International Theatre Festival in Kerala

My theatre face.

510 Likes, 21 Comments - Inua Ellams FRSL (@inuaellams) on Instagram: "My theatre face."

I spent a week in India, Delhi and Kerala, performing An Evening with An Immigrant, and found other resonances, other parts of our world that reflect the ideas and themes of the play.

India is vast, over a billion people and over a thousand dialects and language spoken, across many religions. The current Prime Minister, Modi, is essentially a Hindu Trump, who’s nationalist ideas and beliefs is manifesting in a bill of law that stems the migration of Muslims into India and, makes many who have settled there, illegal immigrants.

Many have been campaigning, mostly led by muslim women, who are out on the streets, taking over public roads and spaces, hosting sittings, chanting, praying and refusing to budge while their children write poetry, sing and host political rallies and speeches. As I struggle to finally settle my immigration battles, they help me consider what I have achieved and what so many stand to loose.

From last week's trip to Delhi & Kerala. Good people, Good vibes. X

452 Likes, 9 Comments - Inua Ellams FRSL (@inuaellams) on Instagram: "From last week's trip to Delhi & Kerala. Good people, Good vibes. X"

Black Theatre Awards x Half God

On Sunday, We (Half God Of Rainfall) won best Theatre Production at the inaugural Black British Theatre Awards. Shout out to the entire team of producers and creatives for their commitment to the true spirit of collaboration that theatre depends on. We did good. 👏🏿👏🏿👌🏿

859 Likes, 67 Comments - Inua Ellams FRSL (@inuaellams) on Instagram: "On Sunday, We (Half God Of Rainfall) won best Theatre Production at the inaugural Black British..."

This was such a surprise to the team. No one had a speech prepared. My mouth fell open and stood up confused. Really proud one everyone, Kate McGrath @ Fuel, Indhu Rubasingham @ Kiln, Nancy Medina, Kwame Odoom, Rakie Ayola, Max John, Imogen Knight, Jackie Shemesh & Tanjua Amarasuriya.

You missed the play, but you can still buy the book and audio book. The Legend lives on!

Poem x Gaddafi

Colonel Gaddafi died on this day in 2011. A few years later, I visited Libya and had a meeting with the director of the national theatre there. We got to talking about Gaddafi and he was surprised that I didn’t out and out condemn like most westerners (far as he was concerned, I was an Englishman, imagine, to him) did. He told me that if I ever write a poem about Gaddafi, he would publish it. This is the sonnet I wrote... (haven’t sent it to him)…

For Muammar al-Gaddafi.
#After Simon Armitage

And he took power in a bloodless coup
And brought his people democratic rule
And championed free speech, building new schools
And hung a student who critiqued his views.
And all his speeches were received lukewarm
And he kept promises he’d made to charm
And gave free equipment to start-up farms
And gunned down protestors marching unarmed.
And to each Libyan he pledged a home
And channelled a river through desert stone 
And fought imperialism from his bones
And never found peace, and he died alone.
Here’s how we should rate him when we look back:
Sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that. 

Life Sentence.

LIFE SENTENCE, 1995

For Ken Saro-Wiwa, #After Elizabeth Bartlett

The judge and junta who had stirred in the small hours
before, hugged their illicit thin gifts and stayed in bed
trying not to dream of the prisoner, how he feared
more for his land and people than he did for his head,

how his punishment would not fit his crime. No Murder
had been committed by him; the chaos and confusion
he’d caused were peaceful protest’s kind. “We were toys
to them, they’re done playing now”. He knew collusion

was likely— that the country's corridors of power faced
the oil company’s and what connected them— the slightly
greying sludge water— would burst its banks, that really,
it would become a sloe–black flood. Yet, he'd rise lightly

to the hangman who would lift the noose. No crowds
would bay, no family present, no wife wailing. No ill
willed towards the hangman, no insulting reference
to his tribe; to Ken’s last few seconds they wouldn’t kill

his inner gentleman. Three chances they’d have to evade
execution, thrice the trapdoor failed, thrice the shame
of noosing his clean neck. The fourth time, they’d have
it working, pulling the lever down, calling out his name.

And waking, they would wish it had all been a dream,
and try as they might, they would not be able to explain
away what sacred thing they broke, why fishing baskets
now came up slick and empty, what brand of pain

it was, how crude and sinister, how troubled they felt
to have framed and killed him in the broad light of day.
That courtroom would shadow every door and corner
like an all-powerful omen. It would not go away.

---

From #Afterhours, published by Nine Arches

An Evening With An Immigrant.

So! This begins next week! I hope you are free and available to come and check out this show. It is funny, ridiculous and exciting. Playing here in London, at Soho Theatre. Tickets cost £14/£12 - and can be bought here.

Born to a Muslim father and a Christian mother in what is now considered by many to be Boko Haram territory, in 1996 award-winning poet and playwright Inua Ellams left Nigeria for England aged 12, moved to Ireland for three years, before returning to London and starting work as a writer and graphic designer.

Part of this story was documented in his hilarious autobiographical Edinburgh Fringe First Award-winning play The 14th Tale, but much of it is untold. Littered with poems, stories and anecdotes, Inua will tell his ridiculous, fantastic, poignant immigrant-story of escaping fundamentalist Islam, directing an arts festival at his college in Dublin, performing solo shows at the National Theatre, and drinking wine with the Queen of England, all the while without a country to belong to or place to call home.

The New Tate Modern.

For one year in 2012, I was a writer in residence at the Tate Modern Building project. My job was to interview some of the architects and construction workers, and write. Below is footage I shot on my phone, early in the construction of the site behind the original Tate building. The New Tate building opened last Friday, I was invited to a private view the Monday before and walking through it was an incredible experience...  I gasped so many times! Seeing and breathing in a structure I'd first encountered as lines and gradients on paper, now live, alive...

Some of the work was carried out by MACE who built Heathrow's Terminal 5 and the employment manager (as she talked me through various incredible schemes they had to train young and working class folks from South London to work on the site) had this MACE screensaver on her laptop. And this was the start of my poem...

The Employment Manager’s Laptop.

Over her shoulder the photograph glowing
on the screen is of an airport's new terminal
and folks in transit; a brunette in pink swings

an umbrella over the polished marble floor.
In the foreground, two others wheel luggage
towards the check-in desks. Three attendants,

their lanyards laden, talk relaxed beneath
the soaring arched ceiling as so much light fills
the just-unwrapped brilliance of the building

and in the middle, one man stands behind
his stacked bags, facing the departure lounge, 
perhaps he thinks of flight. 

                                                  And it's all I need 

to imagine past her shoulders, blur the screen, 
this contractor’s office stuffed with boxes,
scuffed boots, hard hats, and see into the years

from now, when these drawings littered like
white leaves have grown into the building, 
how the planned asphalt and gravel walk

touches the quilt-pattern brick of the new
tower, twisting up as birds nose dive towards
the silver birch on grass and so much light 

hits the window slits cut in the walls and
the glass, catching the sun's wide wink, glints
from the future, promising what's to come.

Hope you enjoyed this, share if you did, and go check out the Tate Modern.

Currently Reading.

I'm flying to Kenya for 9/10 days tonight and these are the books I plan to get through while I'm there. The two Poetry Magazines are for joy, the others are for work, a play I'm writing: adapting Chekov's Magnificent Three Sisters, setting in the Nigerian Civil War. Like the family in the play (three sisters and a brother), I have three sisters and I'm the only dude. The more I read the play these other adaptations, the closer I fall in love with Chekov's characters.

Setting it in the Civil War though is something else and Flora Nwapa, Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emeechta are my guardian angels. 

One of the characters in Chekov's play is compared to a famous Russian poet. I'm trying to do the same thing: comparing a character to Christopher Okigbo, who not only remains important to Nigerian poetry but died fighting in the very war the play is set. 

Will keep you updated as I read and research. 
Cheers.  

Where'd that title come from anyway?

So, last week, for the first time, someone asked me about the title. The book is 5 years old now and never had the question be posed to me. So, if you have ever wandered, here it is...

Way back when I was a little snot-nosed shawty... (can't believe I just wrote that... anyway, 2009 or so) I used to set myself various difficult writing challenges to force unusual poem. I took this to nth degree last year when working on the #Afterhours project, but in 2009, I'd sit with a pen and a pad and look around for images that seemed conflicting or opposite to one another. On finding a suitably opposing pair one, I'd try and figure out if they related to each other in any way and write a poem with that relationship at it's core.

Late one night, this old song from Soul for Real came on the radio.

After vibing out to it, embarrassingly missing the dance steps, the line 'Candy coated raindrops' stuck out to me. I wondered if candy coated raindrops could actually be created and how improbable it is for them to form naturally. I upped the ante a tad to a 'Candy Coated Unicorn' which seemed, given that unicorns do no exist, even more improbable and magical. That sorted, I looked around for something opposite. Something very ubiquitous, every-day, down to earth, ordinary and shit stained... and my eyes came to rest on my old pair of Converse All Stars.

Candy Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars became the title of whatever it is I would write, but I had no idea where I was going. I just started. The result was the poem below which became the title poem of my second pamphlet of poems. 

That's it. Puzzle unpuzzled. 
xx

Portrait of Icarus as an immigrant.

Portrait of Icarus
as an immigrant.
for R.A. Villanueva

Heavy-booted
and uniformed
the armed
who man
the borders
of narrative
and myth
who cast
the war-torn
and hungry
as other
will say
he reached
too far
dared dream
broader than
his country
than wings
could carry
that chant
of his
that song
of light
was foreign
sounded like
a battle
cry sounded
too much
like jihad
the whole
flight was
ill-advised
the father
should know
better now
nothing can
be done
nothing as
he plunged.

Also published today by the Guardian: Several dead after refugee boat sinks off Greek coast.

Please vote.

I'm currently working on a project and need your help. All you gotta do is vote for your favourite sonnet of the two below.  

Sonnet 19.

Sonnet 15.  

Then, vote here on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/inuaellams/status/686562603267670016.

Thanks! 

Happy New Year + 2 podcasts.

Happy New Year folks! Welcome to the second week of 2016. I hope it has started calmly and fruitfully for you. I, personally, am still in holiday mode and wish to stay there for a good few more weeks. Perhaps months. Alas, try as I might, my Nigerian juju no get power reach - there are limits to my black-boy-magic and stopping time exceeds me.

On the subject of time-travel, I'd like to begin this year by taking you back to last year. I was interviewed for two different podcasts where I got to talk about art, poetry, politics, travel and The Midnight Run. 

The first was the inaugural episode for Diasporaphiles - a blog/meeting-place, discovering the common ground between people who feel in place out of place. (35:36min). 

As an artist who works across genre and forms, Inua Ellams is fascinated by movement. A poet, playwright, performer and graphic artist, he is used to inhabiting different worlds. In this conversation Inua takes us on a tour of his imagination. Exploring his views on art and migration, tales of his travels through Africa’s barbershops, and his journey into the hidden corners of the city, we try to find the roots of his restless creativity.

The second was in conversation with the incredible write and urban traveller, Iain Sinclair, for the British council before our trip to Mexico last year.

Check out all the other podcasts in the 'Writers in Conversation' series: soundcloud.com/britishcouncil/sets/writers-in-conversation Find out more on our literature site: http://literature.britishcouncil.org/

Hope you find some time to spend listening. Any questions you have, please do not hesitate to ask. Enjoy!

Inua

The Same City

The Same City

by Terrance Hayes
For James L. Hayes
 

The rain falling on a night
in mid-December, 
I pull to my father’s engine
wondering how long I’ll remember
this. His car is dead. He connects
jumper cables to his battery, 
then to mine without looking in
at me and the child. Water beads
on the windshields, the road sign, 
his thin blue coat. I’d get out now, 
prove I can stand with him
in the cold, but he told me to stay
with the infant. I wrap her
in the blanket, staring
for what seems like a long time
into her open, toothless mouth, 
and wish she was mine. I feed her
an orange softened first in my mouth, 
chewed gently until the juice runs
down my fingers as I squeeze it
into hers. What could any of this matter
to another man passing on his way
to his family, his radio deafening
the sound of water and breathing
along all the roads bound to his? 
But to rescue a soul is as close
as anyone comes to God. 
Think of Noah lifting a small black bird
from its nest. Think of Joseph, 
raising a son that wasn’t his. 

Let me begin again. 
I want to be holy. In rain
I pull to my father’s car
with my girlfriend’s infant. 
She was eight weeks pregnant when we met. 
But we’d make love. We’d make
love below stars and shingles
while her baby kicked between us. 
Perhaps a man whose young child
bears his face, whose wife waits
as he drives home through rain
& darkness, perhaps that man
would call me a fool. So what. 
There is one thing I will remember
all my life. It is as small
& holy as the mouth
of an infant. It is speechless. 
When his car would not stir, 
my father climbed in beside us, 
took the orange from my hand, 
took the baby in his arms. 
In 1974, this man met my mother
for the first time as I cried or slept
in the same city that holds us
tonight. If you ever tell my story, 
say that’s the year I was born.
 

A reading of this incredible poem by Terrance Hayes. http://drheidih.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/terrance-hayes.html