The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah

by Benjamin Zephaniah

  I was also very involved with raising awareness about the plight of the people of East Timor, and again I’m very proud of having played my little part in the liberation of that small nation, but I think we failed when it comes to Palestine. This is a country that for decades has suffered a brutal occupation – you can go online and see Palestinians being killed every day – but the people of Britain don’t seem that aware of their suffering because very little about their oppression is covered in the mainstream media.

  The shameful treatment of the people of the Chagos Islands by the British government is hardly known by the people of Britain, and the government would like it to stay that way, because they know most decent people would be outraged that a whole nation of people were moved from their homeland to make a military base for a so-called ally. Then there’s West Papua. I know it will be free one day; I wanted to help free them before I was fifty; now I’m almost sixty and they’re still not free. So there’s another failing of mine. Yes, for me this is personal.

  I really wanted to free the world, but at home, as I write this, I think one of the greatest injustices in the country of my birth is the number of people who are dying in custody. In police stations, prisons, immigration centres and psychiatric units the vulnerable are dying. Many are taking their own lives as a result of depression and other mental health problems, but many are dying as a result of the brutality they experience at the hands of the people who should be looking after them.

  My mum has been the one constant and most important person throughout my life. She never helped with my writing or anything creative, and she’s read very little of my work, but she has loved coming to my performances, and she really loves it if I point her out in the audience. When I started out she didn’t really understand what I was doing because there were no examples of other people doing anything similiar. She understood what performance poetry was because Jamaica was full of poets, and in the part of Jamaica where she lived the oral tradition thrived but, like a lot of immigrant parents, she wanted what she believed was the best for me: a trade, or better still a profession, and ‘a nice black gal fi marry’. It was only when I started to appear on TV, and people began to tell her what my poetry meant to them, that she realised I had something to say that was valid, and that my work had some merit.

  A lot of people from the Caribbean say that when they die they want to be buried back in Jamaica but Mum says, ‘None of that for me. I want to be buried here. This is my home.’ She’s Birmingham through and through. She’s only been back to Jamaica once since she came here, and she was counting the days until she could return to the UK. She hasn’t set foot outside of England since.

  As I’ve been on the planet for nearly sixty years, it’s inevitable that I’ve witnessed the passing of those relatives who immigrated to Britain in the 1950s and ’60s. Around 2013 or so, the health of Mum’s second husband Brother Wright began to deteriorate. First he started having problems bending and lost dexterity in his fingers. I realised things were getting bad when he told me he couldn’t work on his cars anymore and asked me to sell them, along with his engines and all of his car spares. I was a fully signed-up member of the Triumph Classic Car Club, so I sold them all very quickly to someone who came and took the lot. He got a bargain.

  As things got worse he began to make lots of references to death. His favourite place was the conservatory at the back of his house, where he’d set up his sound system and kept his CDs, tapes and records. As he got weaker he would spend more time there, and one day I came to see him and asked him how he was. As he rocked in his rocking chair, he said, ‘I’m just sitting here waiting to die.’ He would often say similar things. His arthritis was very bad and there were a couple of times when he went upstairs and couldn’t get back down because of his knees.

  On one of these occasions an ambulance was called and he was taken into hospital, where he spent a couple of days, but as he was about to be discharged a doctor broke the news that he had stomach cancer. As the doctor began to list all the different treatment options, Brother Wright interrupted him, saying, ‘Stop. I’m not interested in you trying to keep me alive for a few extra weeks. I’m eighty-four. I’ve outlived all my friends and I’ve had a good life. So please, just manage my pain and let me go at my appointed time.’

  It was tough to hear, but it made sense. On 21 June 2017 he asked to be moved to Marie Curie Hospice in Solihull, where he passed away on 28 June. He was buried at Greenhaven Woodland Burial Ground near Rugby on 5 July. It was a green burial in a woodland area with a simple, non-religious ceremony that I led.

  When transferring my poems from the stage to the page, I’ve always tried to capture the essence of my live performance. I’ve always written with my voice in mind. I have to hear the words in my head before I can commit them to the written word but, try as I might, I am acutely aware that I can’t capture everything the way it sounds within me. Like a martial arts technique, my poetry works best when it goes via the quickest route to the nearest spot, which is from my brain, the source, to my mouth. Writing it down is another step removed from the source to the receiver. To fully appreciate it, to connect with its essence, you have to be in my head or in my audience.

  My style is born out of the living, oral tradition of poetry – an art form that has always been part of everyday life in Jamaica. I grew up with that rhyme and rhythm coming down to me from my mum, who grew up hearing numerous parables and fables that had their origins in Africa. As the older generations pass on, younger people will get further and further away from those origins.

  When it comes to the arts I think my greatest achievement was the creation of the British performance poetry scene. Of course, I didn’t do it by myself. There was Linton Kwesi Johnson, John Cooper Clarke, Jean Breeze, Joolz and others, not to mention collectives like Apples and Snakes, who dedicated themselves to promoting poetry. But in the late 1970s and early ’80s there was no real performance poetry scene in Britain. Michael Horovitz and others organised poetry performances in the 1960s and early 1970s from time to time, and I understand they were numinous events. Alan Ginsberg and other beat poets would come over and perform, and although the poets themselves were free-minded, progressive and all about peace and love, the scene was white and a bit too hippy for we, the new generation of punks, Rastas and hip-hoppers.

  This is why in 1979 I said we needed to create a culture of performance poetry and spoken word in Britain. I wanted to see a time when it was really cool for someone to take their date to a poetry reading on a Saturday night, and it happened. I wanted to see a time when the music press would write about poetry like they wrote about music, and it happened. I wanted to see a time when lots of performance poets would be able to earn a living from their craft, and that too has happened. The scene is alive and well and all over Britain. In fact, all over the world talented people are earning a living from their craft, and more importantly millions of people are enjoying it.

  But I’m not sitting back and relaxing. Not in times like these when the extreme right is on the rise all over Europe, when black people are still five times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than their white counterparts. Not when homelessness is rapidly rising, soup kitchens are opening up across the country, and women are experiencing institutionalised sexism and suffering so much due to poverty. It’s difficult to relax when I live under a political system that is constantly creating refugees and then rejecting those refugees. Instead of relaxing I’ve released a new album, Revolutionary Minds, and, because I feel the political need, I’m back on the road with my band. What’s really inspiring me now is that, as I look out from the stage, I see that the majority of my audience is under thirty.

  Poetry has the power to heal and the power to destroy; it can be used to liberate and, after liberation, to celebrate. In the beginning was the word, and the word became poetry, and I discovered it and found that it was great. I have loved many books with all my heart, I have campaigned to get books to th
e bookless, and keep libraries alive, for they live too. But the greatest poetry is collected inside I.

  I have had books stolen from me, I have misplaced books and left them on trains and park benches, and I still want to get the blighters who took them. The idea that any book of mine ends up in a wastepaper bin, or sits on the shelf in a lost property office vexes me. The book is one of the greatest pieces of design ever conceived. They have survived upstarts like radio, TV, the internet and various book burners, and I love them, but they are books, and as much as I love books (and my bass guitar), they are material, and the attachment to material things, whatever that may be, is the root of all suffering.

  The poetry within me is not owned, yet it is a part of me, and once it is spoken it becomes a part of anyone who opens their mind and receives it. If misfortune, sickness and death will come to us all, then we should let some poetry into our lives to ease the pain.

  Poetry has wrapped my heart when my heart was naked. Poetry has eased much of the pain I have experienced. I have dedicated my life to poetry and ‘the struggle’, but ultimately I have been on a life-long quest to find inner peace. Anyone who has come to my home and seen how much time I dedicate to t’ai chi and meditation knows this. The peace of which I speak is not simply an absence of war, or something that comes about because a treaty has been negotiated; there is no way to peace, because peace is the way. Poetry helped me speak to the world; it helped me to represent my age and my ageing; it is a part of me, but in the end it’s about knowledge of self.

  Peace. I’m out of here.

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. Mum’s (British) passport to England.

  2. Mother and son, across the decades.

  3. The oldest photo I have of myself: a ten-year-old poet, just waiting for a gig.

  4. Gangsta style in pinstripe, circa late 1970s.

  5. My friend Paul Davis, who was killed in the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974.

  6. Hanging with Peter Tosh in London, 1979. Dread times.

  7. A classic Anti Nazi League poster advertising one of their era-defining gigs and marches against fascism and racism in 1978.

  8. Hand-drawn poster advertising my first official gig at The Whole Thing in 1981.

  9. The wholefood store, café and alternative bookshop in Stratford, east London, where I became part of the housing co-operative movement in the early 1980s.

  10. Cover photo of my first EP, Dub Ranting, featuring my mum and Jay Jay. He’s hiding behind the sofa. The slogan on the back reads: ‘Stand Firm in the Downturn’. And it’s still relevant now.

  11. Photographs on the Rasta album cover. I’d just set up home in Peckham and invited my friend Anita around for a drink.

  12. Me and Labour politician Tony Banks (now deceased) with a vegan cake, opening a literature festival at the Royal Festival Hall. He went on to become Labour’s Sports Minister in the 1990s.

  13. Striking miners benefit poster, 1985, featuring yours truly and couple of soon-to-be famous comedians.

  14. The tabloid press conspired to keep a Rasta out of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1987.

  15. The Chairman’s call to arms. Fundraising and compering at the Hackney Empire in the late 1980s.

  16. I was the first reggae artist to play in Yugoslavia in the late 1980s, where the Rasta album went to number one.

  17. With the legend that is Prince Buster, late 1990s, Jamaica.

  18. With my grandmother and extended family in JA, 1985.

  19. With my grandfather in JA, 1987.

  20. A still from the TV film Dread Poets’ Society, 1992.

  21. On tour in Zimbabwe with the British Council in 1993.

  22. Delivering truth to power, Zimbabwe, 1993.

  23. Speaking in Gugulethu Township, South Africa, 1998.

  24. After a concert in Berlin, 1996, with Jamaican poet Mutabaruka. We’re looking to the future.

  25. A photo taken, but not used, for my album Us an Dem. I call this me in the red light district.

  26. With Linton Kwesi Johnson, one of the pioneers of dub poetry.

  27. Dressed for Pakistan, in Liverpool 8, when all the street signs were painted with the Ethiopian colours of red, gold and green.

  28. Just hanging over a wall for no reason at all.

  29. Me and Pastor Burris on one of his visits to England after he’d moved to the USA.

  30. Mum and me return to Deykin Avenue Primary School in 2003.

  31. The first time I met Madiba, as he is known in parts of Africa, he said, ‘Thank you.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ He said, ‘Thank you.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ And then we talked about elephants.

  32. After the concert celebrating the end of Apartheid, 1990.

  33. With writers and poets (clockwise from top left) Michael Rosen, Allan Ahlberg, Brian Patten and Roger McGough.

  34. With author and broadcaster Lemn Sissay, who adapted my book Refugee Boy for the stage.

  35. With my old friend and political mentor, Tony Benn, 2008.

  36. With the brilliant Maya Angelou at the 2002 Hay Festival.

  37. Sharing a smile with Sinéad O’Connor.

  38. Nightclubbing with the wonderful Toni Morrison in Brazil, and chilling with Doreen Lawrence in Leicester.

  39. Protecting animal and human rights.

  40. Jeremiah Jesus and Tommy Shelby (aka me and Cillian Murphy) talking about our favourite bands on the set of Peaky Blinders.

  41. Me and Jon Snow – two ‘no O B Es’ hiding from the press in Columbia.

  42. Practising t’ai chi in the temple in Henan with Grand Master Chen Zhaosen.

  43. The family (from left to right): me, Joyce, Mille, Mum, Velda, Paul, David, Mark, Trevor, Kern (low on the left) and Tippa (low on the right).

  44. Locks fly at Oxford Brookes University, 2002.

  45. Accepting my honorary doctorate from Exeter University, 2006.

  46. My fans in the school in Chen Jia Gou, China. They like my poetry too.

  1. Mum’s (British) passport to England.

  2. Mother and son, across the decades.

  3. The oldest photo I have of myself: a ten-year-old poet, just waiting for a gig.

  4. Gangsta style in pinstripe, circa late 1970s.

  5. My friend Paul Davis, who was killed in the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974.

  6. Hanging with Peter Tosh in London, 1979. Dread times.

  7. A classic Anti Nazi League poster advertising one of their era-defining gigs and marches against fascism and racism in 1978.

  8. Hand-drawn poster advertising my first official gig at The Whole Thing in 1981.

  9. The wholefood store, café and alternative bookshop in Stratford, east London, where I became part of the housing co-operative movement in the early 1980s.

  10. Cover photo of my first EP, Dub Ranting, featuring my mum and Jay Jay. He’s hiding behind the sofa. The slogan on the back reads: ‘Stand Firm in the Downturn’. And it’s still relevant now.

  11. Photographs on the Rasta album cover. I’d just set up home in Peckham and invited my friend Anita around for a drink.

  12. Me and Labour politician Tony Banks (now deceased) with a vegan cake, opening a literature festival at the Royal Festival Hall. He went on to become Labour’s Sports Minister in the 1990s.

  13. Striking miners benefit poster, 1985, featuring yours truly and couple of soon-to-be famous comedians.

  14. The tabloid press conspired to keep a Rasta out of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1987.

  15. The Chairman’s call to arms. Fundraising and compering at the Hackney Empire in the late 1980s.

  16. I was the first reggae artist to play in Yugoslavia in the late 1980s, where the Rasta album went to number one.

  17. With the legend that is Prince Buster, late 1990s, Jamaica.

  18. With my grandmother and extended family in JA, 1985.

  19. With my grandfather in JA, 1987.

  20. A still from the TV film Dread Poets’ Society, 1992.

  21.
On tour in Zimbabwe with the British Council in 1993.

  22. Delivering truth to power, Zimbabwe, 1993.

  23. Speaking in Gugulethu Township, South Africa, 1998.

  24. After a concert in Berlin, 1996, with Jamaican poet Mutabaruka. We’re looking to the future.

  25. A photo taken, but not used, for my album Us an Dem. I call this me in the red light district.

  26. With Linton Kwesi Johnson, one of the pioneers of dub poetry.

  27. Dressed for Pakistan, in Liverpool 8, when all the street signs were painted with the Ethiopian colours of red, gold and green.

  28. Just hanging over a wall for no reason at all.

  29. Me and Pastor Burris on one of his visits to England after he’d moved to the USA.

  30. Mum and me return to Deykin Avenue Primary School in 2003.

  31. The first time I met Madiba, as he is known in parts of Africa, he said, ‘Thank you.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ He said, ‘Thank you.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ And then we talked about elephants.

  32. After the concert celebrating the end of Apartheid, 1990.