Abdul Azeez Nasser came to the UK from Eritrea in the mid 1990s. He is both a poet and a painter and through both activities he addresses issues of history, creativity and internationalism.
‘My name is Azeez Nasser I am now in my 60s.
‘I was born in Keren, Eritrea and had my primary education there. By then, Eritrea was forcibly annexed and became the fourteenth province of Ethiopia. It was a time of persistent political and military turmoil. Extrajudicial killings of citizens- young and old, torture, extortions and years of curfews was the order of the day. It is within such a venomous environment that I passed my childhood and as such I was physically and emotionally impacted by it. My personality and outlook of life was shaped by that turbulent environment. Perhaps that is why I resorted to paint although I have never had formal art education until I left Eritrea. I have been painting since then and writing poems and most of my works seem to reflect life, people and nature’.
Public opening event Thursday 3rd February 2022, 6:30 to 9:30pm
The artist will read a selection of his poetry
The Asses
Alas, the desolated temple;
Besieged by urban clamour;
A union of enduring bricks;
Congregated by solitude.
Permeated by succumbed echoes;
Of defunct beseeching hymns;
Of souls aspired and expired;
Yesterday, contemplated the abstract bliss;
Now, in total convergence,
With the oblivious pact;
The temple besieged by urban clamour
Tarred, tyre-d, wired and fired motions
That never nap in winter or autumn;
And yet, the temple;
A crumbling skeleton of spirituality;
Its flesh and function deposited in antiquity;
A compost of upright values reclaimed by terra
Now, disparaged by reigning material god
Of glittering silver and gold
Whose metal flames scorned tempest
Has more worshipers on this terrain
Than the adherents of celestial religion
Whose sky brushing cemented summits
A palpable testimony of its enviable strata
Heaven-navigating steel angels
Superseding sound speed
The subterranean mass conveyers
Prophetic miracle of digital pixels
Its endless verses and parable
All propelled by dynamism of empirical doctrine
Its electronic nerves
A revelation of earth to earth
Mediated by redefined prophets and demons
That rendered every individual
A recipient of earthly revelations
The keen listeners of ritualised sermons
Glued to a telepathic mirror
Conveying within its framed flashes
The earth’s pleasure and horror
Thus, all piously recite
The revered scriptures of bank notes
Thus, also became the earth;
Partitioned paradise and infernal dearth
Thus, also man became empowered
Bypassing the disabled wombs
And initiating birth in a glass-tube
And like the ordinance of the distant gods
Whose wisdom orbited betwixt fame and fume
A Darwinian endowment of success and loss
A congenital hinderance to paradisal ward
For the frails and fools
Could not access bloom nor nectar
Thus, shall yield to a fate of failure
Tell the asses to cry out the verses
To recycle muted aspirations
To resuscitate leftover disappointments
The idols of gold and silver
Are burning the metals and petals
Blinded by irrepressible avarice
Induced killer corruption in every natural core
Hedonists drowning in ponds of honey
The leaf shall shrivel and leave
Filters within and above the cloud shall fail to sieve
Natural order shall be vexed
And respond to the call of overbearing chasm
The spoil of the coal and oil
Burning the inflammable fat of defunct generation
Earth will be penetrated by every corner and nook
Be the stage of roasting rays and drifter rocks
Death shall be elevated to the ultimate mass desire
