The tower of Nu-Babel burns
The market in free fall
Downturning, Tumbling,
Wraiths wail in uncanny pallid skin
The tower of Nu-Babel is burning
The fires eager to rage, trained to consume consume consume
We eat until foundations melt
Picking our teeth with steel girders
You find Microsoft 365 in your stew
And eat.
We will not look back at the ruin
As force tumbles
And space widens
Stretching gulfs into infinitum
We glide
Rank by Rank — how we march into the sky
Journeys in artistic media: poet Miro Alleyne-McCarthy responds to the work of Hassan Aliyu
This original spoken word piece was composed and performed by Miro Alleyne-McCarthy, an award-winning Bajan-British filmmaker, visual artist and poet, during the Opening Reception and Private View of Hassan Aliyu's 'Epic Journeys'.
As a creative across multiple different media, Miro describes his practice as 'drawn to intersections. These invisible ley-lines between our everyday life, myths, and magic; the gulfs between past, future and an infinite now'. Like Aliyu's collage paintings, his work layers (in both the literal and the metaphorical sense) diverse narratives, symbols and motifs to achieve an epic scope.
Reaching, simultaneously, backwards and forwards across time, juxtaposing the coldly prosaic — from banknotes and currency indices, to the hard-bitten plosives of 'steel girders' — and the hauntingly dream-like — or perhaps more accurately, nightmarish — these works are painted mosaics: finely wrought, yet retaining all the dynamism and spontaneity of performance. Structure and freedom, the political and the personal, reality and unreality, are interwoven.
Click here to find out more about Miro Alleyne-McCarthy, his current artistic practice and his work as the founder of Bit Riot, a visual content studio.
Miro Alleyne-McCarthy performs his original spoken word composition at the Opening Reception of 'Epic Journeys' on 21 March 2026.