Face to Face
A British Rasta in India
HUGO GYE
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While Zephaniah's written output can be mixed, he is a powerful performer, succeeding in reaching out and touching people.
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Photo: S.R. Raghunathan
BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH is arguably Britain's most famous living poet. This is undoubtedly important to him, for, he is a born showman, and, as a writer with a "message" — anti-conservative, anti-political and above all anti-imperial — he is anxious to reach as large an audience as possible. However, his fame largely rests not on his work — his poetry, novels, plays and music — but on the controversies in which he delights to find himself embroiled.
Zephaniah first sprang to public prominence in the late 1980s, when he was shortlisted to be Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, and for a similar post at Cambridge, much to the horror of the more hysterically conservative sections of the British tabloid press. More recently, he hit the headlines again after rejecting, very publicly, the government's offer to award him an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2003: his rejection came in the form of an article in the Guardian with the headline "OBE me? Up yours, I thought". He said that to accept an honour founded on the institution of empire would be to betray "the future and the political rights of all people".
Success story
Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah was born in Handsworth, a poor area of Birmingham, in 1958, a few years after his parents had emigrated from Jamaica to the United Kingdom, attracted by a poster saying simply "Come to Britain" (ironically sponsored by Conservative MP Enoch Powell of "rivers of blood" fame). He was expelled from school aged 13, and had spent some months in jail before he was 20. He did not fully learn to read and write until he was 21, but had composed oral poetry for many years previously, including a poem starting "I luv mi mudda an mi mudda luv mi", written at the age of eight. His first volume was published in 1980, and was a surprise success, but the author realised that none of his community, the people he most wanted to reach, had read it, because "they just didn't read books". It was then that he started performing his work, thereby tapping into a millennia-old oral tradition which he feels to be a cornerstone of civilisation in all parts of the world.
Branching out
Since then, he has expanded his talents into other disciplines, most notably that of the novel. He says the only reason he embarked on this new venture was "because my publisher asked me to" in 1997: the result was Face, a work consciously eschewing themes of black oppression, and instead telling of a rich, white "golden boy" disfigured in an accident; the book is concerned with the ensuing prejudice he faces.
The poet has just completed a tour of India organised by the British Council. The trip was his 12th visit to the country; he says there is no particular reason for this affinity with India, but it is easy to see how a man so shaped by empire would be attracted to the erstwhile home of the British Raj.
He says he has, like so many visitors, been particularly struck by the contrast between opulent luxury and dire poverty in many parts of India: he tells the story of his stay in Ahmedabad, where his hotel porter threw open his curtains to show him a proudly advertised "river view". Zephaniah's eye was immediately drawn to the expanse of slums below the river, so the porter gently took him by the chin and inclined his head backwards, saying "Sir. The river." The writer's perpetual concern for the downtrodden of all hues (he is a particular supporter of the Palestinian cause) is genuinely touching, which makes his cynicism about the possibility of change through political means all the more sad. He says he is particularly disturbed by "conferences on poverty in cities where the streets are cleared of beggars beforehand."
First-rate performer
While Zephaniah's written output can be mixed — it can seem somewhat facile, the Caribbean phonetic spelling ("yu" for "you", "dis" for "this") somewhat forced — there is no doubt about his power as a performer. The audiences which packed out British Council buildings and theatres across India were therefore treated to a fine display of charisma, wit, and above all, passion. When reciting pieces such as "Dis Poetry", with which he opens all his performance, he moves his body along with the rhythms, and is so caught up in his poetry that the audience cannot help but be caught up with him. He talks in such a way that it can be difficult to tell when he has stopped reciting verse and is merely talking, the main difference being that the slight Caribbean twang to his English voice, barely audible in his conversation, is far more pronounced during his recitation.
Different concerns
Benjamin Zephaniah is no genius, but then he does not need to be. He says that his greatest inspiration was a poem by Adrian Hill which runs, "Most people ignore most poetry/ Because/ Most poetry ignores most people". He has devoted a career to overturning this situation, especially concentrating on reaching out to school children, and thanks to his great enthusiasm, natural talent for penning catchy lines, and extraordinary powers of communication, he has come some way towards success.
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