Embedded Files
The Place for Me
Note: In 1948, British Pathé filmed the arrival of West Indian migrants at Tilbury in England. The people on the ship formed part of a generation that would be referred to as “Empire’s Windrush”. The film archive includes an impromptu performance by Trinidadian calypsonian, The Lord Kitchener, immortalising the calypso “London is the Place for Me.”
Kitch had done well for himself
stealing the steam of boats settling in
Tilbury Docks with calypso
reporters searched among empire’s citizens
for the king of a genre in black and white film
to extempo the dark, new waves coming in
deck of hat-wearing West Indians
sweet-tongued, back turned
on colonies full of board houses
and wives resting in beds made of letters
from uncles and nephews abroad
summoning them by their full English names
no city could entice –
i have one tropical mother country
though my life in Helsinki is nice
believing in any god
that reminds me of archipelagos
and their fixated epics
old ports of memory
we wrongly thought
lacked radiance
those front stages of the world’s wars
we stood on with scarfs
like civilisations around our necks
Initiations
young men tussle
grab on to each other’s t-shirts
the smaller-framed are flung into the sand
their bodies’ imprints remain
two boys accept the dare, strip naked
enter the cold water, richer
in the eyes of betters on the edge
boys will be boys, i was told
on an island, where beaches make myth
and history, i know the madness
it takes to swim
blow salt-water and pray
the pubescent strength in arms and legs
provide more support than your father’s absence
to leave the shore as boy and return:
man in the flesh of his ocean
amílcar peter sanatan is an interdisciplinary Caribbean artist, educator and activist. He is from Trinidad and Tobago and currently working between East Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Helsinki, Finland. His multilingual creative writing, interviews, and book reviews have appeared in literary anthologies, journals and magazines. He won the Bridget Jones Caribbean Arts Award for poetry and his creative nonfiction was shortlisted for the Johnson and Amoy Achong Prize for Caribbean Writers. sanatan participated in scholarly and arts-based fellowships with Bocas Lit Fest, Journal of International Women’s Studies and Promundo. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks: About Kingston (Peekash Press) and The Black Flâneur: Diary of Dizain Poems, Anthropology of Hurt (Ethel Zine & Micro Press).
Copyright © 2026 by amilcar peter sanatan, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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