Wall/Flower – a group poem for National Poetry Day

I thought it would be a great idea if we could celebrate UK’s National Poetry Day together so emailed some of my favourite poets and asked them if they would like to take part in a group poem.

The guidelines were as follows and we emailed back and forth throughout the day coming up with the lovely poem ‘Wall/Flower” below.

1. You can post as many or as little times as you like but to ensure that everyone gets a go ONLY POST TWO LINES AT A TIME

2. Once you have added to the the poem allow a couple of other people (at least) to add to the poem before you post again.

The poets who took part were: Katrina Naomi, Heather Taylor, Nev’l Lewis, Paul Ross, Miriam Nash, Kamaria Muntu, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Jacqueline Saphra, Mahogany L. Browne, Nena Black, Sabrina Mahfouz, Warsan Shire, Den Rele and Naomi Woddis

Wall/Flower

Should I tell you that I’d reached for you,
reached for your city, punched through that stupid wall.

Or should I curl my hand in to an embryo,
a sleeping bud yearning for the light ?

A faint bulb beats in me
I cast its flame as wide as I can, a fishing rod.

A sea that pulsed once with shoals of silver
is viscous now. The bait waits on the hook,

a streak flashing across the murky Thames
swallowed in the morning gloom,

I had wanted to call you, I held the empty phone
to my ear as they fished the suited woman out of the river,

I was left with the echoes of my breath
your warm voice nowhere near my heart.

And then the distance begins, the sky slate,
and the chalk dust of our hands.

Scanned ticket prices, hotel deals are reminders
Of days before highway exit signs claimed you

a lazy wave laps at the mucky shore,
reaches towards the blank silent bank walls

On a lay-by, I see weeds growing through cracked
tarmac, their gaudy flowers shimmering like jewels

I tear at their string bodies, pulverize buds
under nails. My fingers are wet with their slush.

a reminder that I am enamoured by the slick glimmer
of chance, where carnations bloom in your mouth

But I have only descended in body, decaying now upon the shore
And my soul now waits beside you, just out of reach for you to see

Can you catch me, I’m the wisp that covers the moon
it’s silvering eye freezing you with my glare.

call me dear moon, as our footprints stretch across
the sky and i scratch your name into the clouds,

That I am now in white moon of cul de sac
A house spun away from it’s rooms

a spine for your welcome mouth, a hollow doorway
anticipating your wretched smile. breath me like water

For I was the energy of the bird in flite and before that
The sunflower propped up against a old Roman Wall

And now I am the vastness of poppies and plains
wide open like a hungry woman’s legs

Moving forward, forever forward
till the climax of my soul

clings back and decides that this is all too much
a touch, just a touch, is enough

yet held — motionless, suspended — with all the impetus
of the four winds, sans the sun that moves them

Your light so bright, it worms my soul
But the veil I stand behind, God I can not let go

Take just that one step to stand with me my love
So we can walk within the puddles of eternity

All I wanted was a conch
But you’ve stolen the sound of the sea.

I think about her again, drowned amongst
weeds, the siren call she did not hear.

her face pale mottled like sharkskin
her perfect ears wet and glistening like seashells

With her face calm, eyes closed, at peace now
As the rope around her neck gently moves in the tides breath

you pick up, a coarse hello, my tongue knots itself among molars
the lover beside you coughs, pulls you closer, i swallow your dial tone.

I am drowning, falling in to the moss green water
your voice is the hand to save me, I grab your finger tips.

And swallow. My ribs aching with a kick,
The sight of you my lift from blindness to light

4 ever more you were more than your my soul,
my light & my dark. You were the air that I breathed,

the song in my head, the dance in my feet.

Beyond Words – a very special event

I just thought I would let you know about a very special event coming to London.

Apples & Snakes presents

BEYOND WORDS

Four incredible South African poets tour the UK together for the first time. Brought together by South African Poet Laureate and renowned exile campaigner Keorapetse Kgositsile, the show premieres specially commissioned new work. This is a blistering introduction to the new South Africa and to the power of live poetry in performance.

Featuring some of the most exciting voices of South Africa in the twenty
first century – Keorapetse Kgositsile, Lebo Mashile, Don Mattera and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers.

Keorapetse Kgositsile: “I think an exchange of literature among peoples has better chances of building understanding and friendship than any diplomatic missions could ever achieve.”

Linton Kwesi Johnson: “It is a very impressive line up of some of South Africa’s finest and most powerful poets.”

When: Wednesday 4 November, 8.00pm
Where: Southbank Centre, Purcell Room, Belvedere Rd, London SE1 8XX
Tickets: £10
Box office: 0871 663 2500 / http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk

The Red Letter – David J

My friend and great talent David J sent me this poem and I post it here (with his kind permission of course)

Are you a Lamb or Tyger
In life in order to move forward ancient scriptures of the times past
Can be quoted as saying seeing what is most important
Is not what you keep but what you choose to leave behind in this story
What was left behind was the thoughts of a thinker.
In a top pocket with a hole in it .
This note had a hole right thru the middle of it was found in a war correspondents top pocket
Positioned over the left side of the chest
After wiping the Red fluid that covered the letters
I was able to re -write it .
Are you a Lamb or a Tyger can you combine the attributes of both of these animals’ weakness and strength to survive

Scratched Out – The Urban Musical

Scratched Out has been described as an Urban Musical, directed and composed by Richard Hale with lyrics by London spoken word favourite, Dean Atta. The scratch performance I saw of this show showed a great deal of theatrical potential. There was a real energy and honesty which was hard to resist.

Scratched Out tells the story of six young people who want to make it in the music industry and for some making it through day to day is enough of a challenge. The show starts with a musical and dance number. The audience could not deny their obvious enthusiasm. Like the best musicals, the emotional exposition is told through the songs.

Scenes change rapidly and the focus of the piece is on inter-personal relationships rather than a convoluted plot line. The script works best when it fully exploits rhyme, keeping both pace and hip-hop at the heart of it.

‘I’d rather get high than get laid/ I don’t play that game, I just relax and maintain’ displays the neat description of character often seen in Scratched Out adding real texture to the show.

Jordan Pitt, in the role of Jason, has a shuddering stage presence. Rudwone Huyghue as Luke talks about why he wants what he wants with such urgency ‘I’ve been scratched out all of my life’. This poignant sentiment continues when he tells us he craves ‘a confidence that will warm the coldest winters.’

Luke is the voice of thwarted hope and his story is an unhappy reminder of so many city lives. ‘What’s the point of dreaming if you have to wake up to a nightmare?’ he asks.

The female characters Jenny and Amanda are juxtaposed to full dramatic effect. Whilst Amanda prefers to wear loose and none revealing sportswear Jenny tries to encourage her to dress in more feminine manner. Amanda retorts that she is not ’scared of being a girl’ but that she cannot understand the reasoning of spending ‘too much for too little material’.

The show does have a tragic and heart-breaking end and I wondered if it was possible to convey the ‘realness’ without having a senseless death at its culmination. Sadly I think not. Scratched Out is a brave step away from happy-go-lucky West End theatre and for this alone it must be applauded.

I would highly recommend ‘Scratched Out’. It’s sincerity is unbeatable, and whilst this passionate musical does not shy away from difficult truths it is also very entertaining. I left feeling both saddened by the outcome but determined to contribute to positive change. You can book tickets for Scratched Out here

Scratched Out – an interview with Dean Atta

I spoke to Dean Atta about the making of Scratched Out. As well as a writer and performer he also runs workshops. It’s clear how much he wants his students to succeed.

You ’sold’ this to the Lyric without them actually having seen it – did your theatre company have a clear idea of how they wanted the show to be from the beginning?

From the beginning we wanted the show to be as authentic as possible. The story was very clear but we each had our own sense of the characters. R&D Productions is myself Dean Atta, Tracey Duodu and Richard Hale. We are three unique individuals all with different talents and life experience. Embarking on a project like Scratched Out we felt close to the story and characters in different ways and for different reasons. We opted for more unknown actors with their vocal and rapping ability taking precedent over anything else. I think we made the right decision, the cast really connected with their characters and with each other exactly how we believed they could.

How much of the process was collaborative, can you tell me about it. For example did you respond to the needs of the story with the lyrics or did you write the lyrics first?

The lyrics were my job, the music was Richard’s and the dialogue was kind of up for grabs. Tracey came into the production team after script was written and help us move from script to show, focusing particularly on choreography and styling. However, Tracey was also involved at the very beginning in a scratch performance of the show for Richard’s MA in Musical Theatre at Mountview Academy last summer, in which a group of actors, including Tracey and myself, workshopped and improvised a 20 minute piece based on stimulus given to us by Richard. He received a distinction for this part of his MA and Paul Clements the Principle of Mountview said we must carry on writing the full piece. At the same time the Lyric Hammersmith were interested to know what else I was working on outside of my work with young people, and Scratched Out seemed the most fitting project to bring to them.

Did you find that as a performer and poet yourself the actual lyric writing came relatively easily to you?

I have written a few plays and monologues in the past and in my own poetry there are narratives threads and characters, but it was real a challenge to combine lyric writing and storytelling and keep the seven voices in Scratched Out distinct and at no point slip into my own style. I think I did really well because you really wouldn’t recognise these lyrics from anything you’ve heard from me in the past. I was heavily influenced by the creative writing workshops I run with young people at the Lyric and in schools and youth clubs across London, I felt it was my duty to tell the stories of these young people I had met and worked with over the years. I tried to ignore newspapers and other media. At no point did I want the show to become preachy, stereotypical or boring. I became slightly schizophrenic whilst writing this show, but I really felt like I knew each character inside and out, there is so much more to each of their stories than we could present in the 60 minute piece that you saw.

When I was watching it I felt that to retain integrity there had to be a senseless death, which brings me on to my next question. How important is it for performance poetry and music to raise difficult issues in today’s culture and do you think it can make the changes we seek?

Words are intellectual and music is visceral and combining the two has the ultimate impact. It takes a certain type of person to go to a performance poetry show and just listen to people talk. But almost everyone listens to music. I have realised this even with my own work and my debut CD Reason & Rhyme (on which two of the five tracks are produced by Scratched Out composer Richard Hale) is music and spoken word combined, and this is the way forward for me. Being a part of Scratched Out has taught me a lot about myself as a writer, my fellow artists as colleagues and my audience – who want to believe that change is possible. But the change can’t happen on the stage, screen or stereo – it has to happen in the schools and on the streets!

On the Out – an interview with Bob Boyton

I interviewed writer and one time esteemed alternative stand up comedian, Bob Boyton about this new play ‘On the Out‘. On the Out is the second in a trilogy about fictional ex-boxer Bomber Jackson doing his best to survive in a post-Thatcher Britain.

In person Bob possesses a wry intelligence giving the impression that he’s taking in a lot more than he allows you to know. I asked him about Bomber Jackson and where the idea came from.

“Bomber Jackson first appears in an, as yet unfinished novel, that I began writing in 2000. I was in an organisation called ‘Writer’s Republic’ set up by the late Linda Smith and Warren Lakin. It was a loose collection of writers and the hope was that we’d become a TV production company.

I was talking to Warren one evening, bemoaning my lack of success and he suggested putting a story of mine to the BBC about a cab driver called Brian with a coke habit. I went home and came up with the first chapter of the novel about Bomber Jackson coming out of jail. I wrote the first couple of thousand words and thought I really like this guys voice. Later I thought this is a character I can really be in”.

‘On the Out’ is the second of the series of The Bomber Jackson trilogy.

He tells me “Bomber is a sympathetic working picaresque working class hero. I worked with homeless people for twenty years and there’s a hell of a lot of that in it.” Bob admits “Some of it is about my past during my twenties and thirties. There’s a homo-erotic episode in ‘On the Out’ where I’m returning to bi-sexuality as a theme I used to address as a stand-up.”

He laughs, “The Scotsman said that I was the Joe Orton of comedy.”

I talk to Bob about the difference between stand-up and performing his monologue and how much he draws on his previous experience as a comic “At first it was hard not to play for laughs and not improvise. When I was a political activist I was a bit of a speechifier, you often work at moving the crowd when you do that.

What got me in to alternative comedy was that people were not moving I think partly as a result of the sclerosis of the Communist Party.”

I broach the sensitive subject of why someone as talented and perceptive as Bob Boyton is no longer on the stand-up circuit. “I was bitter that I hadn’t become famous” he tells me in with characteristic straightforwardness “That’s why I left alternative comedy. It may have wrecked my life being famous.”

He’d like recognition for Bomber Jackson “Because it’s about a homeless drunk but it’s not written by a drunken egotist like Bukowski” proof that Bob, unlike Bomber has lost neither his bite or his punch.

Fight Face – a review

A re-cycled set emblazoned with graffiti, slide projections and animation is the setting for the talented Sophie Woolley’s Fight Face. The action takes place in and around Real Taste, a take-away where the long-suffering Jenghis works. His first customer is the mouthy Leanne from Essex who is primed for a fight describing herself as “I’ve got taste, not like this place”.

Over the night arguments ensue between strangers, a kaleidoscope of characters brilliantly drawn by Woolley. The performances in ‘Fight Face’ are superlative. Sophie Woolley and David Rubin morph between characters with such expertise I had to remind myself that this was a cast of only two people.

Tabitha is an East London artist, posh, edgy and brittle. Jerry is a gutter drunk mourning the death of a pole dancer. Rob and Jim are two builders, the comedy duo of the piece, who watch benignly as the action unfolds. Jim is satisfied watching women and being “man and drill, at one with concrete”. Helen is a new mother with a baby who won’t stop crying and sadly describes herself as ” I’m good at quizzes but I can’t do men very well”. The estranged Natalia and Tomek argue about a dog and a cat. Carl is in Tabitha’s words ‘a hoody’ whose violence tendencies progress as the play progresses. Eric and Mary are a pair of cops, inept and formal. All, with the exception of Rob and Jim, have something fundamental missing from their lives.

Woolley’s strength is in describing extremes of human behaviour as both comedic and sad. She is especially gifted in creating women characters on the edge of sanity. ‘Fight Face’ is not merely a comedy, it pushes the boundaries of surreal story telling to a nightmarish conclusion. The script is sparkling with wit and cutting social observation.

Jenghis finally reveals his own murderous fantasies in response to the meaningless existences he witnesses saying “You are dead, prepare to die and then I give them some chips.” and then more poignantly, the most resonant comment in the whole of ‘Fight Face’ “I know who to kill but who do I save?”

When Jerry meets Tabitha she greets him with a nihilistic “I’m Tabitha. Life’s shit, isn’t it?”. The climax is both tragic and darkly comedic and Tabitha’s dramatic demise forces us to look at the pretentious and self-indulgent in a wonderfully caustic way.

The Turner Plays – a review

Red on Black’s Turner Plays takes five Turner paintings and makes short and memorable theatre.

Rain, Steam and Speed by Annalisa D’Inella and directed by Lotte Wakeman sees a newly wed couple are on their way to London by stream train. “It can’t be good for the body to travel at 44 miles per hour” bemoans the anxious Rose. Herbert by contrast is enthusiastic and overjoyed “Extraordinary – breakfast in Slough and dinner in London” he beams. The couple’s conflict is a sturdy metaphor for a much more contemporary discussion. That of the need for rural spaces in a age of advancing and unstoppable industrialisation. Finally the simple act of opening the window as the train travels at speed illustrates how it’s possible to welcome in the new even if one feels scared and a little unprepared.

A River Seen from Richmond Hill by Mark Lindow and directed by Catherine Paskell is a pocket sized absurdist drama. One and Two are a pair of eager adminstrative busy bodies who ultimately are shown to be powerless in the face of outside forces.

Fisherman at Sea by Sally Horan and directed by Russ Hope is set in a panic stricken fishing village in Ireland. Bridie is a brittle widow waiting for fishing boat to come in with her two sons on board. With her are her daughter and daughter in law. Bridie has already lost one son, Seamus and, as the women wait, old wounds are brought to the surface. “Stop all this lying’ Bridie is told “this poison before it chokes you”. This short and intense piece deftly conveys the truth about lack of forgiveness. Bridie’s closing words ring a hollow truth that is hard to forget “I’m so alone. I can’t forgive him for that. I hope it’s little Seanie in the life boat.” bitterly adding “Happy now?”

Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying by Heather Taylor and directed by Kaitlin Argeaux charts the complexities in a relationship between two women. Ever changing it’s impossible to find solid ground in Heather Taylor’s sharply written drama. Spiralling realities compete for narrative attention. A and B were lovers once and retell the story of their past intimacy in this revealing and compelling piece. It is a complex and destructive relationship which neither women seems capable of leaving. “Some times you have to let them go, the dead weight, they’ll sink you” is repeated like a self-defeating mantra. The characters undress revealing more of their essence and the stark contrast of black and white, light and shadow. This is a tight and perceptive play about multiple attempts to let go and the repeated psychological torture of a relationship that will not end.

Sea Monsters and Vessels at Sunset by Sam Hall and directed by Arlene Vazquez revisits a viking myth about slaying a sea monster. Helga listens cynically to the Olaf’s telling of Sigurd’s story. She is both mocking and disbelieving and recounts how she lost a father and a brother “fifty brave warriors sailed in to a bloody sunset and you weren’t one of them”. In this perceptive and dry-witted drama who killed the monster is unimportant, the story is passed from generation to generation cleverly reminding us about the myths in our own lives and the seductive wonder of story telling.

Human Moments in Time – an interview with Heather Taylor

This interview first appeared on Metaroar.

One sunny afternoon on the South Bank over coffee and cake I spoke to poet, writer, performer and playwright Heather Taylor about her three new pieces Hostage : Bleach : Burn.

Can you tell me a little about how these new plays came in to being?

I wrote “Hostage” first. A friend suggested an actor whom she thought I should meet. When I met him he said to me ‘I hear you are political, I’m not political’ and that idea, that someone who did not have strong a political identity would end up in this situation, was the initial inspiration for the play.

The play is set in an unknown and unnamed place. It could be anywhere because it’s about being held as a mental hostage. It was written at the time when Ken Bigley was killed and there were many questions coming up. The character describes his need to get away from his home country by saying “I’m not here for the money, I’m here to escape”. There is a sense of other characters there but the audience does not see them.

Talking with Lemn Sissay – A Lifelong Project

This article first appeared on Metaroar.

Lemn Sissay is a stalwart poet and performer whose work has been enjoyed throughout the UK and across the globe for almost twenty years. Those who have never been to a spoken word gig will know of Lemn. He is funny and serious, truthful and mischeivous, profound and playful. His poems are universally accessible but never shallow. His autobiographical play ‘Something Dark’ has been touring internationally for the past 3 years. It tells the traumatic story of Lemn’s childhood and the quest to find his mother, and birth family when he was 21 years old.

I meet Lemn one cold winter’s morning on London’s South Bank. The sun fails in its attempt to break through the clouds and the sky is low and grey. Lemn is wearing sunglasses. Two days previously we had talked about his new scratch performance ‘Why I Don’t Hate White People’ on the roof of the Lyric in Hammersmith. Today he greets me like an old friend and I am genuinely excited at the prospect of spending the next two hours with him.