The City of the Missing: Poetic Responses to the Grenfell Fire

Abstract

This essay is about the representation and recognition of the victims and survivors of the Grenfell fire disaster in poetry written since June 14, 2017. It begins by arguing that the fire was caused not by a lack of knowledge, but by a refusal to acknowledge the voices of the community. It shows how this refusal of recognition was both direct and systemic, slow and immediate, situating the fire in the recent and long-term contexts of austerity and the hostile environment, the demonization of social housing, urbanization and the rise of slums, and the logics of colonialism and racial capitalism. The essay then turns a series of poetic responses to the fire, read and discussed mostly in the order of their publication. These include poems by Ben Okri, Roger Robinson, and Jay Bernard; spoken word performances by Potent Whisper; and two tracks by Lowkey. Through close and careful readings of this work, the essay identifies a hauntological politics of acknowledgment and memorialization that refuses social death and galvanizes social life.