Bank Top
BANK TOP is a collaboration with writer, poet & social researcher Abdul Aziz Hafiz, examining the representation & misrepresentation of northern communities. The work focuses on a small, tight-knit community in Blackburn, England, a town that has become synonymous with the use of words like segregation (BBC Panorama described it as ‘the most segregated town in Britain’) & integration (Casey Review to the UK Government).
Hafiz writes: “the work is a response to this simplistic representation and the callous use of language by policymakers and the media when they try to explain the challenges faced by such neighbourhoods and towns and resets the experience of these communities in the context of Government industrial/social policy and contemporary and colonial British foreign policy.”
Bank Top was published by GOST Books, 2022 - available here.
Bank Top Book available here.
Exhibitions
Media
Do you SEE me? What do You See?
Abdul Aziz Hafiz
Do you SEE me?
What do YOU see?
Do you see the toil and strife, the sweat off my brow?
Uphill the struggles on Saunders Road, near but far from Duke’s Brow
In many worlds my roots do bough
The journeying from distant shores
Leaving me ma to do her own chores
Only at a distance I could weep in grief and sorrow
Do you see my sacrifice, for my child and yours a better morrow
Do you SEE me?
What do YOU see?
“They say the young just want benefits, get paid to sit”
The young act out, push back, but willing still, say how do we do our bit?
Do not snoop as though we are a forgotten people
For we found our place in view of the dome mingled with the church’s steeple
Except for Carol from Cape Verde who awaits her decision
“Black bird in Blackburn, Why not?!” angry at the Home Office suspicion
Do you see my hardship each time comes the recession?
Do you SEE Aisha and Alexei?
What do YOU see?
Aisha’s toughness shrouded by every mother’s dignity
With few words of English, proud for queen and country
Her service to others here being recognised
What about Alexei’s gentility, his first day in Bank Top had he spent
Community, solidarity, safety he found on St Barnabas’ bench
Brother at hand learning how a Blackburner to be
Do you see his gaze looking back at you from a century ago?
Do you SEE the ordinariness of those who stare back at you?
Afzal fascinated by his pigeons’ flight, a tradition perhaps from Punjab
But nay, for factory workers long gone twas ‘release and escape’ from the drab
Look beyond the scullery and the mattress in the ginnal
After years of hard graft I did feel my hearth throbben
‘Tek yer ook’ if in me yourself you cannot see!
© Abdul Aziz Hafiz, 2020