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Literary Review
INTERVIEW
He's got words
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Meet Dreadlockalien, the poet laureate of Birmingham.
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Not Political: Just poetry about reality. Photo: SUBASH JEYAN
HE is the 10th Poet Laureate of Birmingham and goes by the name of Dreadlockalien, a.k.a Richard Grant. Born to an immigrant (from the Caribbean) father and an English mother, he says there's an Indian woman somewhere in his father's ancestry. He doesn't know much else about her, just a name that's been handed down and the fact that she was forcibly taken from India in a ship full of women. Speaking of names, why Dreadlockalien, you wonder. Just a reminder from his enfant terrible days as a teenager when he had those huge dreadlocks. Of course it's been copyrighted and if he really had his way, he says, you will find the word everywhere: on t-shirts, cups, mugs, CDs. You smile but can't help the feeling that, man, he's not merely joking.
Protest entry
So how is it that a spoken word artist, a live literature performer, finds himself the poet laureate of Birmingham? Every year, the poet laureate is chosen through a Birmingham-specific competition, he says. An open competition where one submits four poems in the traditional, written form. Last year, he had sent in a protest entry in the form of a CD with a hand-written note, submitting it for the contest. Though it was disqualified then, this year the rules were changed to include live literature and poetry recited on stage and from around 1,000 poets and writers, he got the position.
So does it mean that live literature is going legit? It is a recognition of the fact that a poet no longer works in isolation, he says. That "the form and the use of poetry is changing". Apart from the traditional writing skills, live literature requires other skills related to performance and it is a recognition that those skills are important. Because there's not much of an editing process involved, you've got to be careful of what you are saying, he says. "I've got two minutes, one minute, a very limited time, to change perceptions about the society we live in." And if one is faking it, he says, one gets immediate feedback. It is a different ball game.
Though he thinks of himself as "Anglo-Indo-Caribbean", he says the three words on his hit list are "black", "white" and "race". The words indicate a lazy use of language, he says, of how language itself reflects power relations. So, does he think of himself as a political writer/ performer? "I am not a zealous activist for any cause in particular", he says. Once you become an activist, you tend to ignore the complexity of things, he says. Yet, most of his poems talk, often indignantly, about issues like racism. "That's because I don't want to talk about things I don't know," he says. I suppose he got me there.
More from life
As the waiter serves us tea, he looks in the direction of the kitchen and says, "I was there on the other side, you know. I was a chef." Not particularly doing badly, having inherited the immigrant hard-working ethics from his father. But at 27, he says, he decided he had to do more with his life. He went back to college, to Warwick University where he became the poster boy, he says, to counter their elitist image: someone local and black and without qualifications who got admitted and graduated. Yet, the stint there put him in touch with his writing/ patois poetic roots, he says.
Today, as a poet laureate, he conducts programmes for children in schools. For a fee. "I also make money out of it," he says. "I am not a poet laureate for fun. I run companies." Dreadlockalien Productions, which is exploring new forms of individual media like live literature on your cell phone, moving away from traditional publishing. He is also onto things like working with the educational council to incorporate techniques from rap so that children can learn traditional lessons faster. It's a whole new world of opportunities.
As we leave, he says, "Let me ask you a question. So how's the article about me going to be? Good or bad?" OK, so what do you think?
SUBASH JEYAN
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