On June 22, 1948, The Empire Windrush docked in Essex, England. This single event, widely held as the beginning of the mass migration of Caribbean immigrants to the United Kingdom, was also the beginning of the problematization of immigration. The National Health Service – free health care available to residents of the United Kingdom – was also established in 1948, and this was not a coincidence. Beginning on July 5th, less than a month later, many of its early nurses were of Caribbean origins. Indeed, after WW2, many citizens of countries colonized by the British Empire were recruited to rebuild all that had been destroyed in the war. However those immigrants, some as young 3 years old, arrived to hostility, to a racist environment. All this was cemented in 2012, when Theresa May, the then Home Secretary of the United Kingdom used the term “Hostile Environment” to describe a set of policies designed to make life difficult for illegal migrants living in the UK. In her zealousness the Home Office began deporting immigrants en mass, including children of the Windrush Generation, forever tainting the memory of that ship, and the cabins of dreams it harboured.

2023 marked the 75 Anniversary of The Windrush, and wishing to bear witness, I commissioned 10 writers of Caribbean origins to compose new work engaging with Windrush. The writers were Raymond Antrobus, Dean Atta, Casey Bailey, Malika Booker, Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Courtney Conrad, Mr Gee, Keith Jarrett, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, and Deanna Rodger. Their responses are as vast and nuanced as they are heart-breaking and truth-telling.

Capildeo, begins by redefining the narrative itself:

“Windrush / is the name of a ship / not of a generation / Windrush / is the name of a ship / not of any situation / Windrush / is the witchcraft name of a ship”

Conrad, in precise patois, takes us to the heart of the issue, demonstrating the treacherous journey there and back again to Jamaica, and the confusion when one does not speak the Queen’s English:

“Rebuild Rebuild Rebuild / Unnu hear weh di Queen of England seh? / She seh, mi fi come wid mi whole fambily.”

Malika Booker’s poem – Seasoning – is a staggeringly delicate poem of a woman who, on the surface, is simply washing chicken in cold water, but beneath is trying to cleanse and baptize herself of her nightmarish memories:

“all she clothes / bundled out onto the street, she mother plucking / her out of she house, like she now plucking // the innards / of this damn chicken, / / washing away the errant flecks of blood”

On reading and re-reading the poems, I am drawn back to Raymond Antrobus, who curated this list of poets, and his incantations – the reoccurring gratitude to have survived the 75 years of persecution, to arrive on this page, this place, this space.

“Give thanks, a rush
of registered names and wind, turning into lanes.

Nod to the elders and the roar inside the stadium
of our chests. Give thanks”.

I hope the spirit and persistence of hope I found in them, resonates with you.

Inua Ellams, Writer, Curator.