To policymakers, poet Giovanni Rose would be just a statistic. But like everyone ignored by politicians, he is so much more
What if a statistic could speak its own truth? What if a stereotype could confound your expectations?
A few weeks back, I was riffling through the local papers when a story jumped out. A schoolboy in Tottenham, north London, had just won an award as a Foyle Young Poet of the Year. At the bottom was printed his poem. Called Welcome to Tottenham, it brought the news from a society that is only a few miles from Westminster but might as well be a whole world away.
Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist and senior economics commentator
Excerpts from Welcome to Tottenham quoted by kind permission of Giovanni Rose
