Serena Malcolm

This #poem was inspired by a real life Teams meeting I was on this week. Inspired too by a post I saw today about #nationalinclusionweek and the importance of getting people’s names right. I have a very Anglicised name yet you would be astonished by the sheer number of people who still get it wrong… There may not be any malice behind it, but we should all try harder, it seems like the most basic form of respect.

#saymyname #respect #namesareimportant #inclusion #equity #poetry #dei #prejudice  #storytelling #serenawilliams

The full poem can be read below:

I was in a meeting on Teams,
Snug inside my little pixelated square on the bigger pixelated screen,
Underneath my solemn face (with its forward gaze that belies the boredom inside my brain) sits my given name:

Serena

Since birth I’ve been her,
But the chair of this meeting with his grey-white hair
and lofty, privileged air has just called me

Sabrina

Once, twice, thrice,
Each time like ice slicing through my senses,
Fraying every axon until he reaches my very last nerve,
That he continues to work,
And, really, it’s absurd because at the start of this call he made us all introduce ourselves
Introduce ourselves with “I’m…a…from…”
And he remembers Harry,
And Joseph,
And Jason,
And John,
And doesn’t mistakenly call Tim “Tom”.

I begin to think that’s odd,
But ‘benefit’ and ‘doubt’ are two of my favoured words,
So I repeat my name more clearly in case it’s the case that he simply misheard,
Yet somehow, despite this, he continues undeterred,
Despite, too, the large emboldened font that
literally spells out my name,
In a conveniently positioned way,
In the corner of the square where my face appears,
Sabrina is really what he hears?
Sabrina is really what he reads?
Sabrina is certainly what he concedes
as if Serena is too difficult to say,
To read,
To remember,
And let’s not forget I possess a namesake
who stakes a claim to the accolade of one of the greatest sportspeople of all time,
My name is hers, her name is mine,
And I’m pretty sure people remember her name just fine.

Plus this is not the first nor only time,
I have, in my prime, been called everything from Selina, to Sabrina, to Shareena, to Celine,
It’s obscenely disrespectful,
I mean, if I bore my Ghanaian name at least then he’d have an excuse – although loose – he could claim then that his tongue is just not built to move that way,
In fact, perhaps it spends too much of its day clamped between his teeth, not saying the words it truly wants to speak, making Sabrina to Serena too much of a leap?
But that’s a reach,
And it’s just not that deep.

So must applaud his gall:
He simply didn’t even try to feign respect at all
for the woman,
The only woman,
The only Black woman on that call.