Feel like schools haven’t been teaching you enough about Black history? His first poetry collection, Voices of the Living and the Dead, was published in 1974 by Race Today.
In the poem below, Shire’s second person perspectives create an intimate, moving and honest setting that resonates with the experiences and insecurities of everyday people. I’d recommend listening to The Chicken and The Egg EP which provides a raw, intimate account of teenage pregnancies and relationships.
I’m working on a poetry collection looking at death and Caribbean traditions. Who are the poets you turn to?I’ve been looking to poets coming up behind me, like Gboyega Odubanjo and Belinda Zhawi, and poets ahead of me, like James Berry, who was the first black poet to anthologise black British voices. West Indian poetry showed its ability to be modern and up-to-date when it raised such topics as modern technologies, vegetarianism, environmental protection, creative work and the role of the artist in society.
Anita Sethi, Sun 28 Jun 2020 03.00 EDT I hope so. Prepared to be entertained and educated listeners of spoken word poetry.
I wrote a Hemmingway along your spine and it read profanity, and biro pens that I wrote …
Print. I’d go so far as to say that racism is part of the cultural DNA of Britain. What kinds of challenges have you faced as a black poet in the UK publishing industry?When I first started, it was a closed shop.
Jude Rogers, The modern literary trend of embracing and celebrating cultural variety adds a particular value to their writings. birdsong stripes the day like ribbons,
With regard to the age range of the target audience, I believe that Caribbean children’s poetry can be enjoyed equally by children, teenagers and adults due to the serious character of its topics. Our experiences are powerfully enriched by our heritage, giving birth to what is a beautifully diverse and vibrant community in the UK. More than 50 years later, black writers are yet to be fully absorbed into the mainstream. His rhymes enthralled me right away! What is your typical writing day?I try and get to my desk at six and work till 12. He lives in West Yorkshire.What are the biggest challenges faced by black poets in the UK publishing industry?One is to do with a process of tokenisation, whereby one poet is taken to be reflective of a kind of monolithic black experience, when there are as many black experiences as there are kinds of people. Can poetry change the world?Yes. He started performing poetry at 19, and his early poems were collected in To Sweeten Bitter, published by Out-Spoken Press in 2017. A lot of times we’re not given space to grieve. It can be soothing, therapeutic or even just distracting if you have a troubled mind. I’ve sold a few million records, so the vast majority are consumers of reggae.
That’s smaller. Great British Poetry pt2: The Poets of Black Britain Benajamin Zephaniah is an exceptional British poet; he has been named by ‘The Times’ as one of Britain’s top 50 post-war writers. You cannot love sugar and hate your sweetness. It felt divine. I was being told theirs were about nature and philosophy, but mine were also about those things. His debut collection, Kumukanda, won the 2018 international Dylan Thomas prize and a Somerset Maugham award. I discovered that in West Indian literature for children the greatest emphasis was given to topics dedicated to Caribbean life, notably its nature, food, weather, folklore and traditions.
I love Lorca. Finally, for my research, I chose five Black British poets: James Berry, John Agard, Grace Nichols, Valerie Bloom and Benjamin Zephaniah. When he mentions places like Peckham Rye, Westminster Bridge, Nunhead cemetery, it makes me think how growing up in Hackney was about postcodes, and where your square metre was. Toi Derricotte, Yehuda Amichai, Patricia Smith. After further analysis of poems by James Berry, John Agard, Grace Nichols, Valerie Bloom and Benjamin Zephaniah, I concluded that by mixing Standard English with Creole, the authors broadened their choice of literary devices, created special rhythmic schemes, imitated the speech of Caribbean people, saved Creole from obsolescence and promoted West Indian heritage: “Done baby, done cry, yuh madda gone a fountain Booker prize winner Bernardine Evaristo set up the the Brunel international African poetry prize in 2012 for emerging African poets, because she felt they were absent from contemporary literature. I’ve always been on the periphery. It’s for the ordinary, the unspoken for, the undocumented. Quote a line from a poem of yours that you think best reflects our times.Taking one line from a poem is a bit like taking a brick from a wall.
I wanted to model what survival looked like for the kid I once was. What is your favourite protest or political poem?A poem by the Guyanese poet Martin Carter, our national poet, called Looking at Your Hands, which ends with the resonant line: “I do not sleep to dream, but dream to change the world.”, Can poetry change the world?People can be nourished and inspired by poems and have a heightened awareness of wonder. Black voices have often felt like guests in UK literature, despite being routinely summoned during political events.
Quote a line from a poem of yours that best reflects our times.“Oh Lord, there is pepper in the deads’ mouths and coffins fly overhead”– from a poem called Island Grief after Hurricane Ivan, which devastated Grenada. A 2018 study found that only 7% of work published in poetry journals were by people from BAME backgrounds. I was lucky enough to see him perform live at Shoreditch Box Park’s Boxed In open mic event. They turned to the book for solace. I’m so moved and impressed by them and I feel like I’m in the middle of a seismic shift and worldwide revolution. It feels like a lot of people are in Year 7 of that education. “No one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark” – a line from Home by the British-Somali poet Warsan Shire – was a prominent slogan of the migrant crisis in 2015. Recently, more than 100 black authors formed the Black Writers’ Guild. They’re often anecdotal, about the absurdities of everyday life, like parodies of poets doing poetry.
I was nurtured by that community, and later, by the Cave Canem Foundation [for Black poets] in the US. I agree with David Olusoga that black history must be taught in schools. The visuals are quite disturbing to watch; however, it is necessary to highlight bleaching’s toxic effects on the skin, self-esteem and relationships. If I’m not having a fruitful day, I’ll simply read one of my favourite poets or put on some music or go shopping.