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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.

For eight years now, I’ve owned at least one guitar. For six I’ve owned two. For five I’ve owned three. But I’ve not been able to properly play any of them for eight. Absolutely appalling that is, so I’ve been hammering them a lot lately. I desperately want to stride into the decade doing more of the things I wish I could do, and to actively play – if not produce – music is one of those things. The other main thing I wan t do is to write more. It occurred to me today that the decade of 2010 – 2020 will be the decade that will, theoretically at least, see me hit my physical peak. If that happens, and my creative abilities follow suit (as I consider physical and mental states closely related), I want to be ready.

And as I want to write more, I’ve been doing a lot more reading – fuel for the fire etc. Ron Hogan, Den of Geek contributor, blogger extraordinaire, has an interesting point at his blog, Subtle Bluntness, about how the writer is dead, and that idea strikes me right between the eyes. Having wanted to be a writer since I was a very wee man, I see his fatal point, and I want to adjust for the future of my career and my creativity, wherever each may take me. Music might not ever be my bread-winner I understand,  but it can’t hurt to light another creative fuse in the battle to blow the paths open…if you get my rather convoluted meaning. Besides which, 2010 has been declared The Year Of The Poet by Poejazzi.

Now, as fantastic as it would be for me to be declared the winner of the National Poetry Competition in the year named that by some, I have to consider that it might not happen (I hope it does though), and pile my free time into showing the London poetry/spoken word scene what I have to offer in the lyrical department. Avec guitar or non, I’m sure the enthusiastic learning of it will enliven me to all kinds of rhythmic influence and inspiration. ”Big things“ has Poet, Author, Poejazzi founder and Benin City vocalist, Musa Okwonga said of 2010. Indeed, sir. I want to be a part of whatever big things will be happening in some capacity, and I also want to conjure ’big things’ of my own. So, though it’s a day before New Year’s Eve, I’m preparing for 2010 already. In fact I’ve been preparing for some days now; fail to prepare and all that.

Part of the reason I put up this site was to (yes shamelessly promote myself, okay…) recommend things to look at, read, listen to, hear (not the same) and consider. Needless to say I think his blog will fill most of those criteria.

Well you know sometimes things don’t get written when they should and sometimes things get written which perhaps really shouldn’t. That one just didn’t get written. Ok, so I’m not the most efficient blogger, but I like to think I’m an honest one, so here’s what I’ve been doing. 

Well yesterday was National Poetry Day and I decided I’d leave it to the millions of others in the UK to do the writing for once. I laughed heartily at some of the poems on Sky Sports, cringed at others and thought this was brilliant. I also thought hard about an article I read in the current issue of Poetry Review by Blake Morrison entitled How Poetry Can Make Things Happen which gave me enormous heart in writing. I usually take alot of heart from producing a piece, but ocassionally it helps to get the heart from another source to take into the process.

Anyway, ‘make things happen’ is what I’m all about (or what I want to be all about). In my school yearbook, I was voted 3rd ‘Most Likely To Become A Religious Leader’ and I took a kind of heart from that. Then when I was at University I was told by a lovely lass – a born again Christian – that I could do great work for God. Well, y’know that was fine and dandy, but I wasn’t sure God really needed my help being omnipotent an’ all and three years on, and now being an Atheist, I think well….I could do great work for people.

I hope I could…hmm I think I can, and making things happen through poetry and writing is something which appeals to me, even though I’m not sure exactly how I’ll go about that yet. Being one of the greatest writers to come out of this small corner of the world would be great, and so (as I’ve not heard back from Random House) I’ll be writing an email to an agent Musa recommended for ‘new writers’. I quite like the idea of being a new writer when the habit’s nearly as old as my ability to tie my laces, so we’ll see what happens.

Anyway, stop reading this, go forth and have fun. 

[calls after you]…be nice if you popped bak at some point though…[/calls after you]