MEDIA.
Bios. Interviews. Talks. Quotes.
Biographies.
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Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is an award winning poet, playwright & curator. Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in his work in which he mixes the old with the new, traditional with the contemporary. His books are published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, Penned In The Margins, Oberon & Methuen.
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Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer and founder of: The Midnight Run (an arts-filled, night-time, urban walking experience.), The Rhythm and Poetry Party (The R.A.P Party) which celebrates poetry & hip hop, and Poetry + Film / Hack (P+F/H) which celebrates Poetry and Film. Identity, Displacement & Destiny are reoccurring themes in his work, where he tries to mix the old with the new: traditional African oral storytelling with contemporary poetics, paint with pixel, texture with vector. His books are published by Flipped Eye, Akashic, Nine Arches, Penned In The Margins, Oberon & Methuen.
{250 Words}
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer. He is a Complete Works poet alumni and facilitates workshops in creative writing where he explores reoccurring themes in his work - Identity, Displacement and Destiny - in accessible, enjoyable ways for participants of all ages and backgrounds.
His awards include: Edinburgh Fringe First Award 2009, The Liberty Human Rights Award, The Live Canon International Poetry Prize, The Kent & Sussex Poetry Competition, Magma Poetry Competition, Winchester Poetry Prize, A Black British Theatre Award, The Hay Festival Medal for Poetry, multiple Dora awards for Outstanding Performance By An Ensemble & Outstanding Production.
He has been commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Tate Modern, Louis Vuitton, BBC Radio & Television. His poetry books include ‘Candy Coated Unicorn and Converse All Stars’ published Flipped Eye, 'The Wire-Headed Heathen' by Akashic Books, The Half God of Rainfall by 4th Estate and The Actual by Penned in The Margins. His plays include ‘Black T-shirt Collection’ (Fuel, China Plate, Warwick Arts Centre, National Theatre), ‘The 14th Tale’ (Fuel, Battersea Arts Centre, National Theatre), ‘Barber Shop Chronicles’ (National Theatre, Oxford Playhouse, Bristol Old Vic, BAM, A.R.T, Kennedy Center, The Grand Theatre in London, Canada ) and ‘Three Sisters’ (National Theatre, Soul Pepper, Obsidian Theatre) published by Oberon, ‘The Half God Of Rainfall’ (Fuel, Kiln Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop) He founded The Midnight Run (an arts-filled, night-time, urban walking experience.) The Rhythm and Poetry Party (The R.A.P Party) which celebrates poetry & hip hop, and Poetry + Film / Hack (P+F/H) which celebrates Poetry & Film.
Interviews.
14 / 09 / 2023 / Podcast / The Amplify Project
30 / 04 / 2022 / Radio / This Cultural Life
03 / 04 / 2021 / Podcast / Something Burrowed
04 / 03 / 2021 / Podcast / Planet Poetry
16 / 09 / 2020 / Podcast / The Secret Life Of Writers
10 / 07 / 2019 / Podcast / Distraction Pieces
With Salty brine
With Wayne Holloway-Smith.
With Iman Amrani, for The Guardian.
Interview for Swipe Slow.
Interview with the British Council on BTSC.
talks.
Honorary Doctorate Acceptance Speech. 2023
TEDx Brixton. 2015.
TEDx Hackney Talk on The Midnight Run. 2013.
TEDx Euston. 2013.
quotes.
“The most talented artists hone in on micro-interactions and derive concepts from seemingly mundane occurrences – in the best cases, they use these to make larger social critiques. Ellams certainly demonstrates this ability.”
“His words are incredible... The poems are just stunning.”
“Ellams is a charismatic and engaging performer of his own work. His poems are vivid, picture-rich, hip hop-inflected and alliterative, the words warm as bread.”
“Ellams’s writing is exceptional, and has a character and an incredible ability to paint vivid pictures for an audience. His words are full of love, nostalgia and strength. He transports us.”
“He tells his story with passion and rich, warm humour.”
“Ellams has an instinctive feel for the polyphonous rhythms of dialogue, and the way his characters use language is both a texture and a theme of this play.”
“Exuberant, Invigorating... and richly enjoyable drama.”
“Rich and exhilarating... The tone of the play shifts fluidly from comedy to poignancy to rage.”
“An ambitious piece and so life-affirmingly realised. Go.”
“This wonderful new play is a revelation.”
“#Afterhours takes both the wellbeing and the understanding of the reader as a matter of central importance, let literary kudos fall where it may, a radical gesture in a scene that still equates self-protective emotional insensitivity, irony or literary ‘seriousness’ with a mastery of craft. ”
“His writing is aromatic. He can capture the smell of a place, the sense of a moment, as well as anyone.”
“...dazzling, densely woven hybrids of music, rhythm and narrative, in which Ellams channels his love for image and metaphor into longer, more sustained stories.”
“A tinglingly resonant celebration of the art of solo performance.”
“You sink into his storytelling, which paints vivid mental images and, thanks to minimal yet eloquent sound, a real sense of location. Ellams has an easy, laid-back charisma and pares poetic flair for narrative with admirable restraint. The wordsmith remains present, though, and his sentences, with their sophisticated flavour and texture combinations, can be something of a Michelin-starred mouthful.”
“Ellams’ poetry gleams with a dusty, worn, deeply original beauty and he remains such wonderfully generous company to keep on stage.”
“There’s something uniquely 21st Century about Ellams’ voice which somehow absorbs the whole experience of colonialism without being totally defined by it.”