Wonderful to see CNN Inside Africa doing a special feature on Badilisha Poetry X-change, a grassroots poetry collective in Capetown, South Africa.
I had the great pleasure to be invited by Mbali Vilakazi to record a poem for Badilisha Radio while in Capetown for the Verbalized spoken word project. You can listen to it here.
Mbali Vilakazi interviewing Kayo Chingonyi
You can submit your own poems and biog to feature on Badilisha’s online archive. Beautiful site, beautiful people!
Last night was the launch of the Naked Muse Calendar at Kraak Gallery, Manchester. A wonderful & moving charity event hosted by Dominic Berry, who revealed a lot more of himself than I’ve seen before.
Six months ago, I got a curious phone call asking me if I wanted to pose nude for charity, because I was “a beautiful male poet”. How could I refuse such an ego-boosting (if rather not entirely accurate) invitation?
The Naked Muse Calendar is an exciting collaboration between 41 UK artists, creating together to find a cure for Type One Diabetes. Organized by Cumbrian poet, Vik Bennett and her partner, Adam Clarke, it is a fascinating inversion of the ubiquitous male gaze, featuring nude photo portraits by 14 female photographers of 14 male poets, accompanied by poems by 14 female poets. Vik and Adam were inspired to create the calendar in response to their own experiences of raising their son, Django, a toddler with Type 1 diabetes.
The project has attracted plenty of excited media coverage – a feature in the Guardian, tweeted by Stephen Fry – and the spirit of all those involved has been inspiring. My own nude photo shoot in London was refreshingly liberating and my photographer, Laura Hynd, produced a beautiful image reminiscent of Caravaggio. All the photos in the calendar are top notch, especially the cover shot of Max Wallis lounging like a Regency Lolita on Coleridge’s opium bed and the one of Tony Walsh worshipping the rising sun waist high in a sea of summer grass.
Dominic Berry - a buff host in the buff
All proceeds of the calendar go towards the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. You can buy it online for only £12.99. Ideal Christmas guest for anyone who loves poetry or naked men.
Thanks to Matt Tuckey for these detailed reviews of my two Ghosts On The Dancefloor workshops last month on his blog CageFightingBlogger, though I just thought that it might be giving a few workshop secrets away for free. Ah what the heck! I’ve never much cared for (or respected) copyright obsessives anyway.
Be sure to check out Matt’s other blog posts about Manchester night life and movements! I didn’t realize he was a cagefighting poet!
Yesterday was Manchester Literature Festival all day.
Morning was bright and pale winter sun, seems like we skipped the rich gold of autumn this year. I was very nervous, because I had to do a performance at “Words on Asylum & Refuge“, an Amnesty International event in McrLitFest, and I wasn’t sure if any of my poems or songs were appropriate. The event took place at Cross St Chapel in Manchester city centre in a lovely circular room with creamy pillars and a domed ceiling, which lent a warm echo to the sound of all the people chatting. Good thing the acoustics were beautiful, because we discovered during the first speech that the PA didn’t work.
First onstage was Mende Nazer and Caroline Clegg. Mende wrote with Damien Lewis “Slave“, an astonishing autobiographical account of how she was abducted from a village in the Nuba mountains of Sudan and sold into slavery. Caroline is a theatre director and producer of Feelgood Theatre, who was so moved and inspired by the book that she spent years tracking down Mende to ask if she could adapt it into theatre. The result was “Slave: A Question of Freedom”, which has since toured the country, playing at the House of Commons and was turned into a Channel 4 film “I Am Slave”, starring Wunmi Mosaku.
Mende spoke very eloquently of her experiences, which brought her to the UK as a slave to a Sudanese diplomat. At times, she was too emotional to continue, so Caroline took over the account. There was a quiet, intensely moving moment where Mende described the first moment she heard the word “freedom” and understood that it was a possibility for her. I am rarely moved to tears by a live speaker, but this was one of those few occasions.
Having to perform my relatively lightweight material after such an inspiring woman was rather daunting, but I did my best to sing my soul out using the domed acoustics as a tuning fork. Singers may know what I mean by that.
The event finished with an equally moving presentation by WAST (Women Asylum Seekers Together), who spoke of their fantastic self help work with asylum seekers in Manchester. One of the speakers was particularly brave, because she herself had been refused asylum. Sadly, I had to rush off at the end of the event to set up the workshop space at Contact for Jean Binta Breeze, so I didn’t get to chat to anyone afterwards. But the experience was deeply inspiring.
1948
Brothers & sisters,
we are gathered here to celebrate our common wealth,
the riches we share
when we come together as one family.
Our family grew in abuse,
our bond was sealed in blood,
the seeds of our union grew in poppy fields
& we reaped a drunken harvest in the land of sugarcane.
We picked cotton, packed cotton,
could have spun & woven cotton,
but our hands were occupied,
congealing blood in buckets.
We bought our own cotton back
as cloth on credit,
a family deal from our new loving parent,
a welcome to the fold.
& we so loved her, our mother country,
we dreamed of her each night
we tasted paper kings & queens
& fell asleep to her bedtime tales
till she slammed the door shut
our love, our kinship denied.
But can you deny the thickness of blood & history?
Can you deny wealth that is common?
Is this not our mother’s house?
I know the floors we scrub were never tiled in gold,
the pots we wash are only steel,
but didn’t we pay for those bloodred bricks & mortar
with cotton, sugar, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rice, rubber, gold & spice?
The human wealth we left behind calls us home,
as we grow tired of cold meat & rain,
our children deny their own names
& become strangers in a strange land.
This family is haunted by guilt & shame.
Can we break this chain,
create a world for our children
where Abuse is not their middle name?
5.30pm. Everything was going to plan. Martin De Mello and I arrived at the Yard Theatre approximately on time. It wasn’t raining when we unloaded the PA and boxes of crisps and drinks from the car. We managed to get inside the venue, not always the easiest of tasks. While Martin set up the chairs, I set up the PA and microphone, plugged in my iPhone and Wanda Robinson sashayed through the speakers. As more people arrived to lending helping hands, we started to put up the Commonword banners.
Now, for the lights. Yard Theatre is a beautiful space, but without stage lights it resembles a concrete bunker, not perhaps the best atmosphere for a poetry gig. Martin drove us to another venue whose tech manager had promised two days before to lend us the lights. In fact, he insisted that he would set them up for us. But he wasn’t there. He just left, explained the man on reception. No lights left for us. No answer when the man tried calling tech man’s mobile. “Could you send him a text?” I asked. “Not much point really,” he answered,”He lost his mobile today.”
Thank God for Emma the venue manager! She helped us root through backrooms piled with lights and stands till we found a couple of parcans and improvised a stand. We rushed back to the Yard Theatre and I set up the lights on the balcony. Just in time. Slam contestants and judges had arrived. Phew! That was close.
Now, where’s the compere? Doors opening in 5 minutes and he wasn’t answering his mobile. 15 minutes later, still no compere. Thank Heavens for Dominic Berry. He just turned up to watch, but Pete Kalu, Commonword director, persuaded him to host. Not that Dominic ever needs much persuading to get onstage. A quick briefing and he was in the spotlight giving it large and camp, flirting generously with everyone in the room, a wonderful compere!
And from then on, the event went swimmingly.
Last night was the Grand Final of Commonword‘s Superheroes of Slam at Yard Theatre, Hulme. A sell out event, with standing room on the balcony and a loud enthusiastic audience who were urged on by the always wonderful compere Dominic Berry. Some truly astonishing performances, which the judges sometimes seemed to mark rather begrudgingly, but fairly. The ultimate champion was experienced slam winner, Mark Mace Smith, who collects the Dike Omeje Slam Poetry Cup and £250. Mark celebrated with a barnstorming beatbox attack on Cameron and Clegg.
You can check out Mark Mace Smith on his blog: http://thuddub.blogspot.com/
