Ongoing #29

I actually wrote this poem a couple of years ago and then found it again yesterday when I was going through a pile of unfinished work. The circumstances were that the Government were changing the rules about who could and could not have English lessons. The changes would have removed the right from the most vulnerable members of society, the very people who need it most. The teachers and the teaching unions were opposed to it and organised meetings and marches and petitions. We managed to water down the proposals at the time but it's a battle we just keep on having to fight. This year's proposals are just as bad.

The poem came about after a public meeting where a student that I knew stood up to speak. She was living in a tiny single room with no kitchen, bathroom or toilet and surviving on the £15 a week shopping vouchers that asylum seekers - contrary to the Daily Mail's claims - are entitled to. She was not allowed to work and could not claim any benefits. She spoke little English and had been placed in accommodation where no one spoke her language. Her only human contact were four lessons a week of English in the college, and that was about to be taken away from her.
She stood up and in halting English told her story. These are not her exact words but they are her sentiments.

The doodle in the book shows a very sad looking foreign lady.

I wish I speak well English

I wish I speak well English.
I wish people not laugh to me.
I wish things like before
When I am important woman.
Not rich. Not rich woman
But have own business.
I dressmaking lady.
I wish soldiers never come.
Now I nothing.
Now I living like nothing.
Like no one.
I wish I speak well English.
I wish much... lots of things.
I wish knowing where children are now,
Where my husband.
I wish I know alive.
I wish they safe.
I wish they here.
I wish I speak well English.