O Board Overlord
a poem by Yumna Kassab
Repeat after me.
We welcome our rich overlords, our benefactors, our setters of taste.
They are the achievers and creators, and it is to their opinion that we defer.
We especially welcome them on boards so they can shut us down when we err.
Then the default: hands folded, head bowed, a mumbled apology: Oh you generous and illustrious and intelligent and wise keeper of all the important traditions in the land where we live.
We welcome and thank our overlords, and may we always be graced by their presence at our events to give the look that says cut!, to ensure the money is only channelled towards harmonious projects that never rock the boat.
It is right that they direct the money, that they direct us from voicing any troublesome thoughts of our own.
To the benefactor, the patron, the generous donor: we thank you for your benefaction, your patronage, your generous donation, and we insist that without you keeping the quo in status quo, the artists of the world would run amok.
We thank you for your moment of attentive interest!
For this we promise eternally not to irritate you in any way that would lead to your resignation or to discomfort you and your dollars ever, amen.
We, the undersigned, thank you for your lively policing of what we think and say and how we live and act.
The earth has seen fit to bestow riches upon you and this is an indication of your rightness and so we accept—overlord—your noble choices in enforcing who gets to make the art.
✷
Please board overlord
we thank you for your ever-principled dignity
your conviction and strength in weeding the rabble amongst us out.
Board overlord
I fear for the future where you resign—
without your unspoken guidelines we’re left out on our own.
Overlord on the board
we respectfully ask you to train another to take your place
so your important values are kept in strict circulation,
to protect us because without your protection
our world would be an anarchic.
Board overlord
welcome welcome and welcome!
with warmth and respect
pretty please give money to our work.
Board overlord
ensure you and your rich friends
are on every board
so that there isn’t any corner left untended through oversight.
Board overlord
the lot of us haven’t yet learnt the confining decorum that is so important,
keeping our country tracking along on tracks you approve and gel.
There is an element amongst us artists that is uncouth,
that speaks direct from the heart
that thinks we can instantly change our behaviour
that to stop violence only takes a word.
Imagine, board overlord—
there are people who believe more in justice than in being polite,
who believe human beings are equal,
who don’t understand some people belong on boards
and there are others who do not.
Board overlord,
use all the mechanisms available to you
especially the legal card
frighten these poor artists into shutting up.
Remember
the best art is derivative
safe art with old ideas digested
nothing that pushes us beyond we already believe.
Use it all, overlord—
your disapproving silence
your threats of resignation
so everyone knows—the artists especially—
who runs the arts and creativity show.
Board overlord
we praise your strength
we personally are willing to do anything
so your benevolence glows a second our pitiful way.
Board overlord
that seat you sit in should be engraved with your name
your philanthropy should be understood to be conditional
revokable (of course) when the conversation goes astray.
Board overlord
no sudden changes— none—
slow and steady, and if there is to be change, let it be very slow
and considered, century patient, and we accept that people will be killed die.
Board overlord
it is not for you to save the world
only a child still believes that can be done
easier to think about carefully spending money on the careful ideas that you like.
O board overlord
gift me a small gift
to make a small artwork that you will approve and like
and I offer you my undying allegiance
as well as my unquestioning mind
to always accept you because you know better
so please, for the love of God, sit in your special board seat,
for our lifetime, and then arrange an eternity for your offspring to do the same.
Yumna Kassab is a writer from Western Sydney. She is the author of The House of Youssef, Australiana, The Lovers and Politica. Her latest book, The Theory of Everything, is available from Ultimo Press.
Her books have been listed for the Stella, Miles Franklin Award, Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, QLD Literary Awards, Victorian Premier's Literary Award and NSW Premier's Award. She is the inaugural Parramatta Laureate in Literature and an avid supporter of the Western Sydney Wanderers.