2014 (Poetry, Education, Community And Other Summaries)

shot by Adam Docker for Chill Pill Shorts -
https://www.youtube.com/user/chillpillshorts

This year I have spoken poetry to an estimated twelve thousand people from stages at Tedx, Glastonbury and LatitudeFestival to fruit sellers on Deptford Market to students and professors at Oxford University.

November 2014

I finished my Masters in Spoken Word Education at Goldsmith's University with a distinction and was promoted to Lead Educator on the MA Programme, co-ordinated by Jacob Sam La Rose, training and mentoring poets pursuing careers in education.

Faber are currently considering my new poetry manuscript.

I have delivered workshops on creativity and poetry to over two thousand young people, aged 10 – 25, nationally and internationally. I also ran workshops for adults as part of the Keats Festival in Hampstead.

I have written poems commissioned by The Arts Council, Freeword Centre and Southbank. 

Keats House Forum and Chill Pill remain two influential London based poetry and Spoken Word nights.

Chill Pill featured at Camp Bestival

This has been my third year teaching in schools and I will continue to campaign for student voice, education and the marginalised people of Hackney.

Cardinal Pole's Spoken Word poetry showcase in April 2014

In January an anthology of poetry and creative writing by many of the students I have taught in Hackney will be published and has already been recommended by The Poetry Society, Joelle Taylor and is also being reviewed by Michael Rosen.

In 2014 I experienced grief as well as accomplishment and fulfilment in (almost) equal measure. New connections have been established in terms of friendships and my family may be smaller but I feel we are closer. 

I’ve been less sociable this year, preferring to be alone, to read, to think and to hone a kind of solitude. I have shifted my ideas of success, who I am and who I want to be and I am improving the management of any anxiety and depression.

Here's to another year of learning, teaching, creating and inspiring. 

See you all in 2015.

Chill Pill Christmas Special; Luke Wright, United Vibrations, Aisling Fahey & Vanessa KIssuule at The Albany (December 18th)

Here are two powerful poems by two of our featured poets appearing at the Chill Pill Christmas Special at The Albany. I'd suggest watching these all the way through, and on your own. Then I'd remind you that the Chill Pill Christmas show will indeed be a BIG HAPPIER PARTY!

Luke Wright

“One of the funniest and most brilliant poets of his generation.”  The Independent.

Luke was a poet in residency on BBC Radio 4’s saturday live, he’s the founder of the Latitude Poetry tent, and regularly tours with John Cooper Clarke.

For this Chill Pill event he is performing a special xmas collaboration with stand-up comedian and musician Vikki Stone, and her choir

United Vibrations



Vanessa Kisuule

She is the current Roundhouse Slam Champion AND the current Hammer & Tongue national slam champion, currently based in Bristol. 



CHILL PILL TICKETS ON SALE NOW - £9 

http://www.thealbany.org.uk/event_detail/1257/Spoken-Word/Chill-Pill:-Christmas-Special

The First Time I Wore Hearing Aids

1.

The first time I wore hearing aids
Stepping out of Saint Bartholomew 
Hospital. I heard pigeon flapping 
crowded city traffic avalanche my ears
like never before. If there was silence
behind any doors in my brain 
they’d been unhinged. It is a miracle
that anyone can think in this volume of busy. 

2.

The first time I heard the bell on the bus,
I kept pushing it for every stop, 
it vexed the bus driver
but I was a child 
playing with sound.

3.

First day at school,
Kieran saw my hearing aids 
and asked if I was a secret agent, 
I said yes, my ears are investigators 
of missing sounds. 

4.

I can still hear 
Miss Williams taking register.
every present syllable in Ray-mo-nd-Ant-ro-bus
was a silent prayers for absence.

5.

When Dominick asked if support teachers 
sit with me in class because I’m stupid,
I wished I said something smart
to clarify my intelligence.

6.

I wished I could trust my ears
to pick up the answers.



7.

In speech therapy
I struggled with
confidence 
pronouncing it con-fi-der.

The sound was too dense, too tuned out of frequency.

8.

In the hearing aid repair clinic
The TV is always on mute – Or is it?


9.

I turned off my hearing aids
to write this, because sometimes, 
hearing aids make you hear everything 
except yourself.

Joelle Taylor Book Launch, Karim Kamar Album Launch & Girls In Film Discussion

Bouncing back from a week of illness and a reading at Oxford University, here's a few events I'll be appearing at this week.

PREORDER NOW FROM BURNING EYE
http://burningeyebooks.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/new-from-burningeyebooks-the-woman-who-was-not-there-by-joelle-taylor/

Joelle Taylor, curator of SLAMbassadors has a new book of poems launching, 'The Woman Who Was Not There' and I'm honoured to be one of the poets asked to read alongside her at Phoenix Artists Club on Thursday 6th November at 6.30pm in Soho. Joelle is one of the most important names in British poetry and has become a prolific door opener for many poets on the London scene today. If you haven't seen her Ted Talk I highly recommend it.



The following evening, (November 7th) Pianist, film maker and Out-Spoken Co-Curator, Karim Kamar launches his music project 'Songs Without Words' at the 1901 Arts Club from 7pm. I'll be reading alongside poets such as Simon Mole, Anthony Anaxagorou and Sabrina Mahfouz.



TICKETS HERE - https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/date/125109

On Saturday (November 8th), Corrina Antrobus will be chairing a discussion on female representation in film at The Under-Wire Film Festival. Details below.

http://www.underwirefestival.com/event/girls-on-film-the-bechdel-test-needs-your-vote/

Am I Black Enough? - On Being Invited To Read At Oxford University & Caribbean Weekend Festival 2014

...My father, who I adored despite every cruelty, 

who opens his arms like a dream he knows 

I have had all my life and says "come..."

- Kwame Dawes

I was born in England to an English mother and a Jamaican father, and only having visited my family in Jamaica a handful of times throughout my childhood, I wouldn't have felt my voice had anything to add to a conversation on Caribbean poetic expression and experience, but I am feeling a new confidence in claiming part of that identity, despite my thirteen year absence from Jamaica.

As a child, it was hard to bond with my family in Jamaica, I was called "White Bwoy" everywhere I went, my family seemed more interested in the materials in my bags than the history of our family. This upset me, because it was my father who brought me to Jamaica to connect with his heritage. This denied me the feeling of being in a place that was meant to be a part of me. I returned to London that year, and wrote off Jamaica as a place I could not call home.

Since my father passed away last year, I have felt a need to understand something about my Jamaican heritage, a need to find a connection that has been denied or lost since my father is no longer anywhere on earth.

He was the person in my family I most physically resembled. I felt proud when I was seen with him because our resemblance, in spite of his darker skin, confirmed my blackness. This was important because, most of my fathers stories about living in England as a dreadlocked Jamaican, were about the racism he had to tolerate, on the streets, in the work place, at the airport, in the job centre, it was everywhere. His colour was something he had to defend and fight for. It's something I admired about him, and that's something I always wanted to connect with. A fighter for equal rights, social consciousness and justice.

On October 25th I will be reading in a Caribbean literature and music festival curated by Renaissance One, London Is The Place For Me 2014 (also the title of a Calypso song by Trinidadian singer, Lord Kitchener). I don't know if I have anything new to add to the conversation around Caribbean poetics and literature but I'll get to explore that with my invitation to the festival.

Caribbean poets who lived or are living in the UK like John Agard, Jean Binta Breeze, James Berry, Andrew Salkey, Grace Nicolas, have all had their place on my childhood bookshelf. I have been particularly inspired by Roger Robinson and Kei Miller in recent years. True, these voices are not "Caribbean specific'', the intensity of their work is drawn from the unsettling narratives of African and European history.

These Caribbean voices carry the tone of their Islands across the Atlantic. This is something unavoidably political. The awareness of what Patois (or any indigenous, mixed-nuanced language of a colonial / post-colonial space) brings to the European ear, gives the Caribbean poetical sensibility a loud whip-lashing purpose. 

When I saw Kei Miller read his poem, 'Flog Man' at The Southbank Centre, I heard a Jamaican, unafraid of the difficulty of presenting accurate colonial history to a predominately middle class white audience, culturally indulging in his Forward Prize winning poetry, which is both striking and subtle.

Flog Island?  / It had one beating so brutal, no one could cork their ears from it; 
both black and white man fail in the long practise of deafness...

...Blood did sprinkle the ground like anointing
and now people walk by and cringe as memory
curl like S and lash them owna skin.

As a Jamaican / British poet (who is literally hard of hearing), when listening to Kei Miller, he stings and sings my blood every time I am able to hear him read.

Am I Black Enough?

My father spoke Patois, and I could only speak it comfortably around him, although I was always too British for him because I ate with a fork instead of a spoon. He made a point of saying, "Black is predominant, you are my son, therefore you are black", but in the British context I identify as a British Jamaican. I feel particularly British when I'm in Africa or the Caribbean, but I feel particularly black when I'm in Europe. One of the nuances of having two parents from two very different cultures is neither of them can fully relate to the identity which is forming around your ambiguous existence and that in itself, is a kind of displacement. 

On November 1st I will be reading on the Diaspora, Identity and Art at Oxford University. Only in the last year would it make sense for me to be reading (and writing) in such a space. Through poetry I have unearthed a kind of (at first unconscious) acknowledgement of my Jamaican heritage, and now (consciously) that is something that excites me and thickens my notebooks. Like Miller, I aim to hold these spaces with my own voice, a British, Jamaican voice that sounds a story, in spite of everything that makes it harder to hear.

James Baldwin On Columbus (from Jimmy's Blues)

This gone National Poetry Day, I took a group of students to Southbank as I was invited to perform alongside Ross Sutherland, Joshua Idehen, Joelle Taylor, John Hegley and others. As the theme was 'Remember', I was asked to memorise a poem and perform it, I chose 'Imagination' by James Baldwin. I recommend picking up this collection.

"imagination creates the situation, 
and then, the situation creates the imagination. 

It may of course be the other way around: 
Columbus was discovered by what he found"

The Importance Of Vulnerability, Creativity, Honesty & Consciousness In Education

"If our young people grow up holding on to such terrible feelings, it could lead to another war some time in the future when the fate of the country is in their hands" - Zlata Filipovic

Student Slam

This Wednesday I was invited to teach, perform and curate a slam at the British School Of Brussels for a few days. It is an international school, mostly attended by the children of diplomats, government administrators, military etc. I was honoured to meet and talk poetry with many young people from all over the world. I spoke with students who have lived in Cuba, Philippines, China, Australia and all over Europe, as well as meeting students from Africa (some of whom are part of an exchange programme). The main thing that these young people have in common is that they are all from wealthy families. Coming from teaching in Hackney, where students live mostly in social housing, you'd expect a contrast... and there is. What I can't say however, is that one of these demographics has more of a need than the other, it is just a case of those needs being different.

The interesting thing about teaching poetry, is when you create a space that nurtures honesty, vulnerability and creativity, you make it understood that it is ok to think what you think and share it, because your story matters, and it is ok to step out of uniforms and predicted grades and just be the person who is working their way through life, as we all are.

Many beautiful and difficult things are brought into that space but recently I've been hearing students (in all kinds of classrooms and spaces) say things like, "I'm in school, I don't think this is the place to talk like this", it breaks my heart to hear that young people feel their way through school as a space that is closer to an incarceration than a liberation.

I often hear students label themselves "stupid", or "not smart", one particular lesson last week, I asked the class for the definition of "figurative language", when a heavy silence fell, a student staring at his desk said "We don't know sir, you're teaching the dumb class". It's heart-breaking when young people feel the pressure of "being intelligent", instead of the excitement of being curious.

Cyrus The Great in 550BC Persia, founded "The Rights Of Nations", the foundation of Human Rights laws 

While researching for my MA, I found that National Curriculums all over the world share a consistency in policies that encourage human rights, social awareness and student voice, something which I do not see practised enough. Reading through the National Curriculum's, it reminded me of the day I was invited along with fifty international artists and campaigners to recite each bill in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Halfway through, a woman from Iran and a man from Sri Lanka broke down in tears, followed by everyone in the room. It was the simplicity of hearing our rights, articulated out loud, with matter-of-fact-precision. If this was the bar set for basic human rights, too many of us are living with content instead of passion, oppression and mis-education instead of enlightenment and conviction.

No matter what part of the world, or the background of our students, I believe the classroom is one of the most important spaces to bring about self-empowerment and therefore, social change. This needs to be a space which, as I said before, allows us to be vulnerable (connected to each other), creative (to explore new possibilities), honest (to understand our similarities as well as our differences) and conscious (to keep seeking truth).

Chill Pill at The Afrovibes Festival; October 16th at The Albany

Chill Pill are back at The Albany for some global poetry shenanigans as part of the Afrovibes Festival, and have booked one of South Africa's foremost poets, Toni Stuart, alongside the full Chill Pill team and whatever treasures we unearth on the open mic.

We'll also have live music from the brilliance of the London Zulu Township (soul meets West London funk in Deptford.)

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Toni Stuart is a Poet from South Africa, and has been featured on BBC World Service and named by The Guardian as one of 200 notable young South Africans. Before becoming a full-time poet she co-founded the non-governmental organisation I am Somebody! with storyteller Nicole Le Roux, and directed it from its inception in 2010 until the middle of 2012. She is now a SpokenWord Educator, studying for her Masters in Writing and Teaching at Goldsmith University. 

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London Zulu, the project formerly fronted by the late, great South African singer and dancer Doreen Thobekile. Doreen’s daughter (and long-time vocal sparring partner) Ingrid Webster is taking her place in the spotlight to perform the songs of her mother and more. Backed by members of Transglobal Underground, she’ll be singing her heart out on a set of Township soul and West London funk.

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JJ's WALK ABOUT WITH A LUMIX PRESENTS INGRID & LONDON ZULU from Joseph Otieno Adamson on Vimeo.

In 2014, Afrovibes festival's biggest-ever programme celebrates 20 years of South African freedom: 20 years since the ending of apartheid and the beginning of democracy. The creativity of award-winning artists brings us music, drama, dance, photography and film, reflecting upon what it is to be part of 21st century South Africa. By turns it'll be thought-provoking, energetic, sad, fascinating, wonderful. With free events, family workshops and themed food served in the atmospheric Township Cafe, drop by, hang out and belong - you'll believe that you really are thousands of miles from home!

Box Office 0208 692 4446

020 8692 4446

http://www.thealbany.org.uk/event_detail/1263/Spoken-Word/Chill-Pill:-Afrovibes

Climate Change March In London in Photos

On Exhibit B & James Baldwin On Education

""We charge the Barbican with exhibiting institutional racism" - Sara Myers

Exhibit B was cancelled in London this week and much has been written on the case already. Firstly, I did not see the exhibition so my judgement, like most people in London, is based on A) the exhibition cost £20 - who was that money going to and who is this exhibition really aimed at? it reeks of classist cultural ownership, B) Brett Bailey, the creator is a white South African and was educated under the Apartheid regime, (a time when black people were denied education), bad move for the Barbican to not have had more dialogue before booking the exhibit and C) the promotional photographs of black people in cages aren't very imaginative if it's aim is to inspire a re-thinking of slavery.

"Accept the university of death" - Gwendolyn Brooks

I recently finished my Masters in writing and teaching, and I'm currently teaching in schools. My stance is that racist indoctrination is still alive and judging by the reading lists on every school / university / curriculum I have come across, our educational institutions still glorify and endorse racist literature, defended by creative writing and English Literature professors as "the mentality of the time". I'm not even saying to remove or censor these writers, I'm saying, it can't be taught without taking the painful narrative of colonial atrocity seriously. Without asking why all the "uncivilised, barbaric, savage" language is something that can pass without deeper interrogation of racism, how it translates today and why the establishment forgives it?

Much empathy is needed from teachers (I don't just mean qualified teachers in schools, but anyone sharing and accessing knowledge) in the presentation of this history. They need to understand that every time a white writer calls a black person a nigger, he / she is denying their humanity. It seems these "canonised" writers who are used as models of supreme literary achievement (such as H.G Wells, Darwin, Conrad, Kipling, Woolf, Lawrence, Larkin) and let's not even get started on the Americans, who assumed black people would never read their books, because the system they believed in would forever keep them illiterate. These writers were not stupid, they were racists, directly benefiting from slavery and defending white supremacy. To call black people human would be to admit that the only thing rich white people were by default is human rights abusers. What kind of teacher would not be able to empathise with this? Perhaps a teacher, who themselves are victims of a racist education? This requires a deeper exploration on race politics, particularly if you're a white teacher educating students of colour. How can we expect black and white students to have the same response to these narratives? Its about creating an honest history and debate between all students  and teachers (regardless of background). Would this not be a positive move in bringing us all together?

Toni Morrison and Chinua Achebe have written excellent essays on this

As our education system has such a miserable time confronting colonial history, people surely aren't ready for Exhibit B before they're ready to resolve the present institutional racism. Perhaps part of what has caused offence is that Brett Bailey has assumed racism and slavery are things of the past?

"It's hard to talk about education in a country where people take seriously such a creature as John Wayne and Ronald Reagan... for a black person to get an education in this country, you got to have a lot of guts first of all... and to endure a racist institution... and risk schizophrenia" - James Baldwin

In other news, the country has just started a war.

October 2nd National Poetry Day at Southbank featuring Jean Binta Breeze, Kei Miller, Joelle Taylor & more....

I'm back at the Southbank Centre for National Poetry Day, do pass through, the quality of poets is too high to miss, and it's FREE. Details below

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/national-poetry-day-live-86162

On 6th October I'll be attending the Complete Works II event, also at Southbank. I recommend this highly. http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/the-complete-works-85993

If you can't wait until October, Chill Pill is on Monday, 22nd September at Soho Theatre, hopefully see you then. http://www.sohotheatre.com/whats-on/so-chilled-afrovibes

Do stay in touch with what's happening at Keats House Poets Forum, myself and Simon Mole are running a workshop on Sunday October 28th. The theme is 'Our Place Within It All', join us for a afternoon of writing.

http://khpoets.wordpress.com/

Hackney Carnival in pictures

This man was run out of his caribbean shop on Boardway Market, his name is ironically 'Spirit' 

This child has a solution 

This woman is going into trading

This is determination

Who said Hackney was rubbish?

Dress this man in white and he is happy to be alive 

This man had no idea the carnival was on and he fitted right in...

More photos here

https://www.facebook.com/raymond.antrobus/media_set?set=a.10152375930511235.1073741831.510921234&type=1

Am I Born Again?

...and you were beautiful
innocent young though you were fat and clumsy
too but you were you and you treasured the nosegay - Gerald Stein

This morning my daily meditation took place on a bench under the sun in London Fields. I sat out of the shadows, facing a tree. I closed my eyes and focused my breath. Allowing myself to be present, feeling the bench planks hold my weight.

After twenty minutes of meditation I open my eyes to see a black boy, about ten years old, in a tuxedo suit, holding a leaflet that read "Are You Born Again?"

I sat still in a kind of semi-zen fuzz, the sunlight gathering the day into focus, "this is for you" said Tuxedo Boy, and I took it, and thanked him as he skipped away, happy to have something to offer the world. I was left alone with the leaflet’s question, Are You Born Again?

Well, firstly, I'm not religious, so my usual mind would be to ignore the leaflet and assume someone has told Tuxedo Boy to place the leaflet in front of my closed eyes and wait for them to open on a staged epiphany. But meditation pushes the mind beyond the horizon of assumptions, so I made space for the question... Am I Born Again? 

Answer

A few years ago my mum showed me my school report cards from primary school that read “Raymond finds it hard to focus. His reading and writing are below what’s expected of his age. He seems more interested in what’s happening outside the window than what’s in the classroom”.

I still recognise my "outside-the-window-thoughts", and it’s a shame for this to be picked up in a learning environment as a criticism. I was also partly deaf and this wasn’t picked up yet, but the signs weren't sounded out for traditional teachers. The truth is, I was in the wrong place for development because my teachers, instead of assessing their own practise, blamed me for not tuning into their classroom expectations.

When I think about myself as a child in that class, I don’t feel I have out-grown him completely. The person I am today is not “born again” if that means a death of a previous self has occurred. My growth as a person has all been gardened in the same bed of earth. Reading my report card, I feel proud that I was able to express something that is still aligned with my true self. Therefore, I am not "born again", rather, I have been born as I am, and have been taught to stay open to change, growth and transformation.