into dumb calm doomed children, and there curled
(Currents’ sick fingers whispering at their hair)
Round them a coiling clutch, was our despair.
Sea’s soft sad pressure, like the sprawl of love,
Darkly spreadeagled, so they could not move,
The wide wet mouth was heavy, they would choke,
Till in that cold confusion pity spoke:
“This is a nightmare and one is asleep.
This is a dream, my brave one, do not weep,
Often may drown in dreams and not be dead:
Such weight is mother leaning on your bed.”

But having thought of this to cheat my pain,
That woe and wonder harrows me again,
Fat clouds seem bulked like whales, while through the green
Grave tons of twilight, in a submarine
Solidity of air like sea I move,
Pressure of horror how our hate hurts love.
Deeper than grief can plummet, mercy lies,
But not so deep as trust in children’s eyes,
Justice is high in heaven, but more high
Blood of the innocent shall smear the sky—
Or think that red the flame of seraph wings,
See stained-glass heaven, where each darling sings
In God’s dark luminous world of green and gold
As lovely as death’s waters, but less cold:
Think what you will, but like the crisping leaf
In whipped October, crack your thoughts to grief.
In the drenched valley, whimpering and cold,
The small ghosts flicker, whisper, unconsoled.

ALT

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1y

she was disqualified for a "political" display hidden in her clothing that she revealed in competition

#ManizhaTalash

an Afghan #breaker on the #IOC #Refugee Team, residing in #Spain

there are things far more important than an #Olympic #medal

and Manizha chose right

story about her from before her display:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9x8dj81r73o

#olympics #olympics2024 #afghanistan #refugees #women #breaking #breakdancing

Manizha Talash displaying a slogan hidden in her clothing:

"Free Afghan women"

ALT

Edited 1y ago

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1y

“Minnesota nice, whether represented in policies or in being kind to neighbors, is a worthy ideal,” writes a scholar who has studied the experience of Vietnamese refugees in Minnesota.

But “...the trope of Minnesota nice has a more complex history – especially when it comes to nonwhite people.”
https://theconversation.com/the-contradictions-of-minnesota-nice-236751
#USPolitics #TimWalz #Midwest #Refugees #News

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214d

Bake Sale this weekend in Beaverton, Oregon! 🧁

Neighbors Together Bake Sale

Saturday April 12 & Sunday April 13
Noon - 4 PM

11705 SW Denfield St., Beaverton OR 97005

Proceeds go to the International Rescue Committee.

Contact: Lorie.Rose@gmail.com

#Oregon #Beaverton #Food #Fundraising #Charity #Refugees #DoSomething

Photo showing four people under a canopy near tables with baked goods.

Text:
Neighbors Together Bake Sale

When: Saturday April 12 and Sunday April 13
Time: 12 pm - 4 pm
Where: 11705 SW Denfield St., Beaverton OR 97005

Contact: Lorie.Rose@gmail.com

Purpose: We are a community of families with a passion to raise money for international refugees. All proceeds from this fundraising event will go directly to International Rescue Committee, a 501(c)(c3) non profit 'empowering refugees to achieve self-sufficiency as they rebuild their lives.'

International Bake Sale:

Experience delicious homemade baked goods from around the world. Featured desserts from Cambodia, Norway, Italy, allergy-friendly treats, and more! Served alongside coffee and tea.

ALT

Edited 214d ago

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183d

The #Trump poster-person for the first Afrikaner #refugees from supposed anti-white racism in #SouthAfrica.

She is not a #refugee by any definition, yet she is being flown here at #taxpayer expense & handed a path to #citizenship while actual refugees are turned away.

Also Trump claims he’s granting "refugee" status to "white farmers”, but this woman lives in Cape Town, isn’t a farmer, & it doesn't seem like she's #Afrikaner since her bio says she was born in Zimbabwe.

#immigration #law

ALT

Edited 183d ago

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164d

Finding Common Ground: New Scots Stories
16 June, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh. Free, booking required

Join Finding Common Ground for a community walk & creative writing workshop as part of Refugee Festival Scotland. Discover unexpected connections between migration stories new & old; listen to seldom-heard voices; & find common ground in journeys across landscapes, languages, & literatures

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/finding-common-ground-new-scots-stories-tickets-1382461552719

#Scottish #literature #storytelling #refugees #migration #languages

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161d

Refugees in Kenya have died at food distribution centers, officials noted, including a pregnant woman crushed to death during a stampede.

Aid workers said they expected more people to get hurt “as vulnerable households become increasingly desperate.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-usaid-malawi-state-department-crime-sexual-violence-trafficking?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

#News #Kenya #Refugees #USAID #Trump #Crime #Nigeria

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144d

I have fled through land and sea, blank land and sea,
because my house is besieged by murderers
And I was wrecked in the ocean, crushed and swept,
Spilling salt angry tears on the salt waves…

—Edwin Muir, “The refugees born for a land unknown”
published in Collected Poems, 1921–1958 (Faber, 1960)

20 June is World Refugee Day

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #refugees #WorldRefugeeDay #asylum #humanrights

Edwin Muir
‘The refugees born for a land unknown’

The refugees born for a land unknown
We have dismissed their wrongs, now dull and old,
And little judgment days lost in the dark.

‘I have fled through land and sea, blank land and sea,
Because my house is besieged by murderers
And I was wrecked in the ocean, crushed and swept,
Spilling salt angry tears on the salt waves,
My life waste water drawn down through a hole,
Yet lived. And now with alien eyes I see
The flowering trees on the unreal hills,
And in an English garden all afternoon
I watch the bees among the lavender.
Bees are at home, and think they have their place,
And I outside.
Footsteps on the stairs, two heavy, two light,
The door opens. Since then I remember nothing,
But this room in a place where no doors open.
I think the world died many years ago.’

ALT

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144d

Use no names. Roads
have been whited out,
redacted. Hone your oldest sense…

—Pippa Little, “For Refuge”
published in AIBLINS: New Scottish Political Poetry (Luath Press, 2016)

20 June is World Refugee Day

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/refuge/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #WorldRefugeeDay #refugees #humanrights

For Refuge
Pippa Little

Use no names. Roads
have been whited out,
redacted. Hone your oldest sense.
Learn the wind,
memorise where it goes
bearing your odours. The truck-stops
are roofless churches.
Comma-birds on power lines
swollen by rain
fall away.
Comfort yourself,
there will be stars in the dark
travelling towards you,
smaller and smaller.
Trust the earth
with your bandaged feet,
the pockets sewn shut by your mother.
Carry only such things
as snowflakes, eyelashes,
for the future may not make you out.

ALT

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144d

I would like to tell her not to wear such flimsy shoes,
that rubble contains the whole spectrum of knowable
and unknowable dangers…

—Marjorie Lotfi, “Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)”
published in THE WRONG PERSON TO ASK (Bloodaxe Books, 2023)

20 June is World Refugee Day

Photo: REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly

https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/idUSRTR40EE6/undefined

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #refugees #WorldRefugeeDay #humanrights #Gaza

Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)
Marjorie Lotfi

I would like to tell her not to wear such flimsy shoes,
that rubble contains the whole spectrum of knowable
and unknowable dangers: sheets of metal ripped
to knife edge, live wires, bloated arms reaching

for light. Her hair, scraped back into a ponytail,
is open to sky; remnants of buildings filter down
one concrete chunk at a time, and the midday bells
of rockets ring out above her. She carries a boy

on her still narrow hips, his legs entwined around
her yellow dungarees. Like a rodeo rider, his left arm
grips her shoulder to steady himself, or her,
while his torso reels back and away; his body

is asking to slow down, to turn back. Instead,
her eyes comb the ground for a next step, fingers
of her free hand curled into a claw, as if
to frighten off what she somehow sees ahead.

ALT

A Palestinian girl carries a child across rubble from a building that police said was destroyed by an Israeli air strike, in the Burij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, August 1, 2014. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly.

Marjorie Lotfi's poem describes the picture in detail:

Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014)
Marjorie Lotfi

I would like to tell her not to wear such flimsy shoes,
that rubble contains the whole spectrum of knowable
and unknowable dangers: sheets of metal ripped
to knife edge, live wires, bloated arms reaching

for light. Her hair, scraped back into a ponytail,
is open to sky; remnants of buildings filter down
one concrete chunk at a time, and the midday bells
of rockets ring out above her. She carries a boy

on her still narrow hips, his legs entwined around
her yellow dungarees. Like a rodeo rider, his left arm
grips her shoulder to steady himself, or her,
while his torso reels back and away; his body

is asking to slow down, to turn back. Instead,
her eyes comb the ground for a next step, fingers
of her free hand curled into a claw, as if
to frighten off what she somehow sees ahead.

ALT

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144d

Frae the broo o’ a brae I saw them gang,
I saw them hirple to a lanesome shore.
I saw them pass abune the ferly seals
Withouten keel and sail and oar…

—William Jeffrey, “The Refugees”
Published in A KIST O SKINKLAN THINGS (ASL, 2017)

20 June is World Refugee Day

https://asls.org.uk/publications/books/volumes/a-kist-o-skinlan-things/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Scots #Scotslanguage #WorldRefugeeDay #refugees #humanrights

William Jeffrey
The Refugees

‘Arise and flee into Egypt’

‘There’s a carline walkin’ the road ootby,
A body wi’ hair o’ the streekit snaw,
And an auld man daunders at her side,
A chiel that’s laggie and bent in twa.’

‘They maun be folk frae a fremit toun.
Bid them come in and bide a wee.’
Sae the carline and the auld man came
And supp’d guid brose anent the swee.

I speer’d the taen, and I speer’d the tither,
And scant the answer did I get—
But O, the licht in their eldren e’en
Shone frae some gouden unkenned yett.

Quo’ the carline frail, ‘There’s hame nae mair
In kintras raxt on the crookit sword’;
But the bodach murmured, ‘Nay, there’s hame
Where folks are free wi’ the kindly word.

‘Natheless,’ quo’ she, ‘gang west, my son,
Westlins to isles o’ Bride and the sea.’
Syne they rose and quaitlike went frae the door
And steppit west by the flowery lea.

Frae the broo o’ a brae I saw them gang,
I saw them hirple to a lanesome shore.
I saw them pass abune the ferly seals
Withouten keel and sail and oar.

I saw them gang in a siller glore,
Walkin’ the sea in’ a calm sae still—
The braid eard faulded like a rose
And Bethlehem gloss’d an island hill.

ALT

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121d

Trump's threatened 30% #tariff on #SouthAfrica exports is set to deal an economic blow to a community he has vocally & controversially championed: white farmers.
Citing false claims that #white South Africans are being persecuted, #Trump has cut aid to the country, publicly berated its president in the Oval Office & invited #Afrikaners - descendants of early European settlers - to come to the #US as *#refugees*.

#PerfomativePolitics #stunt #racism #idiocracy #geopolitics
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/us-tariffs-south-africa-set-hit-white-farmers-trump-has-embraced-2025-07-09/

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132d

New today: Despite warnings from advocates like me about the dire consequences, Congressional #Republicans have sought to dismantle core legal protections for detained immigrant #children fund strip searches of children as young as 12 years old by law enforcement officers, allow indefinite detention, and impose new barriers to children’s release. https://www.texasobserver.org/republicans-immigrant-children-budget-court/

#immigration #politics #USpol #HumanRights #news #border #refugees

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