My fake despair

is the shame I’m unable to move

myself to work.

Is the lack of sleep I’m getting in

four walls perched on a hill

that would mock rains.

And for a time.

While I shake dry, combed hair.

shamefully so do I.

My fake despair

doesn’t bother you.

And it shouldn’t.

I am disconnected.

I am an observer.

Useless worrier.

Anxious about my purse

Rather than the balance of survival.

My despair does not deserve the name.

It is born bone idle and fretting.

And my wasted will upsetting

those who have no chances.

My fake despair

should not exist.

But it does.

And I’m sorry.

But I’m aware of it

and that’s something.

My fake despair,

My enemy.

Concerned by the absence of trivial things.

I hope to write you off.

You call, nothing more.

Tell me nobody’s around.

I know how that feels.

Personal space,

accompanied only by the air.

That long ago, blew away

the last company held.

You tell me that it’s quiet.

Well I know the silence.

Unanswered lines of curiosity,

Of flippancy, designed for mirth.

The hearth here burns for one.

Yet even the Sun’s heat reaches the earth.

It could be called tranquillity.

The lack of one. The half of a pair.

It implies soothed ached though.

So none of it.

It’s not what we have here.

Digging nails with nails,

To pass the time.

Time, precious to be spent in kind

company.

So you call.

Tell me nobody’s around.

I know how that feels.

Personal space,

enveloped only by the air.

–

The Word Has Turned

Poets are crossing the divide, and the arts will benefit

When, earlier this year, the Beckham-related scribblings of our own Poet Laureate captured more imaginations than those who might previously have even been aware of her post, it attracted praise from the expected corners. But it also added intrigued glances from those not necessarily at home with the world of lyrical wordsmiths. Clearly the work was a potent mix: poetry blended with the national sport, that sport’s great national icon, simmered in classicism and served on a hotplate of cultural relevance. Served up by the nation’s press, it was a dish that proved to those normally blind to it, that poetry is more than an acquired taste.

But that’s just for starters. Because though that one, internationally-reported step outside of poetry’s four walls is praiseworthy, something enthralling is happening with poetry’s younger disciples, who are doing their own bit to display an expanding relevance with skills that come bewilderingly natural to them. So much so that, very publicly, they’re crossing the arts and finding deserved success in each field they pitch upon.

The prime example is Scroobius Pip, one half of the hip-hop duo completed by Dan Le Sac. He’s a poet. Or rather, four years ago he seemed to be only that. Suited, with shirt, tie, cap and trademark beard all in tact, he was on an open mic tour of Britain and – to this writer’s delight – performed ‘Angles’ (the now title track of the duo’s debut album), to a stunned attendance at Camden’s ‘Oh! Bar’. The atmosphere, purely constructed by layered words, captivated, but it also announced a talent and style that screamed for room outside of poetry’s four walls.

A year later, in 2007, separate from a Le Sac vs Pip appearance at the Dance Lounge, Pip performed his poetry before being nominated as front-man to an ad-hoc jam session in Glastonbury Festival’s Chai-Wallah tent. Without practiced songs or poems to draw from, the performance displayed a slam-style talent that straddled the poetic and vocal arenas, while showcasing a verbal diversity clearly destined for more than 30 pairs of ears in a half-attentive bar.

The story from then to now is more widely-documented. The first album, fuelled by a stunning mix of Pip’s original poems (Angles, Thoult Shalt Always Kill and Letter From God To Man) and ignited by le sac’s beatific knowledge, reached number 31 in the UK album chart. It was more than enough for early followers to pine for a second album, the now released The Logic of Chance. And ‘yet the Scroobius one’ has now released a collection of poetry of all things. Entitled Poetry in (e)motion the release signals, if his lyrics didn’t already, that this is an artist with more on his mind than just playing gigs and touring albums.

The same can be said for – and step forward – Kate Tempest. Self-styled Spoken Word Poet and Rapper, Tempest is an unassuming vocalist to glance at. Previously she would have been spied destroying assumptions and igniting the hearts of those attending the capital’s poetry slams and acoustic nights. She’s caused near-rapture without instrumental backing and yet, as the signing of Sound Of Rum – the band which merges Tempest’s urgent lyrics with finely tuned funk – to the self-same Sunday Best music label will tell you, there is more to this poetess than reflective verse and paper bound thoughts. Even though she still wilfully stalks the street, pen in hand, commited to verse.

However, Sound Of Rum supporting Le Sac vs Pip at Koko on the latter’s London date of the Logic Of Chance tour, signified more than just good label management. Two bands committed to adding a poet’s thought and discourse to beats and tones that effortlessly befit them, should surely share a stage if they share the drive shown by each of their members.

Poetry inspiring music isn’t unheard of, but this is more than that. This is poetry and its creators existing outside of it, while becoming importantly immersed within music. What’s more, these younger poets are, incredibly, achieving such personally and publicly rewarding levels outside of their ‘first’ art-form, while ensuring the levels they have cultivated within poetry remain. Music might seem like the obvious place for those of a lyrical disposition to ply their trade, but again it’s the skill, originality an seeming ease of the implementation that’s truly engrossing.

In the case of bounce-inducing Afro-Jazz purveyors, Benin City, the combined prophetic tones and explosive rhymes of Musa Okwonga and Joshua Idehen (with brass, bass and drums) is achieved with devastating affect. And yet Okwonga and Idehen are, before these roles, an author and an MC respectively, but even before those, two committed and much-lauded poets of London. Their success in each of these differing roles are far from effortless – that would belie the work-ethic each of them exhibits – but their consummate filling of them speaks much of their quite spectacular dedication and resulting skills. Skills matched by another young poet who, to quote himself and his work ‘…is from a long line of trouble makers’.

Attend one of Okwonga’s and Idehen’s Poejazzi events in London and you might see a performance by the man who wrote those words – their ‘A Poem In Between People’ stable-mate, Inua Ellams. A poet again, yet the salve for your senses is that he’s not a musician. Not yet at least. What he is, is an astonishing freelance graphic designer and the writer nd performer of the 14th Tale, the one-man stage show that recently delighted audiences and critics at the National Theatre. This is the very same show that secured a First award at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The 14th tale’s run at the National ended in March. But as though there are simply no laurels to rest on, Ellams then lent his native Nigerian tones to promoting the Kingdom of Ife exhibition, now showing at The British Museum. This is truly befitting not just for him, but for the poets, those detailed included, currently shining across the art-forms.

After all, The Kingdom of Ife was one which, Ellams tells us, in his commentary, provided technical sophistication and magnificent craftsmanship. It was also, we’re told by the overview, a cosmopolitan city-state which flourished culturally. That it did so some 32-35 centuries before a crop of poets also flourished culturally and technically, while providing craftsmanship at very high levels, could be considered tenuous. But that one of those poets lends his tones to an exhibition that celebrates the very virtues that exhibition and his contemporaries are extolling, should impress upon us a poignant point:

The Poet Laureate isn’t alone in reaching out to those who before would not have sought poetry out. Our rising poets are doing it also, yet are employing both old and new avenues to varied, but equally satisfying effect.

Here’s a boat that cannot float.

Here’s a queue that cannot vote.

Here’s a line you cannot quote.

Here’s a deal you cannot note …

and here’s a sacrificial goat,

here’s a cut, here’s a throat,

here’s a drawbridge, here’s a moat …

What’s your hurry? Here’s your coat.

On the subject of poetry, if you happen to be in North London tomorrow, the arts collective I’m part of – Lazy Gramophone – is holding an event called Lazy Sunday.

Full details can be found at the facebook group here, and it should be a lively and entertaining event, equally mixed with Sunday cool.

Readings by William Conway (from sections of his Tastes of Ink) as well as performances by the top gent (and excellent poet and musician), Joshua Idehen, The Sea Kings and Jem Cooke will feature.

I’ll be there milling about and chatting to peeps as well. Not as part of any performance, just to have a bit of a natter. Maybe see you then. And let’s hope that – for the good of the country – whatever is to happen, happens quickly in Westminster. 

They asked me not to break things, first.

After I deconstructed their careful blockade.

They asked me not to eat them.

And I wouldn’t.

They asked me to have mercy.

Not that they needed to.

Whispers of ‘that man’.

Rang in negative ears.

Him, the naysayer.

Him, the irrepressible.

They pointed at me.

They asked me not to change them.

But I had at least to even the odds.

Break the bonds and

untie Potential.

Invite Belief

back to the fold.

Have a word with Power

just make sure he was on both sides.

When I, Inspiration, struck.

Boredom cowered.

Distraction frowned.

And the playthings of

Idle were sent to their corner.

‘There’s a time and a place’

I said. And, ‘you’ve had your fair share’.

And they asked Inspiration to be gentle.

And he just winked a smile.

A bit of preamble here: This was my entry for the National Poetry Competition 2009. Obviously I didn’t win anything, otherwise I wouldn’t be allowed to share this here. But the competitions loss is someone’s gain…or something else equally consolatory :) Anyway, here it is – I hope you find it enjoyable in some way. I quite enjoyed writing somethign a little bit different.

—