Anthony Joseph in Conversation at the London Buddhist Centre

This time last week I was still reflecting on Anthony Joseph who read from his T S Eliot award winning collection of poetry Sonnets for Albert (2022). This really was a wonderful evening where Anthony was in conversation with Maitreyabandhu at the London Buddhist Centre, in East London on 21 October. This was part of a series of Poetry East events that the centre organise, held in the beautiful Buddhist Temple, which is adorned with an ambience of candles in abundance and vases of flowers that were remarkable to view.

My friend and I arrived early enough so as to get a front-row seat. Anthony was blessed with a full house and we were blessed with hearing many of the poems from Sonnets for Albert, written after the death of Anthony's father. The poems mainly stemmed from the absence of Anthony's father due to a range of factors including the fact that he had twelve children. Here's the first poem in the book's inside cover that sums up this theme perfectly:

FLACK AND HATHAWAY

My father would be gone.

Months into mystery.

But he persisted

in our longing.

We saw him

maybe once, maybe

twice a year. We sang

Flack and Hathaway,

that he would come running.

And while we waited

the myth of him grew,

till the anticipation

of his return

would fill each room. 

This event was so inspiring. I was moved by the emotional content of Anthony's poems, especially that despite the absence of his father, he grew to love him, which may have had something to do with Anthony living with his grandmother, his father's mother, who also experienced the same absence in her relationship with her son. Maybe growing up with his grandmother in Trinidad ensured that the connection with Anthony's father was less likely to be severed.

Anthony also discussed how the personal can be universal. I really like the way the book is structured; the shortness of the self-contained poems and their related themes didn't detract from the significance of their depth and breadth. I know it's a cliche but less is definitely more with this book. 

Some of the sonnets exceeded fourteen lines — I love a rebel poet! This was a deliberate action on Anthony's part, a kind of rule-breaking, a manipulation of the form, acknowledging the imperialism of not just the sonnet's form but its history. 

Black and white photographs taken in Trinidad and sprinkled throughout the book, was also a nice touch as we could see Anthony's father in a range of guises as well as other family members and garner a real sense of nostalgia. The white space behind each image worked really well to provide a slight distance from the text, a refreshing pause.

I also thought it would be really interesting to explore writing in the sonnet form myself at some point, in exactly the same rule-breaking way. 

This Poetry East event was so refreshing and thought-provoking, especially as I could resonate with the absent father theme although I didn't quite grow to love my father. Maybe it is a different scenario when you are growing up with your father's grandmother. How lovely that must have been for Anthony to at least find out about his father through his grandmother. It must be nice to be that close when you're growing up with your grandmother. I grew up with my grandmother so I totally understand that element.

No Q&A!

I mentioned this to Maitreyabandhu as I was leaving and he nodded as if to say yes I get you. There was more than enough time for a Q & A, since the event was two hours long, and included a tea-break too, so this was a missed opportunity. 

I got around this by making sure to ask Anthony a question while I was getting his book signed. My question was: How much artistic control did you have when putting the collection of poetry together. Anthony responded by saying that he did have artistic control which included curating the order of the poems and the book's landscape and inclusion of imagery. 

If you get a chance to see Anthony Joseph, don't hesitate. You will enjoy the experience!

Author Bio:

Anthony Joseph is a Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic and musician. He is the author of four poetry collections and three novels. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award, and longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. As a musician, he has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at De Montfort University, Leicester. Anthony was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize for Sonnets for Albert (2022) his first poetry collection since Rubber Orchestra in 2013. 

Claudia Rankine In Conversation with Nicola Rollock

On 14 March 2023, I went to see Claudia Rankine In Conversation with Nicola Rollock, at the London Review Bookshop (LRB) which holds 20,000 titles on two floors in Bloomsbury, London, plus there's a cafe that serves cake and tea!

This was one of the best literary events I had been to in years.  To say I'm a fan of Claudia Rankine is putting it mildly, so I made sure to sit at the front.

Claudia Rankine, poet, essayist and playwright, was at LRB to discuss a new forthcoming revised and re-issued version of PLOT,  (2023) her third collection of poetry, initially written in 2001, before Claudia Rankine had a child, as a thought experiment around what it means to decide to be an artist and to be a parent and the challenges that brings. PLOT is a poetry collection concerning pregnancy and motherhood told fictiously by using a couple named Erland and Liv to drive the narrative. 

The text of PLOT crosses genres, existing at times in poetry, at times in dialogue, in order to arrive at new life and baby Ersatz. At most, the text explores what it means to be human and to invest in humanity.

Excerpt

1

Submerged deeper than appetite she bit into a freakish anatomy, the hard plastic of filiation, a fetus dream, once severed, reattached, the baby femur not fork-tender though flesh, the baby face now anchored.

What Liv would make would be familial, not foreign, forsaken. She knew this and tried to force the scene, focus the world, in the dream. Snapping, the crisp rub of thumb to index, she was in rehearsal with everyone, loving the feel of cartilage, ponderous of damaged leaves, then only she, singing internally, only she revealed, humming, undressing a lullaby: bitterly, sinkholes to underground streams ...

In the dream waist deep, retrieving a fossilized pattern forming in attempt to prevent whispers, or poisoned regrets, reaching into reams and reams, to needle-scam a cord in the stream, as if a wish borne out of rah-rah's rude protrusion to follow the rest was sporded, split, and now hard pressed to enter the birth.

In the dream the reassembled desire to conceive wraps the tearing placenta to a walled uterus, urge formed complicit.

* * *

The event lasted 45 minutes and was also streamed live online. In the Q&A at the end, I was keen to ask a question:

NM: It's great to see you in the flesh as I've been watching you on YouTube for a long time. It actually feels like I'm in your front room.

CR: Because you are! This is my home. I'm really enjoying reading.

NM: I wanted to ask you about Just Us — the process — because I also make art and I'm a writer and poet, so all of that is working well for me. Do you think there will be any more books like Just Us in the future?

CR: Right now, I'm failing badly at trying to work on a new book ... I've been looking at all of these people ... Mahsa Amini, people who do things ... in grasping life they also have to grasp death at the same time, that you can't separate the two things. [NB: Mahsa Amini, aged 22, died in custody on 18 September 2022, three days after her arrest by the notorious morality police in Tehran for allegedly breaching the Islamic Republic's strict dress code for women] Mahsa Amini, the woman who lowered her headscarf, was killed in Iran. But the people came out in objection to her killing, but, they too in coming out to value Mahsa's life, had to grasp their own death and know that the moment you do that, is the moment that the State no longer has control over you.

Lewis Hyde once said, 'Poetry is outside of the market economy so it allows that freedom for the writer to do whatever they want.' So, I've always felt that in the realm of poetry, it's the one genre that has not needed market controls or influences. The world of poetry is the most open place"

When asked about the meanings of the title PLOT, Claudia Rankine said:

CR: The title was chosen because of the multiple meanings and it contained both the idea of a storyline and a plan and also a grave — all thematically relevant to the possibilities of where we were going, i.e. whether following Wolff to the River Ouse or fighting in scenes of a marriage or using language to describe my own husband. Throughout the book, there are moments when the titles are words that are contained in other words. I wanted to show how the word lives independently and also in relation too.

The final question was 'Do you have any advice on how to broaden the readership of poetry?

CR: Poets like T.S. Eliot used to be able to fill stadiums. I think poetry should be heard on the radio. It's an oral activity ... the music ... there's so much work that goes into the cadenza... we could have five-minute sections in mainstream radio, just before the 12 o'clock news, to listen to a poem. I think when people begin to hear it, they'll become less afraid because poetry is just language but because it defies the rules of grammar, of expectation, there's a kind of 'I don't get it.' But you do know, and you will get it if you're open to it. You have to let down the guard that says, because this isn't functioning like a newspaper article, I'll be able to understand this. It's just habits of reading and listening.

Claudia Rankine recommended Poor (2020) by Caleb Femi, winner of The Forward Prize Best First Collection (2021). "Unlike me, he doesn't have to buy in images, he takes his own photographs that are in the book. It's really phenomenal."

Claudia Rankine is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays. She has won numerous awards, too many to list here. I particularly enjoyed reading Just Us: An American Conversation, a brilliant arrangement of essays, poems, and images, which includes the voices and rebuttals of others, e.g., white men in first class responding to, and with, their white male privilege; a friend's explanation of her infuriating behaviour at a play, and much more.

Sara Ahmed in Conversation with Sunny Singh

 

Image Credit: N.Moore L: Sara Ahmed, R: Sunny Singh

On 9 March 2023, I went to see Sara Ahmed, one of the world's leading feminist thinkers and writers, in conversation with academic and writer Sunny Singh, who teaches English Literature at London Metropolitan University, with a special interest in feminist and postcolonial theory. The conversation was about The Feminist Killjoy Handbook, followed by an audience Q&A and a book signing.

The event was held at Foyles in Charing Cross Road, London, one of the UK's most famous booksellers, comprising five floors of books, with a dedicated events space on the sixth-floor hosting author events, in conversations and more.

Sara Ahmed spoke about the stories, theory and history that inspired The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. This book calls on those dismissed or ridiculed for calling out sexism and division, to find solidarity and empowerment.

I first came across 'A Killjoy Survival Kit' and 'A Killjoy Manifesto' in Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed where she unpacks the term 'killjoy' in ways that open up a whole different way of seeing how those experiences of being or becoming a killjoy:

"can feel, sometimes, like making your life harder than it needs to be. I have heard this sentiment expressed as kindness: as if to say, just stop noticing exclusions and your burden will be eased. It is implied that by not struggling against something you will be rewarded by an increasing proximity to that thing. You might be included if only you just stop talking about exclusions. Sometimes the judgement is expressed less kindly: disapproval can be expressed in sideways glances, the sighs, the eyes rolling; stop struggling, adjust, except. And you can also feel this yourself: that by noticing certain things you are making it harder for yourself.

But the experiences we have are not just of being worn down; these experiences also give us resources. What we learn from these experiences might be how we survive these experiences" (Ahmed, 2017 p. 235).

Having read Living a Feminist Life I was enthusiastic about the Foyles event since that book had me making copious notes on yellow post-it notes so as to capture the many insightful theories and practicalities of living a feminist life. However, I must admit the actual conversation between Sara Ahmed and Sunny Singh was a bit flat in places as it lacked context and depth, which I think was due to the questions which arose quite randomly almost out of thin air, so a bit of a missed opportunity. Some of the questions could have been better framed. 

Sara Ahmed is the author of many works including The Cultural Politics of Emotion and Complaint!. Her work occupies the intersections of feminist, queer and race studies. She was Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, until 2016. She resigned from her post in protest at the failure to deal with the problem of sexual harassment.