Fiction Adaptation: Poem Choice

I have chosen the Raymond Antrobus poem '1986 - Where?':

Yesterday the National Front

stormed Hackney.

Today, I am a boy in a buggy

pushed through drizzle by

my white mother

and my black father

and we are together,

even though thunder

had the right to strike

like the SS in Germany, 1939.

My five year old ears

hear someone in the street

say into a phone,

where are you really?

and all it takes is a question

I can't answer

to know that there is more

to know.

Where am I really

when a white man calls my mother

a "nigger lover"?

where am I really when my mother

is the reason, light

and heat stay on my skin

while I finish my history homework

which was not

about Edward Long

Mary Prince

or Sarah Forbes Bonetta,

not about Dido Elizabeth Belle

or Sancho's abolitionist letters.

Where am I really

when a Jamaican woman

tells me I am

definitely English

because I asked for Tea

or water (not war-ta)

with my Ackee and Saltfish.

I wonder who I am 

when my father is detained

in immigration

because someone snuck a bag

of green, like a piece

of the island into

his suitcase before 

leaving Kingston.

I don't know where an immigrant

tongue will land

because I am

a baby in a buggy

with both parents from two

islands beside me,

and I have not yet

wondered what will storm

this brown face

to tell me where and who

I really am.

I have chosen this poem as there are plenty of opportunities for different ideas and the ways in which I can create a visual story from it are very broad. The topic of race in the 1980s in England is something that I would like to tackle with this poem. However in order to properly encapsulate the era and the poem a considerable amount of research will need to be done into the era and the poet himself.

What's Next?

- Research more of Antrobus' work

- Research 1980s England

- Look into films such as This is England (2007)

- Consider style/fashion

- Locations

- Realistic ideas?