Amazing. I am interested in poetry and architecture, have worked with a lady called Sarah Butler who creates projects of exactly such a description, however, architecture and moving motion graphic is a new to me, watch!
So, I am a writer in residence at the Tate modern. The Post began on the 1ts of January and will last for all of 2011. My previous residency was also for a year, posted at Covent Garden's Piazza to celebrate its 180th anniversary and this was written on the final day. 30th December 2011. My last day.
I arrive to find a street performer on his hands walking over and across four young boys lying flat on red carpets on the cobbled grounds. The crowd is united and clapping to the spectacle. Back on his feet, they fill his’s cap with five pound notes then dissolve into pedestrians. Another performer takes the stage wearing a kilt, holding a ladder and a wooden box, he begins to build the street magic again. I walk to the west side of the Piazza and there is a man bare chested save for suspenders, juggling a crystal ball with his elbows and a little girl is so swept into his performs she yells when her mother tries to feed her ice cream. There, I meet Davina and Jeanie biting hungrily into cornish pasties. They are from Little Hampton which they tell me is by the sea. Jeanie says her mum bought her an overnight stay in London for Christmas at a hotel just down the road. They arrived, dropped their bags and wandered up to the Piazza. They have not visited London in a year and a half. I suggest things to do and ask where in the piazza they had visited? Whittard, a shop round the corner. I follow their trail.
There, I meet Dunia who has worked here for five months. She is dark in complexion, open face, wide smile. She spells out her name, says it means ‘world’ in Arabic. She likes the atmosphere here, a great place to work but how sometimes, it does not seem a part of London. There is a queue building behind me, so I thank her for her time and follow a couple as they leave the shop, turn left and walk towards the pit where a string quartet strums the khan khan and has visitors dancing. The couple, Adam and Chloe from Derbyshire, came to see Ghost Stories at the Duke of York Theatre. Adam describes it as a really good show and deconstructs its structure: three short stories within a story. They come here once or twice a year for its atmosphere. Where else in the piazza had they visited? Regents Gifts. I follow their trail.
And it is a little shop of wonders winding out from a small staircase. It sells glass sculptures, hand-painted venetian masks with brass bells, scented candles, porcelain cats, leather jewel boxes, hip flasks and hand crafted cufflinks, there is something Aladdin-cave-like about it that counters Florence’s accent. She is French and speaks with the flourishes of her language. After introducing myself, we briefly talk about the Christmas period and her hopes for the New Year. A gentleman, older than I, buys a gift and I slip after him downstairs, back towards the pit where an opera singer has replaced the string quartet. I brush past a couple clenched and kissing, romanced by the tenor’s voice, turn left, left again and come against a crowd gaping at yet another street performer. This time it is a girl a pink leotard on stilts, juggling knives. There, I walk into Ludivine, introduce myself, but before I can speak to her, there is a sudden throng of human traffic and I am swept into an army of push chairs and laughing kids and hear snatches of conversation.
The lady immediately in front of me chats to her friend about a dress bought the night before. Two teenage girls discuss boyfriends. A man in grey slacks says to a boy in black jeans ‘do you know the nicest thing to do?... A young lady declares to an even younger one as the walk past, ‘you do not need anything, just masks, and you can tell stories’. A boy in bright yellow shoes shouts the word ‘sweet’. A man in a brown bowler hat points at the giant baubles dangling from the roof ‘look at these’. An older lady in a Russian ushanka says ‘I am not leaving yet, there’s so much to see’ and immediately to my right, a photographer captures the scene as I do: moments in time, snatches of life seized with his fingertips. There is still a lot to be seen here, over 300 languages are spoken in London, not counting the different inflections of English - from SouthLondon street-speak to East-End cockney, most pass through the piazza’s cobbled streets. Perhaps this is what Dunia means; It doesn’t seem like A part of London. It is ALL parts of London, all the time. I’ll miss this of the residency, these vistas of life, my vantage point to write and and the belief that strangers will share their lives. As I finish, a boy in a hooded sweater stops before me, asks what are you writing? I take down his name, where he’d come from, “this” I say, and thrust my notepad into his hands.
Inua x
ps, here are some shots from Covent Garden's Anniversary Celebrations. [nggallery id=22 template=inua]
Fresh off the boat!a poem heavily based on a poem of the same title by Billy Collins. This is his. // This is mine:
Directions - after Billy Collins
You know the wild bushes at the back of the flat, the ones that scrape the kitchen window the ones that struggle for soil or water, and fail where the train tracks scar the ground? And you know how if you leave the bush and walk the stunted land you come to crossroads, paved just weeks ago hot tar over the mangled roots of trees, and a squad of traffic lights, red-eyed now stiff against the soot stained fallen leaves?
And farther on, you know the dilapidated allotments with the broken sheds and if you go beyond that you hit the first block of St Thomas Street Estate? Well, if you enter and ascend, and you might need a running jump over dank puddles into the shaking lift that goes no further than the fourth floor, you will eventually come to a rough rise of stairs that climb without railings to the run-down roof as high as you can go and a good place to stop.
The best time is late evening when the moon fights through drifts of fumes as you are walking, and when you find an upturned bin to sit on, you will be able to see the smog pour across the city and blur the shapes and tones of things and you will be attacked by the symphony of tires, airplanes, sirens, screams, engines and if this is your day you might even catch a car chase or a hear a horde of biker boys thunder-cross a bridge.
But its tough to speak these things how tufts of smog enter the body and begins to wind us down how the city chokes us painfully against its chest made of secrets and fire how we, built of weaker things regard our sculpted landscape, water flowing through pipes, the clicks of satellites passing over clouds and the roofs where we stand in the shudder of progress giving ourselves to the vast outsides.
Still, text me before you set out. Call when you reach my door and I will walk you as far at the tracks with water for you travels and a hug. I will watch after you and not turn back to the flat till you merge with throngs of buses and cyclists, heading down toward the block, scuffing the ground with you feet.
Hitting the road next week!
Just watch!
To celebrate Thanks Giving Day on the 25th of November this year, I stayed up for 24 hours and every 15 mins tweeted something I was thankful for. See list below. #1. I have a warm bed I just woke up from. Most of the world do not. #thankstweetingday. #thanksgivingday
#2. My father is aggressively proud of me, and I write poems for a living. #thankstweetingday. #thanksgivingday
#3. Torch lights. They are modern day light sabers (the force is with me) #creepingtothekitchen #thankstweetingday. #thanksgivingday
#4 I'm thankful that people do the things that I'm not brave enough to: http://www.thepeopleivesleptwith.com / #ThanksTweetingGivingday
#5 I'm thankful for kungfu films. Jackie Chan for life! #ThanksTweetingGivingday
#6 I’m thankful for wifi, the interplay between my mac and miPhone is incestuously good. #ThanksTweetingGivingday
#7 #thankful that I am not an American. #controversial #thankstweetingday
#8 #thankful that there are always signposts to tell me i’m on the right path #thankstweetingday
#9 #thankful that there’s so much documented history to learn from. #thankstweetingday
#10 #thankful that things like this still happen: http://on.fb.me/eRI5Pn #thankstweetingday
#11 #thankful that rap music is so duplicitous, it shows life and vibrancy. #Tpainisstillcrap #thankstweetingday
#12 #thankful for auto tune! Otherwise, rappers would not be brave enough to show their soft sides. #thankstweetingday
#13 #thankful that the planet spins! imagine having sunlight all the time... #childofthenight #thankstweetingday
#14 #thankful that because of youtube, 1000 people have heard my poem today. Thanks Ben: http://bit.ly/dHz5P5 #thankstweetingday
#15 #thankful for apple juice. MMmmmmm #thankstweetingday
#16 #thankful for mature cheddar. MMmmm #thankstweetingday
#17 #thankful for Bob Geldof, despite the BS, his heart was in the right place. #thankstweetingday
#18 #thankful for Neil Gaiman’s novel ‘Anansi Boys’ it grounded my wild narrative thoughts. #thankstweetingday
#19 #I have lived where it is none existent, I am thankful for electricity. #thankstweetingday
#20 #thankful to the NHS for looking after my dad. America, don’t know what you are missing. #thankstweetingday
#21 #thankful for the men in pants who allow boys to dream. #superheroforlife #thankstweetingday
#22 #thankful to D’angelo. I have found myself in your albums many times over. #thankstweetingday
#23 #thankful that I was taught to build a catapult out of pen caps and elastic bands. #poetryweapons #thankstweetingday
#24 #thankful for all 5 elements: #thankstweetingday
#25 #thankful: wind #thankstweetingday
#26 #thankful: fire #thankstweetingday
#27 #thankful: earth #thankstweetingday
#28 #thankful: water #thankstweetingday
#29 #thankful: and the one that unites ‘em all: Thought! #thankstweetingday
#30 #thankful to Terry Pratchett and QBert for teaching me about the last tweet. #thankstweetingday
#31 #thankful that heard melodies are sweet, unheard sweeter still. #thankstweetingday
#32 #thankful for Councillor Troy, I became a man watching you on Star Trek. #thankstweetingday
#33 #thankful to the two Ms, I am because you were. #thankstweetingday
#34 #thankful that somethings are still free. #thankstweetingday
#35 #thankful I was not born in victorian times. #thankstweetingday
#36 #thankful that Kanye told Bush what time it was. #thankstweetingday
#37 #thankful that Salman Rushdie did not back down. #thankstweetingday
#38 #thankful for tea leaves, cocoabutta and the colour blue. #thankstweetingday
#39 #thankful for my mother’s sharp tongue. It is relentless with the truth. #thankstweetingday
#40 #thankful for those who carry bullets so I don’t have to. #thankstweetingday
#41 #thankful for lights and shadows, but the in-between is what counts. #thankstweetingday
#42 #thankful for *Soul Glow. I have built friendships with you. #thankstweetingday
#43 #thankful to Steve Biko, my cost is far far less, but I too write what I like. #thankstweetingday
#44 #thankful for Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car. I once sat in a park and cried listening to that. #thankstweetingday
#45 #thankful for Nolloywood. Stories are predominantly wack, but you are pushing Nigeria to new heights! #thankstweetingday
#46 #thankful to Jodie Foster, your movie First Contact changed me. #thankstweetingday
#47 #thankful to my twin sis from kicking me outta the womb first, been taking leaps of faith since! #thankstweetingday
#48 #thankful to my lil sis for standing up to me that day in Dublin. #thankstweetingday
#49 #thankful to my big sis for not busting my head all those times we fought, 5 yrs is no joke! #thankstweetingday
#50 #thankful to my lady, for showing me who I was already, and who I can be. #thankstweetingday
#51 #thankful to Mr Achebe and William Butler Yeats. Things do fall apart. #thankstweetingday
#52 #thankful to L.Hill. Your Miseducation changed music. #comeback #thankstweetingday
#53 #thankful for Gravity, we would look like upturned eggs with legs otherwise. #thankstweetingday
#54 #thankful to Occam’s razor. I use you to end arguments. #thankstweetingday
#55 #thankful for cold clean running water, I have lived where it is in short supply. #thankstweetingday
#56 #thankful for Luke Cage, essentially an AfricanAmerican Colossus. #superheroesagain #thankstweetingday
#57 #thankful for Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello & Leonardo. Aged 6, I wore a cardboard box & was a mutant turtle too. #thankstweetingday
#58 #thankful to Steve Urkel. I was you growing up, I WAS YOU. Watch: http://bit.ly/hzQYhK #thankstweetingday #fb
#59 #thankful to Voltron Force. (http://bit.ly/eRNDhJ) You taught me team work. #tvaintallbad #thankstweetingday
#60 #thankful to the Paul Robeson for paving the way. #thankstweetingday
#61 #thankful that the UN, Red Cross and MSF exist. #thankstweetingday
#62 #thankful to the Irish, they began my love of hip hop. #thankstweetingday
#63 #thankful to my editor for always going beyond the call of duty. #Ghanianareokaysometimes #thankstweetingday
#64 #thankful for the Yes Men. Google them! #thankstweetingday
#65 #thankful for Marvin Gaye, it is amazing but sad that ‘What’s going on’ is still a relevant song. #thankstweetingday
#66 #thankful for Fela Kuti - he who walks with death in his pouch! #thankstweetingday
#67 #thankful that my english teacher thought I was worth bullying to do homework. #thankstweetingday
#68 #thankful for pidgin english, de language fine sha e no be smol ting at all at all, no shaking! #thankstweetingday
#69 #thankful for the students protesting, please be level headed and do not rise to your provocateurs #thankstweetingday
#70 #thankful for The transport system in London. Have lived where the equivalent is ridiculous. #thankstweetingday
#71 #thankful for these at bus stops! Suspense is overated. #thankstweetingday http://twitpic.com/3a2qfg
#72 #thankful for all the chicken shops in South London! #morelysbrixton #thankstweetingday
#73 #thankful for all that the Marleys have sung and chanted. #thankstweetingday
#74 Thankful for the Welsh gentleman in front of me on the phone who just exclaimed 'Peckham IS nice!' #iliveinnunhead #thankstweetingday
#75 #thankful Hulk Hogan body slammed Yokozuna back in old wrestling days. Thought after that, anything was possible... #thankstweetingday
#76 #thankful for the tall French one - though he thinks he is English. #thankstweetingday
#77 #thankful for GREGGS and NANDOS! #yeahisaidit #thankstweetingday
#78 #thankful for Waterloo and Southbank. Fave place in London. #thankstweetingday
#79 #thankful for Christmas, yes tis commercial etc, but it brings people... #fact #thankstweetingday
#80 #thankful that my job tonight is to write about couples kissing in Covent Garden. Far worse things to do. #thankstweetingday
#81 #thankful for the kindness of strangers; it is always there. #thankstweetingday
#83 #thankful that I waltzed through the hospital club. No questions asked. #connections #thankstweetingday
#83 #thankful that I waltzed through the hospital club. No questions asked. #connections #thankstweetingday
#84 #thankful that I am among the Onetaste crew again. Good great people. #thankstweetingday
#85 #thankful that I am not a celebrity. WayneGate is still alive. #thankstweetingday
#86 #thankful for guitar and the naked raw voice. Nothing more soulful, nothing more stripped and powerful #thankstweetingday
#87 #thankful for Daniel. #thankstweetingday
#88 #thankful that poetry is not and will never be cool. #thankstweetingday
#89 #thankful for Magners Irish Cider, I don't drink much, but love apples... Mmmmmmmm #thankstweetingday
#90 #thankful for choirs and choir claps. Gonna O.D. this Christmas. #Thankstweetingday
#91 #thankful that Christmas carols have such beautiful melodies. #thankstweetingday
#91 #thankful for Guernica by Pablo Picasso, Groundbreaking, that all works of art be so powerful... #thankstweetingday
#92 #thankful for Guerilla Gardeners. Saints, all of you. #thankstweetingday
#93 #thankful that the world never halts in its capacity to amaze and bewilder. #thankstweetingday
#94 #thankful for all the variations of Tea, from Early Grey to mint, lemon and honey, herbal etc... Thaswassup! #thankstweetingday
#95 #thankful that something like Twitter actually exists and is free to use!! #thankstweetingday
#96 #thankful and finally thanks for following and reading my list guys! I'm off to sleep. Good night! #thankstweetingdayDONE!
Love this!
It's here! Poejazzi's grand finale of its Year of the Poet season:
In ’05, 3 years after I started writing poetry, my first pamphlet, the Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales – published by mouthmark, a flipped eye publishing series that began with Nick Makoha’s The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man and will end with Warsan Shire’s teaching mother how to give birth - came out. The Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales was written in my angry-young-black-man phase, where I’d gather what I thought to be ills of the world and throw my pen hard, knocking them down one by one. Three years before that, I had just returned to London after another three years spent in Dublin where an enthusiastic English teacher plied us with so much Shakespeare, Boland, Heaney and Keats, it split the class into two factions: lovers and haters of poetry. I was in the former camp, but I lived in the suburbs of Dublin and after school, friends and would gather round hi-fis chanting after 2Pac, Eminem, Snoop, Dre, swearing allegiance to House Of Pain, bouncing on the balls of our feet. Words from those rappers conjured so rich a world they’d sit comfortably on the Irish fields that surrounded us. I discovered the classics and hip hop simultaneously. So, when I began writing my voice was tinged with this. It was Hip Hop influenced as it was classic, as of the fields as it was of the city and as I studied Keats’ construction of sonnets, I’d deconstruct Mos Def. Yet each creation of mine would sail softly into dustbins; I never considered it poetry, just fooling with words.
London 2002, and Jack, a close friend hands over an unlabelled CD with ‘you like poetry, check this out’. That night I pressed play and from the speakers came the Buddhist meditation chant ‘Ooooooohhhhhmmmmm’, followed by the words: ‘Through meditation I program my heart to be breakbeats and hum baselines and exhalations’ Those hypnotic seconds opened Saul Williams’ first album Amethyst Rockstar and in the half darkness of the South London summer night, between the thick, rhythmic, philosophy-inspired hip hop, drilled rock and rolling hymns of hope and hardship, I found the courage to consider myself a writer, perhaps even a poet.
The fire I wrote the Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales by was lit from Saul’s songs and it warmed everything I wrote until I turned 22 when, confident I had a voice, I took to other fires. The night I turned 22, the night I grew up, is one of the most memorable I have ever lived. My birthday in 2006 coincided with the official launch of the mouthmark series and after the reading we gathered at a Wagamama restaurant for dinner. Writers who had led me to new fires: Jacob Sam-La Rose, Roger Robinson, Malika Booker were there, as where a generous troupe of friends. After dinner, after all of Wagamama – staff and random diners sang happy birthday to me. Then we stood outside comfortable in boyish banter when a man walked by.
Jack pointed after him – That’s Saul, he said. – No dude, don’t be… huh ? – I studied the swagger disappearing into the night, ran, tapped his shoulder, stuttered, swallowed, then spoke: Hi Saul / Inua / remember me, I interviewed you a few months ago for flipped eye’s x magazine / You do?! / I’m cool. Today is my birthday / what are you doing here?
And Saul told a story of missing a flight to California and instead of staying in his hotel, something called him out. He’d just seen a film about an artist isolated and he did not want that tonight. – Cool / So what are you doing now? / You were just gonna walk the streets, well, wanna walk with us? / -
We left the Southbank Centre in London, walked through Waterloo, to Elephant and Castle, journeyed to Camberwell and in the basement of a moth-eaten, smoke-filled, low-lit student house, Saul and I sat swapping poems and stories till 3 in the morning. I was 22, and felt great. If Saul was Mr Miyagi, I was the Karate Kid and he had just told me my karate-chop was on point. After that, I became brash, careless and wrote some really horrid, artless poems; the master who cut me down to size after I strayed was Kwame Dawes. But that is another story.
Decades ago before the earthquake. Hatians were invited to the Dominican Republic as migrant workers for the sugar plantations there. Generations later and their offspring born in the Dominican republic are refused their birth certificates. This means they cannot go to university, in some cases, they cannot go to school at all, can’t read an write They cannot get married, buy property, leave the country, anything. Essentially, it is an attempt to build a race of menial workers, slaves. Dominican human rights lawyers are calling it racial genocide, something to that effect, and they expect it to explode. The poor against the rich. Monday the 31st August, I watched ‘I am a Slave’ on Channel 4, starring my friend Wunmi Mosaku. It was about a domestic helper brought into the country by a diplomat and treated appallingly. These helpers are paid poorly or not paid, are bullied, beaten, in some case tortured. There are tens of thousands of cases like this, in the UK and across the world. In Iraq, one ‘slave’ was so mistreated, so tortured with boiling water, the wounds so horrific that her employer was sentenced to death.
To live, progress and make way in a capitalist society, someone needs to be exploited and these are some of the extreme examples. I started writing because of reasons like this and over the next year I will immerse myself in these issues again. A lot of the time, I still feel like one of the disadvantaged many, there are some Fridays where I feel like trash. I read poems like the one below and it lifts my spirit.
A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL By Audrey Lourde
For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children's mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours:
For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother's milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid
So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.
It is 4.29 am. I am on a 36 bus en route to Heathrow where I will get the Heathrow Express to terminal 1 to meet my lady. I am front-seat-sat, top deck of the bus. The bus is half full. To my left two men lull between this world and glimpses of the next. Behind, a bespectacled lady snoozes onto a man's shoulders. By his facial expression he is not comfortable with this, but is too polite to say anything. There are mostly 'foreigners' here, together, microcosmic of the world in skin tone, culture, race and language I imagine. But what strikes me is the silence. When the bus pauses at lights, like it just did, if one dared, you'd hear a mouse fart.
Perhaps they are thinking of God, or something else as elemental and basic. The next meal, for instance. It is ironic that this city of a thousand tongues falls still at times like this when loneliness is heightened and real.
It is 4.41. We are by the Hilton Hotel at Hyde park. The lit buildings flash by like bright monologues or one sided conversations. The dark hears and does not speak.
I have always lived on the 36 bus route, my oldest friend lives on the Westbourne Grove end. 14 years and I have taken the same journey.
4.59. Paddington, on the Heathrow express train. There is easy listening wordless flute music wafting from the speakers. It invokes a sense of flight, it is calming and welcoming. There is a gentleman in a green sweat shirt, who looks American, smiling at the flowers in my hand. An air hostess just floated by and there is rising anticipation of the next stop. Recently I listened to a podcast that posed the question: given the choice of flight versus invisibility, what would you choose? Those who chose invisibility liked the idea of sneaking onto airplanes unnoticed and flying for free. I optioned for flight, to have wings as He-Man, flap and leave the world behind. But right now, I lean towards invisibility; wondering if the lady on the blackberry is checking flight deails or hotel bookings. Is she flying or meeting someone who has jus flown in?
5:10 The train has just left the station.
5.37. Heathrow Terminal 1, arrivals lounge. There is a Costa and a WHsmith. Two ladies scrutinse the arrival display. The one in grey repeatedly strokes her chin, points to the display and strokes her chin as if trying to tease out a beard and her folicles feed on flight information. There is a lady on my right playing solitaire on her iPhone and I feel that time is passing very slowly.
5.56 Her flight has landed.
6.24. I have killed hundreds of aliens playing Halo on my laptop. Wonder how she will react if I tell her I have mass-murdered in anticipation of her arrival.
6.30. There are many of us, eyes fixed at the arrivals entry swing doors. Whenever they open, we hold our breaths. A half second passes and we fade to dissapointment. It is a symphony of silent sighs, lungs - our only instrument and we play subconsciously.
6.34 She is in my arms. All's well. Tweet