In service of all the dead: World AIDS day
VICTORIA KINGHAM
Erica Smith, founder of Hastings Creatives, is herself a maker. The evening of 1 December (particularly stormy) was an opportunity to display her recently-finished quilt and hear the poem that it illustrates, David Cain’s dedication to a friend who died from AIDS during the days when there was no alternative but the loss. The event was a commemoration of World AIDS day and a fundraiser for the Terrence Higgins Trust.
The poem is a memorandum to an absent friend who, aware that he was dying, did not want to be remembered as a square on a quilt. So he wasn’t, not exactly, but the fact that he didn’t want to be remembered, was remembered. Complicated? A little. It’s reproduced on this page.
It’s the kind of poem you can think about for a long time: its abbreviated shape (almost a gravestone or memorial), its odd line endings, its architecture, its philosophy. In the words of William Carlos Williams, it’s a ‘little machine’–its physical form is as important as its content. For one thing it’s written in capitals – each character has equal importance and weight, and to some schools of poetry this represents a kind of typographic democracy, or socialism. Next thing – the lines are interrupted, like the life, or perhaps all the lives, it commemorates. And while it is one actual person writing about another, once the poem is on the page, any poem’s ‘writer’ is not necessarily the poet themselves – in fact the poem forgives ‘you’ not ‘me’. And because the poem is about something the subject definitively did not want, it becomes, indirectly, a testament to his particular personality. But it’s a poem, a stage removed, so by definition it has a more general application.
A good quilt is, in a way, a historical anomaly, an example of an almost lost art. In the age of AI, when whole people can be reproduced by a click or two, and artists like Grayson Perry can make swathes of brilliant and relevant computer-generated quilted and collaged images, a completely handmade quilt is a rarity to be treasured but which also has a significance over and above its visual value.
Traditionally quilts are heirlooms, made collectively to commemorate a family event or, significantly, a political event like the abolition of slavery. In the American 18th and 19th centuries they were often associated with hardworking families such as Quakers or Amish. In Britain wealthy families used to employ many female villagers to make them so that they could be passed down as a testament (usually of the wealthy family, however) to the next generation. These could take years to make, even by groups of women, and their commissioning, the design, and the works therefore now stand as political acts representative of liberal class discrimination, ‘philanthropy’, uneven wealth distribution and (in hindsight) exploitation.
An artefact such as Smith’s quilt, made from donated recycled material, is thus a representation of and a memoir to a small literary work, which in turn refers to the larger tragedy of the early AIDS epidemics – it’s estimated that before maintenance drugs were developed, there were some 40 million deaths. Further, the quilt’s structure incorporates the original source of the materials, all the donors, their association with the maker, and more. It’s lined largely with cut-up old bed sheets dyed red, the colour of blood. It took Smith just a year to create, by re-stitching and transforming a single poem, this permanent representation of a literary, historical and political event.
David Cain and Erica Smith staged an informal conversation about their friend, his illness, and their own collaboration. Local poet Oli Spleen also recited his poem, ‘Death Rattle’ written from personal experience, first of learning he might die from his exposure to AIDS, then the wonder of learning that he would, after all, live. That poem ends where life begins.
World Aids Day was on Monday 1 December 2025. The ‘To Remember’ quilt and poem were exhibited at Unit 2, Norman Road, on 6 and 7 December 2025 as part of the S.L.A.P (St Leonards Art Party) exhibition.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply