i remember

Vasiliki Vita

like the wooden paddle against the wave
i refuse
to get pulled in one direction
i resist
like the dictionary in a digital cave
i recede
to be put in boxes of linguistic perfection
i reject
like the chief, to store my life in a safe
i revert
to following my timeline, foot-dragging
i remember

The Science

This poem draws from my involvement in a collaborative language preservation project with a Micronesian youth group, where we developed and delivered language materials, such as audio recordings and a dictionary database, to a digital archive that partially funded the work. The poem does not use direct quotations from participants; instead, it represents my ethnographic interpretation of the dynamics that emerged during the project.

In line with Tuck & Yang’s (2018) theorising of resistance, I read certain decisions made by the youth volunteers, such as delaying the submission of materials until their preferred content was ready or declining to standardise a single orthography, as forms of resistance to external expectations about what should be documented, how, and on whose timeline. These actions prompted questions about which language varieties were prioritised, who held decision-making power, and how linguistic structures were framed for archival purposes. The poem translates these tensions into symbolic imagery rather than paraphrase, emphasising my own reflections on the collaborative process.

The Poet

Vasiliki Vita is a London-based sociolinguist and activist. Born in Greece and active in her local community, she later chose to explore being an active member in communities beyond her own. She has supported language maintenance and revitalisation initiatives in Europe, North America, Africa and the Pacific. Vasiliki is a wayfinder, and this is reflected in her writing. Read more of her work on Academia.edu.

Next poem: Live Art by Anne Eyries