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Seraphima Kennedy
Seraphima Kennedy grew up in west London. She completed an MA in poetry at Goldsmiths in 2009, and is currently in the final stages of a PhD in Life Writing. Seraphima writes poetry and creative non-fiction about family, migration, conflict and music. Recently she’s been published in Magma, And Other Poems, SouthBank Poetry and the Rialto, and has performed at the Troubadour, Vortex Jazz Club, Ledbury Poetry  Festival and Poetry in Aldeburgh. In 2016 she was longlisted for The Poetry School/Nine Arches Press Primers competition, and in 2017 was selected for the Jerwood Arvon mentoring programme working with Pascale Petit. Seraphima is a member of the collective Malika’s Poetry Kitchen.

Articles Available Online


In memory of Sandra Bland and Philando Castile   #1   Remember back in the heft of 2001? 7,227 items were delivered   to an old C&A in Oxford St – Landy sets up   a conveyor belt industrial shredders drills, saws clawhammers the violence of it and in them he puts his jeans his socks old shirts a stuffed toy bear family photos his car artworks his passport   he becomes       unidentitied              un-thinged   by white-gloved handlers   who place his belongings              gently into the shredder   or throw them into the trash compactor, joking              as if they’re on a production line   and they are, in fact, on a production line,              and then he is mediated by blades   and then, when he is              six tonnes of rubbish   it’s as if he has never              lived   all he can feel is his body his blue overalls   shock of cold air              on his neck   his eyes open his mother’s disappointment his father’s sheepskin jacket                           gone how could he he did afterwards,              his scalp is a buzz-cut tingle   his feet are holograms              he has never felt such who is the self where is he he is there and he is not there he is disappearing              the way men are always disappearing   in novels, and in pregnancies and here, in the gallery a man looks into his own life from outside dissolving – He makes a book              lists all the things                           300 pages a life he exhibits                           words
Breakdown

Prize Entry

November 2017

Seraphima Kennedy


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