I’ve shredded and shed-ed. I’ve bagged and boxed. I’ve folded, I’ve filed, and I have filled recycle bags with malignant gangs of documents which have followed me, grunting their disdain, in scruffy boxes on every corner of every street I have ever walked. Dramatic moi? I fought them, with a shredder, cause I am reclaiming the right to organise the past. A weight is lifting off my shoulders and into the bin. I haven’t thrown all the documents away . Don’t be daft. I’ve made a neat file for each year from 1967 to the present day. I’ve kept some press and letters and a treasured box of passes. They have a bright melancholy and a pre-covid poignancy.
As I sifted and shifted paper to shredder I read letters from the people I have worked with from 1985 to the present day. it became abundantly clear how much I have been supported and if the arts Council had not funded the arts centres around the UK where would I have performed? I thought it was all me. It wasn’t. If the Arts Council had not supported Bogle L’ouverture (my first real publishers) or Initiatives such as Caribbean Focus (1987?), or magazines like Wasafari, or Poetry Now (remember that) where would I be. The Regional Arts Boards, literature officers, publishers, Photographers, City Festivals, Theatres, Libraries and librarians (literature activists), West Indian Societies throughout the country (1984 to1990) , Magazines like Black Beat International, Community Centres, Literature festivals from Edinburgh to Brighton, Radical Bookshops: They gave me the chance to shout and shine.
The list is worth writing: organisations such as PRS, MCPRS, ALCS, local councils, bookshops, publishers, schools colleges and universities, lawyers, TV production companies and producers, regional BBC Radio (Manchester), Radio 4 producers, The Agents: PDF, David Higham, Sandra Boyce, Curtis Brown, 57 Productions, Artsadmin, Clare Conville of Conville and Walsh, Suzette Newman, Island Trading, Blasthard, Eliot Rashman, and individual promoters like Helmut Heuer, Record Companies like Yo Mamma in Germany, The British Council, and lawyers and Unions like The Society of Authors: All these people (and more) have helped provide the environment for artists of my generation to grow. And then there are the artists, from Grace Nichols to Bernadine Evaristo. , from Linton Kwesi Johnson and Benjamin Zephaniah to Inua Ellams. Artists, from Carol Ann Duffy to Malika Booker, they lead by example.
Photo by Suki Dhanda – The Observer
I love my career as an artist. This isn’t grandiloquence. It’s cause I’ve been filing and throwing away stuff but I am keeping stuff too. If I could advise the eighteen year old me I would say these organisers and organisations are the engine of the arts. You and your fellow artists are the fuel. Organisers want nothing more than for you to be your best Thank them by being your best. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to advise myself cause I was too busy trying to get a drink from the bar in The green Room (Manchester) or WKD (London). But fortunately I have learned. Filing copy now. Taxes paid.
☘️&… Ride the Tide while it lasts, they say … Congratulations…
I love reading all the names of people and places, some I know and some not.We are all connected up – appreciating one person or place or organisation always sheds thanks on a whole bunch of others. Thanks for this!!
true.
They raised you up & you raised them up, a beautiful karma component to it all. Look how far you’ve come & what a continued inspiration you are. Respect to you & those organisations & ones like them around the globe. Where would art be without them?
absolutely.
I’d a very strange experience when I watched ‘Imagine’ the programme in which you were interviewed by Alan Yentob when you stepped into the house where you used to live with the Greenwoods. You felt recognised by the house as though it said hello and welcome back to you. This struck a deep note with me as we had our home stolen which we feel is waiting for us to come back.
Evaxx
PS I missed, or rather saw only the last minute, of a programme where you were walking through the countryside. Something like that. What was it called? Can I retrieve it as I want to watch it?
You re the only person to comment about that particular moment in the documentary. I have never said anything like it before or since.
I think that is because I don’t have those homes to return to. I remember that feeling of the house talking to me. Thanks Eva. And I am sorry for the loss of yours.
The programme you were looking for is here https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qftx/winter-walks-series-1-lemn-sissay
…From A little provincial woman / exciting life :
…You , entered into my life without knowing it …
… I’m not going to give the incredible details about the miracles that lit up my way since then …
( I admit I’m not mentionning those who were not at all ) ) …
I live in a little French town called Chartres ( not far from Paris )
( Welcome here ) I want to read you , I ordered ” Your name is Why ” at the library ” ( I’m not into the internet world ( Ama -zone and so on ) and after 3 months of waiting for peanuts I gave up and tried another way “Shakespeare and Co .” in Paris but I don’t want to go to Paris …
Anyway yesterday I gave a call to the library again to check if they could not find another way : It wasn’t possible but today
( = the day after and here it becomes very exciting …!!!!) YOUR book MAGICALMLY arrived … I started ordering two others
” Gold from the stones ” and ” Morning breaks ..” to celebrate it and YOU and your talent / shared gift and for – giving of yourself and sharing on the precious connections on Twitter
( although I ‘m not registered )
tx
thanks.
( Not being the only one , my last message did not appear on your blog : Hope ” ? ” is far far away above this image and did not get me wrong comparing the waiting of your book to the waiting of a child !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! )
found your message – it is up now – and thank you.
We’ve all been chidren : Wishing you so much good and having a great respect for you and the unbearable parts of your life I’m witnessing as a reader and that should have never existed .
( Coming from the countryside I look more like a squirrel than a cow but I love cows )
Thank you so much for having made me feel like reading ( your ) poems : Poetry ( a noble witty art ) has always sounded, looked , felt like ” framed still life ” to me . Your words sound , feel , look vivid, light ( although very deep and bright ) ; Words spring up and down like a piece of music they hit us in one second with no blah blah blahs ..
thanks