What kind of a year has 2017 been for you?
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field
Percy Bysshe Shelley, from England in 1819
What has changed for the better and what, if anything, has changed for the worse?
I am all at once
freed by love
but I am imprisoned
none the less
Angela Davis, from Conflict
What do you wish hadn’t happened this year?
You think
your pain
and your heartbreak
are unprecedented in the history of the world,
but then you read.
James Baldwin, LIFE magazine, 1963
What do you wish had happened this year, but didn’t?
Remain remain propose repose chose
Gertrude Stein, from Stanzas in Meditation: StanzaLXXXIII
What would you characterise as your major achievement this year and why?
child, they just played your song. now is your chance to move on.
Danez Smith, a quote from Twerking as a Radical Form of Healing
Is there anything you’d like to have done this year but haven’t?
Wild nights – Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Emily Dickinson, from Wild nights – Wild nights
What would make 2018 a better year than 2017?
There is a button on the remote control called FAV. You can program your favourite channels. Don’t like the world you live in, choose one closer to the world you live in.
Claudia Rankine, from Don’t Let Me Be Lonely
Images:
1. Oreet Ashery. Photo: Christa Holka; Courtesy: the artist
2. Oreet Ashery, ‘Revisiting Genesis’, solo exhibition, Stanley Picker Gallery, 2016. Image copyright of the artist; courtesy of the artist
For more in the ‘2017 – How was it for you?’ series, including Lubaina Himid, Larry Achiampong and Common Guild director Katrina Brown, use the #hwify2017 tag
More on a-n.co.uk:
2017 Jarman Award goes to Oreet Ashery, artist whose work is “impossible to pigeonhole”
Best exhibitions of 2017: a-n writers pick their top shows of the year
A Q&A with… Layla Curtis, artist and explorer of places
