Galaxy Walk

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A girl glides down Galaxy Walk to her grandmother's home. The impact of patriarchy is unravelled. The unforgivable negligence of Grenfell and unsafe housing in Britain is exposed. In these poems that are at once raw and vulnerable, Shareefa explores hauntings of love, loss, and history as a working-class Indian woman raised in the diaspora. With a voice fortified and perceptive, these writings navigate the blunt cruelties of our existence, whilst refusing to forget how to marvel at the wonders on earth. From holding governments accountable, to dealing with grief and loss, Galaxy Walk restores our faith in what it means to be alive and human.

“The vast range of Shareefa’s work is astonishing. She represents a generation who are growing up in a world that is confused and complex, in families that are confused and complex. But there is hope. Hope is delicately placed between the lines of all of Shareefa’s brutally honest poetry. Shareefa knows a woman’s place is on the front line speaking truth to power. She does this intelligently and creatively, and she doesn’t pull punches. This poetry is totally relevant.” Benjamin Zephaniah

“Galaxy Walk is an important framing of the lives of an ignored community, Shareefa’s poems are brave and proud and demand to be known. We are better for having her voice present in British consciousness.” Caleb Femi

“Words which speak from the heart, questioning and sensitively sifting through the complexities of what it means to be a woman of colour, an activist, a lover, to grow up in an Asian family in 1990s Britain, to witness Grenfell. More than anything these poems express how it feels for those who, in myriad ways, resist a racist and misogynistic society in this time of austerity and seek to create something new.”Amrit Wilson

“Shareefa’s poetry is a trumpet, a clarion call for the weak, the meek, the downtrodden, the oppressed, to pick up their arms and heal, to find ourselves and share it with the world, and most of all, to love, to love to love.”JJ Bola