Interview: Talking to Benjamin Zephaniah
The poet, lyricist and writer Benjamin Zephaniah comes to G Live in Guildford on September 27th for an evening detailing his life, rhymes and times. We caught up with Benjamin to talk about just that…
You head out on tour this autumn in support of your autobiography, The Life and Rhymes,which came out last year. What can people look forward to on the tour?
The show I’m doing varies from night to night. Basically it’s mainly talking about my life, reading a few poems, and the best part for me is taking questions from the audience. Those questions can vary from deep philosophical questions or political questions to where do you write your poetry and who’s your favourite poet. I go back and do some of my older poems, which I haven’t done for years, and which I don’t normally do. For example, I do a poem that was written in 1993 about Joy Gardner. I tell the story of how Joy Gardener was being deported as a so-called illegal immigrant. So I tell the audience, so you think the Windrush thing is happening now – this happened in 1993 – and it really blows the audience away.
It’s a journey back, but it’s not just about me – it’s about the politics of the time, what was happening culturally and musically at the time.
A poet, lyricist, novelist, actor, political activist and anarchist – is there a moment in your career that stands out from the rest?
It’s difficult to say because I hate to call it a career, actually. In my life of performing, for me, the most important thing was just before. In my autobiography I talk about being involved in crime in Birmingham. One night I go to bed and I know that someone wants to shoot me, and I want to shoot them, and I just go, ‘I don’t want no more of this’. I literally just got in a car and came to London. To me that was the greatest thing I ever have done, because it was life-changing. My life was going one way and I could see death or prison coming. All my friends were saying, ‘hang out man, you got money coming at the weekend, you got this coming, you got that coming’, and I just said no, and I went to London and just found creative people to work with.
The first poem of yours that I read was ‘No Problem’ which for me completely turned this idea of traditional poetry and prose upside down. Iconoclastic, candid, and contemporary, a common theme in your poetry is the political, cultural and social struggle that yourself and many others face. Do you feel that any progress has been made since you first stepped onto the scene back in the 80s, or is a civil civilization still but a distant dream?
Well we’ve taken many steps forward and many, many, many more steps backwards. We have made progress. Look there was a time when there were very few black people on television. There was a time when people like me just weren’t in school. People still want more black literature in school, but there’s a lot more than there was.
The other day I was at a university and I had to go and look at the science department, and then there was this department where they were developing these things that analyse rocks on the moon. I walked into the room to meet these two scientists and it was two young black girls and I remember being really shocked. I just thought, wow, I could never have imagined that. So we have made progress, but I think where we have gone backwards – and this involves all of us, black, white, or whatever – is the division in the country you know? I could never have imagined somebody like Nigel Farage coming forward after we got rid of the National Front back in the 80s. I could never have imagined the EDL. I could never have imagined being on television and talking about multi-culturalism and they say, ‘well we’ve got to balance it out – let’s bring on a racist!’
I lived in a time when we were forever being stopped and searched. I spoke to a kid the other day and he said, “I’ve been stopped three times tonight” and I think gosh, that was me. I think we do ourselves a disservice if we say we haven’t made any progress, but we’re also doing future generations a disservice by saying everything’s all right. We’ve still got a long way to go you know? We’ve got to decolonize curriculums.
I’ve just been touring with my band, and at the end of the gig before our last number I always ask the audience, ‘Is there anyone here from Birmingham?’ “Yeah!” Is there anyone here from Manchester? “Yeah!” and then I say, ‘Is there anyone here from Turkey, Jamaica, whatever?’ And then I go, ‘it doesn’t matter – the borders and nationalities are all fake, they’re all human constructs’. And then we do this track ‘One Tribe’ and we get everybody to hug and dance together. It’s a beautiful moment.
There are no illegal immigrants, just illegal borders. That’s what we’ve got to work towards – we’ve got to break down these barriers.
It’s well documented that you left school at an early age, unable to read or write. What was the process of learning those skills once you left school?
It was really easy in a sense. Because I was doing oral poetry it didn’t matter. I heard the music and the poetry in my head, and all I had to do was get up on stage and reproduce it. One day they were talking about me on the television, saying, ‘Britain’s new young black writer – you should read him’. And I was thinking, ‘they’re calling me a writer and they’re saying you should read me’, and I thought ‘I can’t even read myself!
Ken Livingston used to run an organisation called the GLC then, which had really cheap, almost free adult education courses. I went to one of them. It was really weird because I had my music on television, my poetry was being read, and then I would go to these adult education courses. The first one I went to was all girls. They were all girls who had got pregnant at 15 and were returning to finish their education.
At that point my teacher told me that I was dyslexic, and I didn’t even know what dyslexia meant and she explained it to me. It was one of those cliché moments that I thought, ‘oh, I get it now – so there are other people like me? I thought I was on my own’.
It’s important to understand that dyslexia is actually the default position of human beings. Learning to read and write is a weird thing to do. If you look at all the early languages they’re all pictorial. You cannot be dyslexic in Chinese, for example, because it’s pictures. It’s a bit abstract for us now, but actually it’s like reading a piece of art. All the early languages were all pictorial languages, so to have a squiggle that represents a sound is really an odd thing to do – it’s counterintuitive.
The poetry scene is alive and well today, with slam poetry and poetry open-mic nights convening regularly throughout towns and cities across the country – what advice would you give to any aspiring poets who might be reading this?
Be true to yourself. With poetry its not about what’s in fashion, it’s about being true to yourself. People who listen or read poetry want to hear an authentic voice. Don’t try and sound like Benjamin Zephaniah, don’t try and sound like Kate Tempest – find your own voice, find your own truth and speak your truth. If you’re worried about making money that’s another problem, but if you really want to be a poet who really connects people be honest with yourself. When you’re honest with yourself you can be honest with your audience.
BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH / SEPTEMBER 27 / G LIVE, GUILDFORD {TICKETS}