New Internationalist – September 2019

Brexit and identity

passport. I’m tempted to call myself
‘European’ but that only invites the
response ‘Where in Europe?’ It’s natural
to wonder where people come from but
to ask is a loaded question. There are
people living in the UK who fear they’ll
be discriminated against if they admit to
having begun life elsewhere, just as there
are countries where – because of Empire,
or complicity with the US, or bombs that
have been dropped – it pays not to say
you’re British.
In the dreams of elsewhere I had as
a teenager, none of this was going to
happen. We would all be trans – transna-
tional, that is: fluid, pluralistic, opposed
to borders, indifferent to difference. How
naïve that seems, now that territorial
affiliations have hardened and borders
are more strictly patrolled.

p

Still, there remains a way to roam
freely: in books. It’s how I found my
way as a teenager and I’m keeping the
faith. ‘Poetry makes nothing happen,’
Auden said, a line that most readers of
his poetry would dispute: after 9/11 New

Yorkers found solace in the ‘affirm-

ing flame’ of his poem ‘September 1st

1939’, and many of those experiencing

bereavement have taken comfort from

his ‘Funeral Blues’, all the more so since

it featured in the film Four Weddings and

a Funeral. The mistake – my mistake

• has been to ask too much of poetry
  (and of literature overall): to expect it to
  make things happen externally, in poli-
  tics, rather than internally, through the
  subtle and inevitably slower process of
  shaping ideas. The world hasn’t opened
  up as we hoped it would, but literature
  remains a repository of values. It teaches
  us that others aren’t Other and helps us
  to understand ourselves.
  In his essay ‘The Few and the Many’,
  Octavio Paz considers the limited audi-
  ence for poetry: does it matter that even
  great poets like Baudelaire and Whitman
  sold so few copies of their work?^4 No, he
  decides: poetry of real merit will even-
  tually find its way through to reach a
  sizeable audience. For poetry in particu-
  lar, read literature in general. Quoting
  Juan Ramon Jimenez, Paz speaks of ‘the
  immense minority’. It’s a lovely phrase

and consoling reminder that minorities

can be massive, from those who read

Auden to those who voted Remain in the

2016 referendum. In these bleak times, of

Trump and Brexit, of fascistic resurgence

and environmental crisis, it’s easy to feel

isolated and helpless. But, as literature

reminds us, we are not alone. O

THIS IS ONE OF 15 ESSAYS IN BRAVE NEW WORDS:

THE POWER OF WRITING NOW (MYRIAD EDITIONS,

£9.99), PUBLISHED ON 9 NOVEMBER. TO GET A COPY,

VISIT: ETHICALSHOP.ORG

BLAKE MORRISON WAS BORN IN SKIPTON,

YORKSHIRE, AND HAS WRITTEN FICTION, POETRY,

JOURNALISM, LITERARY CRITICISM AND LIBRETTI,

AS WELL AS ADAPTING PLAYS FOR THE STAGE.

AMONG HIS BEST-KNOWN WORKS ARE HIS TWO

MEMOIRS, AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR

FATHER? (1993) AND THINGS MY MOTHER NEVER

TOLD ME (2002). HE IS A FELLOW OF THE ROYAL

SOCIETY OF LITERATURE, FORMER CHAIR OF THE

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY AND VICE-CHAIR OF PEN. HE

IS ALSO PROFESSOR OF CREATIVE AND LIFE WRITING

AT GOLDSMITHS COLLEGE. HIS LATEST BOOK IS A

NOVEL WITH POEMS, THE EXECUTOR (2018).

1 Octavio Paz, The Other Voice (Carcanet, 1992).

2 James Kelman, Some Recent Attacks:

Essays Cultural and Political (AK Press, 1992).

3 Salman Rushdie, ‘A General Election’, in Imaginary

Homelands (Vintage, 2010). 4 Octavio Paz, op cit.

71

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