October... BHM again! Guernsey again! And more...

When they say this is Black History

Do they mean this is history without the whitewash

Without the grey areas or red herrings – just one big old black hole

For school kids to sink kissing teeth into?

from 'Black History Revisited 2012'

It's the 1st of October and Black History Month is upon us. As I put in a poem I wrote for last Friday's event for Lewisham libraries, "black is infinite and history is never over". Incidentally, it was a really enjoyable night and I feel I learnt a lot and shared a lot with all those present.

The idea of a month to celebrate and learn about black history is at best a temporary solution to the fact that so-called mainstream history has been quick to omit much of what needs to be learnt about the nations and peoples who all too often end up in the chapter about slavery and Empire (turn to your GCSE textbooks and highlight page 364). At worst, it's a way to build up resentment on one side ("Where's our white history month then?") and a quota-filling culture on the other ("Let's pencil you in for October when we have a budget for your sort of thing...") I do, however, like to look on this month in its best light and take it for what it is: one of the only months when local councils and schools like to employ poets for added cultural value (don't worry - I'm pulling my best cheeky face as I write!)

I've a feeling I've said all this before though, so I won't go on much more except to say that I'll be using the month to read as much history as I can, via the stacks of fiction and poetry I have waiting to be opened on my bookshelf. Also, seeing as this summer marked the 50th anniversary of Independence for both Jamaica and Trinidad, there are a couple of events celebrating the two which look very interesting to me, and I'll keep you posted here.

Spoken Word Educators Programme 

The most exciting thing for me this month, from this week onwards, is that I begin my course at Goldsmiths in earnest and I also start teaching Spoken Word at a school in East London. This is all for a new programme that will see six of us trained as full-time Spoken Word Educators; the scheme will hopefully soon be rolled out across London and beyond but this is the pioneering year and I expect we'll all learn a lot along the way.

The people I'm on the programme with read are real gems who I'm glad to know: Raymond Antrobus, Dean Atta, Catherine Brogan, Pete the Temp and Indigo Williams. And I see that Ray's posted something up about it, so I'll not say much more!

I shall be doubly busy, however, which means I've had to ask for extra patience from friends... and to forgive any emails not replied to - resending usually helps ;)


Other things...

Guernsey - So yes, being part of the Guernsey Literary Festival was great; yes, I promised pictures ages ago and yes, I have some right here:

 

Before - and perhaps during - the trip, I imagined my camera would return full of pictures of cows and farms or at least the outsides of the venues where we did workshops, went to festival events and set up the Slam on the final Sunday. But no, thanks to having people with better cameras snapping the juicy stuff from the Festival, I have tonnes of pictures taken near the sea, looking towards the sea, above the sea, in the sea... There seems to be a theme.

 

John Paul and Katie

I was lucky enough to travel with Katie Bonna and John Paul O'Neill, who runs the Slam. This is actually a standard snapshot of how we spent the day. We got to work with some enthusiastic people, and some really great kids, who were brave enough to suspend both their misgivings on poetry and their public performance nerves and work on wildly-varying and imaginative poems based around this year's National Poetry Day theme, Stars.

A brief summary of what went down at the Slam - the final event of the Festival - can be found here.  

scary propeller plane going back

The book - Having not had time to do any work on the novel for a month but wishing it complete, I'm redoubling my efforts this week and am aiming for another 5,000 words by Saturday. Doable, yes?

The poetry - I've also been writing loads and I expect to be putting a first pamphlet together over Christmas

The gigs - 3 out of my 5 weekday eves are guaranteed busy these days so I have less time to go to gigs. Which means I'll be a bit more picky about where I go. Which can't always be a bad thing.

The rest - Will update here again soon... Next gig is the launch of RTJ's Big Heart at The Albany, Deptford, next week.

Good times! 

Next Gig: Lewisham's (Pre-)Black History Month special

This Friday evening marks the start of Black History Month at Manor House Library in Lee, Lewisham. Alongside Andrea Encinas, I'll be taking you through some lyrical stories of Afro-Caribbean experience in London. This will be a warm event, complete with Questions and Answers at the end, so pull up a library chair (or bean-bag) and come along! More details here.

Listed Buildings

to those who understand...

She says they’ve opened up a new restaurant

up on one of the top floors

up one of those new supersized shiny skyscrapers that have recently risen up

in the square mile somewhere

with a perky waiter

with a smile as opaque and crooked as the Thames

each jagged-edged tooth a borough boundary

each curling lip an M25 pile-up

She says I’d like it.

If not the waiter

then, like, at least the plates

(which I imagine will be square

or, at least, oddly-shaped

and punctuated with a dot of food

or maybe a block

or a cube

and I remember the word soupcon makes me tingle)   

She says I’ll like the concoctions too

a cosmopolitan or Manhattan

shaken to match the skyline

while I’m elevated half a mile high up from the floor.

I say elevated because we don’t say lift these days

because we’ve shifted our language into globalisms

neologisms and semi-colloquialisms we used to get corrected for

like 24/7

and sometimes I need to sift through my lost vocabulary

and wonder where the words have gone

like a song eaten

up by the cassette player

chewed tape lost

to my parents’ attic

static from the TV screen I used to feel

until the crown of my head went numb.

Before they complained we’d all been dumbed-down

when we were really young

and not just pretending

there was a never-ending stream of words

we used to parade

on the upper deck of the 123 bus

banana-yellow and painted

blue with our pre-rehearsed curses

while Year 11s smoked out of scratched windows

and you and me chanted verses

from mixtapes you stole.

There are words that have long-graduated

from sink-Estate schools

queued in jobcentres

been left unemployed

and doled out

no doubt on some Essex barstool

where women dressed as schoolgirls order

vodka and lime.

I haven’t actually been to Romford

All those years I was just passing through

somewhere between Time and Envy

just me and my portion of chips

and a shoulder bag full of dirty clothes

waiting on the Friday-night busstop

with that top-of-your-voice karaoke belting

I believe that children are the future...

I felt that line

even with tinny headphones

a shivering puffa hood

and paranoia woven around my neck.

I felt that my future would come in time

and the space between us,

between our worlds,

would collapse.

And perhaps, while the helpline volunteer

with the chirpy voice of unreason

chipped in that everything would one day be ok

in that consoling way professionals always do

I saw myself

in the future

sporting a shiny new tower for a life

with a square mile for a job

and a wife with a smile that says home.

And perhaps, after I put down the phone

and held down a dot of a tear

and forced a laugh right back at you

for the prank that you never knew went wrong

it was then I learnt to embrace long silences

for absent words

and I learnt to curse

and I learnt to downgrade my dreams from a skyscraper

to a grave where I could bury them

along with all those redundant phrases

lost somewhere between the North Circular extension

and the tension we felt on the Central Line.

I want you to know

there is no darker destination

than Hainault via Newbury Park

on a low battery

and an angry stomach

no flattery more odious than an insincere smile

and no square mile that I haven’t trod down

in this opaque city

looking for you

and finding God.

I want you to know that things get better

and that Shards of glass posing as monuments

will never rise higher than your questioning soul

and that there is a skyscraper within you

as odd-shaped and crooked

as the city you roam

and that there is a banquet on the end of your tongue

a restaurant rising from deep within

which you can call home.

I want you to pull up a seat on a barstool

get comfortable in your skin

and invite your friends to feast.

I want you to elevate yourself from under the giant thumb

you’ve created out of East End churches

and Mockney and Jafaican

and I want you to find your own language.

Then, and only then,

will you manage to order something

out of that chirpy, gravelly voice

that you can drink

Then, and only then,

can you bring up a laugh

that bubbles through the buildings

listed in your lungs

and break down the walls of this city

destroy the young boundaries that divide us

the tall towers that hide our shadows 

and find me, whole.

And Today's Random Word Is...

...Borrowing

Hmm.

Upcoming Gig... Last minute... Bang Said the Gun tonight!

Okay, very short notice but I'll be featuring at BSTG tonight in Borough due to a change-around with dates. Come along - it will great!

Poetry Update...

So, last month I left a few threads loose.

Rap vs Poetry again

First up, I wanted to comment on the Rap vs Poetry gig. Luckily, in my failure to do so, Angry Sam (is it me or does his name sound more like a rapper's than a poet's?*) gives a pretty good analysis of how the night went down in his blog.

I've found a video of Kat Francois during the final battle round and I only wish you could see some of the audience's expressions:

Let's just say none of the poets pulled any punches, while some of the rappers were far more respectful!* In any case, poetry won this time but it was all good - both rap and more conventional poetry (bearing in mind that rap is actually a form of poetry) have a lot to learn from each other. I think I said as much on NTS radio's Re:Versed show a few days beforehand (check August 13th show) but I can't be sure any more.

*that's what the night was about: flipping expectations.

Freeee-style

In the run-up to the Rap vs Poetry show, I'd been writing a tailored poem for almost every gig I've performed at. For instance, at a student union gig at University of London, I researched some of the history of its colleges beforehand and wrote something just before the gig... What came out was something that surprised me (in a good way) but I'll probably not use it again, at least not in its current form.

Likewise, at Sage & Time's birthday in July, I was lucky enough to be one of the final poets, so I managed to incorporate some of the themes running through the night into a birthday poem. I've found it pretty exhilarating writing up until the last minute and delivering a personal response to the theme of the evening.

My Christmas poem (which I put most of up under my Edinburgh post) once again was a reaction to the night itself; there are few occasions where I'll reuse it but I'm glad I was able to come up with something for the night, rather than rock up to a show and recite from my back catalogue regardless of what the night's about. I hope that I can continue to do this!

Guernsey

Being in Guernsey for five days and part of the team organising their first ever schools' slam has been especially rewarding. At the very least, you feel a great degree of responsibility when bringing in concepts for the first time. One teacher introduced us, excitedly, as rappers: "Today, class, you're going to learn how to rap slam [does hand movement]". Needless to say, the kids were a little less excited when we said they didn't have to rap but we were really going to take them through a bunch of poems, and get them to write their own! All in all, it went well and I learnt a lot.

I feel this deserves another blog post but, for the moment, I'd like to end this with a pic from near the coast, where I stayed up till sunrise after a particularly deep conversation.

Spoken Word Educators Scheme

This also deserves another post, but so you know it's coming, I have new employment and new studies coming up in the horizon... Yippee! (horizon - see what I did there with the pic and everything?) I shall def fill in this space within the next 24 hours so please come back!

A'ite. Arrivederci!

And Today's Random Word Is...

...Tin

(Does what it says, really)