For Windrush Day 2021, we delivered a live broadcast in partnership with Reading's Caribbean community and Barbados Museum and Historical Society.
Joined by special guests, our live broadcast celebrated, commemorated and educated about the history of the Windrush story, and explored the enormous contribution made by the Windrush Generation and their descendants to life across the UK.
The broadcast was streamed live from 10am on the 22nd June.
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Two poems by Kelsia Kellman
Kelsia Kellman is a history student with a love of literature and writing. Her curiosity about the human condition led to anthropological post-graduate study at Syracuse University.
As an intern at Barbados Museum & Historical Society, Kelsia took part in the EULAC Museums project, which explored the phenomenon of Caribbean migration to Britain. This resonated with Kelsia, as her family history was directly involved and included in that migration.
Kelsia was moved by what she learned to write a short story, 'Barrel Child', which touched on the experiences of children left behind by migrant parents during the Windrush migration. Meanwhile, her two poems 'The Enigma of Arrival' and 'The Lonely Londoner' explore the experiences of the migrants themselves.
Kelsia's poems were the spark that fuelled the Windrush poetry competition, which forms a part of this year’s Windrush commemoration activities in both Reading and Barbados. They were published within the Companion Reader to the Windrush Day exhibition 'The Enigma of Arrival: The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain' and the Selected Essays for the Lecture Series 'From Importation to Deportation: 70 Years of the Windrush Generation'.
The exhibition may be viewed online on our website, and the lectures may be accessed via the Barbados Museum and Historical Society's Facebook and YouTube.
We hope you enjoy Kelsia’s poems as much as we did.
