The Healing Next Time

By Roy McFarlane

Roy McFarlane's second poetry collection, The Healing Next Time, is a timely and unparalleled book of interwoven sequences on institutional racism, deaths in custody and of a life story set against the ever-changing backdrop of Birmingham at the turn of the millennium. Here forms a potent and resolute narrative in lyrical and multidimensional poems which refuse to look the other way or accept the whitewashed version of events.
Courageous, rageful and mournful, these are poems of Black history and Black presence, poems of witness and poems of activism. McFarlane's intricate lines make record of injustice and mark the names of those who have lost their lives and dignity to prejudice and hatred. The Healing Next Time also asks vital questions of the future, and of the reader – and reminds us where the power to change things lies. It is also a poetry of personal discovery, of revelation and resilience – where the influence of Jazz and of James Baldwin infuse and shape this unique, remarkable book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Sep 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781911027638

Roy McFarlane

Roy McFarlane is a Poet, Playwright and former Youth & Community Worker born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage spending most of his years living in Wolverhampton and the Black Country, now residing in Brighton. Roy is Canal Laureate for Britain, and Birmingham & Midlands Institute Poet in Residence, as well as being the former Birmingham Poet Laureate. From Amsterdam to Philadelphia, Roy has shared his passion for social justice, equality, identity, love and the healing power of poetry as a witness to our times. His debut collection, Beginning With Your Last Breath, was followed by The Healing Next Time, (Nine Arches Press 2018) shortlisted for the Ted Hughes award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. He has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University and the Poetry School.

Book preview

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The Healing Next Time

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The Healing Next Time

Roy McFarlane

ISBN: 978-1911027454

ePub ISBN: 9781911027638

Copyright © Roy McFarlane

Cover artwork: Untitled 2006, (mixed media on digital image, 81 x 106cm) Copyright © Barbara Walker. Website: www.barbarawalker.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Roy McFarlane has asserted his rights under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published October 2018 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre

Great Central Way

Rugby

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in the United Kingdom by:

Imprint Digital

To Maish

To love and be loved in return

Contents

New Millennium Journal

1999 – Parts of a broken man

2000 – There are no gods in the midnight hour

2001 – When the devil comes calling…

2002 – What we do when things fall apart

2003 – And who will wipe away our tears

2004 – When the ground shakes

2005 – Every second counts

2006 – New wine in broken vessels

… they killed them

David Oluwale, 1969

Blair Peach, 1979

Clinton McCurbin, 1987

Orville Blackwood, 1991

Joy Gardner, 1993

Shiji Lapite, 1994

Brian Douglas, 1995

David Bennett, 1998

Roger Sylvester, 1999

Jean Charles de Menezes, 2005

Azelle Rodney, 2005

Sean Rigg, 2008

Ian Tomlinson, 2009

Olaseni Lewis, 2010

Cherry Groce, 2011

Mark Duggan, 2011

Dalian Atkinson, 2016

Rashan Charles, 2017

Gospel According to Rasta

In the city of a hundred tongues

Solomon’s love song

Gods looking just like me

No woman, no cry

Writings in the sky

Conversation

Dancing with Ghosts

Their hands

Arms outstretched

A British thing to do

Gabay of hope

Liberty

The beginning of love

Notes

Thanks and Acknowledgements

About the author & this book

God gave Noah the Rainbow sign, no more water but the fire next time.

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

New Millennium Journal

Addressing our individual and collective suffering, we will find ways to heal and recover that can be sustained, that can endure from generation to generation.

bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism

1999 – Parts of a broken man

the more a man has the more a man wants

—Paul Muldoon

i.

On Sunday, the preacher’s speaking of revelation and repentance,

the end of the world is on the lips of news reporters.

Cults are spreading and in the basement of a computer department

they’re preparing for the invasion of the millennium bug—

we watch for the skies and miss the stones at our feet.

*

The family man is shooting a basketball, graceful

in motion and everybody’s watching the flight of the ball

reaching its zenith, then beginning to fall. All things fall;

summer rain, falling from grace, the fallout

of a sordid affair; the ball’s falling.

*

Breadfruit, soursap, plantain. A Saturday morning ritual,

roles changed, the son takes his mother to a Caribbean stall

in Bilston market. She’s not as strong as she used to be,

her breathing laboured, but she snaps the heads, digs out the eyes,

yellow yam, sweet potato, dasheen.

*

A daughter will be born soon, an olive branch

for the family man treading water after storms ceased.

ii.

A nation hears no evil, sees no evil, speaks no evil.