Poetry by Lana Bell

Police everywhere. People everywhere. Bradford City centre’,

a white sky of supremacy hung like death

a ghost sky

of internalised alienation.

I asked a motionless white police officer at the Interchange:

“What type of dogs you got in the van?”, I asked as innocent as a shy eighteen year old girl can.

“German Shepherds” he replied with a fierce look in his eyes.

The beat of Bradford; Rain fall can rise!

it was a damp protest, Saturday 14^th November, Spitting rain, Bradford air, and sea breeze from the tears of unrepresented people and tears that weren’t so clear. The beat of Bradford- the bass of protests, at lunchtime, no music at all, you could hear.

Suspense. Silence. Sadness.

Real people walked through puddles and puddles

of fresh resistance,

with the anti-fascist counter-protest fully alive, full of life, conversation flow — the beat of Bradford. Raindrops Can Rise!

“EDL Go Home!”

“Whose streets? Our streets” so many young people would chant together — The beat of Bradford. Raindrops eventually Rise!

Kettled in. Only five minutes. This eighteen year old Raindrop has so little experience of getting tied down with real fear. EDL Go Home, you are beyond every use of every swear word!

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Lana Bell

Author / Poetry Editor at I Am Hip-Hop

Lana Bell, is an eighteen year old Londoner who is based in Bristol. She is an emerging Spoken Word Artist, and the Poetry Editor for I Am Hip-Hop Magazine. She has been writing for a decade; though she has only been performing on from the age of fifteen. She got into Hip-Hop music at fourteen, and she found a massive interest in Old Skl Sounds and the outlet that Hip-Hop music offered her.