Once when Cura was crossing a river, she saw some clay. Thoughtfully, she took up a piece and began to shape it’. – From the Greco-Roman creation myth of Care

Care(free) is a new piece of prose poetry, playing with the Greco-Roman creation myth of Care, taking the listener through the future imaginary of the goddess Cura (Care) as she creates the first human out of clay. Click on the soundcloud link above to listen (11 minutes long).It explores care and its relationship to gender, freedom, loss and human rights. Written with the support of Malika Booker’s brilliant Poetry Challenge. References and influences on the story are below. I wrote the text and it is read by actor Eva Pope

Commissioned as part of my time as Associate Artist at Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality, University of London as part of Care Collaborations: 2020-21, where Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre (where I am a Fellow) collaborates with other research centres to support the development of three digital artworks accessible online exploring the subject of care.

Influences and references:

The Care Manifesto – by The Care Collective 

Nasrin Sotoudeh – Iranian human rights defender, still in prison.

Malika Booker’s 5-Day Poetry Challenge (Arvon)

Gentle Radical’s Anthologies of Care

Many thanks to the beta readers input, from our Writer’s Groups with Writing Our Legacy

And to Craftspace for the opportunity to develop the interactive project Craft in Common earlier this year, as well as previous work for which whet my appetite to drill down deeper into this subject. And to Here who asked me to consider the meaning of care with them, in 2017, in the first place. 

For more on this piece, see the BiGs website ( link here)