Crazy as it sounds, on some level I believed I deserved to be treated this way. It was like being quietly beaten up in the corner of a busy room, by the person who invited me to the party, whilst also being accused of gatecrashing. Make of this what you will. It happened and it must be said. Seventeen years later I received an apology of sorts from Neil Astley of Bloodaxe, for it was he. The apology accompanied a request that I change some detail about him on my website. Something that had always bothered him.
‘It’s not difficult to be successful in poetry but as a successful poet it is.’
My books are flags in the mountainside. I have another flag in broadcasting, another in public art, another in performance, in plays, in television, in music. I am the first of my generation, of the contemporary poets, to make poetry as public art. Today in England it is normal, but it wasn’t in 1992. I started Landmark poetry with Hardy’s Well, in Manchester. My central influence is Ian Hamilton Finlay. I released an album in Germany, Disjam Phuturing Lemn Sissay.
By the age of thirty-two I’d found and visited all my family. I had travelled the world to find them: Ethiopia, Senegal, America, Europe. I had travelled the world to perform too.
‘It’s not difficult to be funny in poetry on stage. Just set up a false idea of what poetry is and then ridicule it, set up a false idea of what an audience is and then ridicule them – they’ll love it.’
A new generation of poets were emerging out of their teens. A few years passed. I met Jamie Byng when filming a poem in the Spiegeltent at Edinburgh International Book Festival in 1994. The title of the poem was ‘Gold From The Stone’. Jamie became the CEO of Canongate Books where he founded an imprint, Payback Press. The second syllable in ‘Rebel Without Applause’ rhymes with swell. Rebel. Rebel without applause. In the same year Bloomsbury published my children’s book The Emperor’s Watchmaker. In 2000 my next book Morning Breaks In The Elevator was published by Canongate. It sold out. Both these books are in print to this day.
‘If you are searching for your family the search begins when you find them.’
I’ve my own journey and it is unique. My conversation has not been with the gatekeepers or the ivory towers. Why would you storm an ivory tower unless you wanted to build one yourself? There are gatekeepers though. They need you to want to go through their gate. The more you want to go through their gate the more real their gate becomes. Poetry belongs in the world. The world belongs in poetry. I have always thought that way. I have always been that way.
‘I’ve never thought of the artist’s career as up or down. I see our careers as orbits. Each orbit is unique.’
So we come to my last book Listener. It was published by Canongate in 2008. It has a killer cover by Rankin. But the book is a third too big. And for that I apologise. I’ve always wanted to apologise for it.
My Landmark poems are on walls across the world. My radio documentaries have meant sitting in the home of Gil Scott-Heron while he makes me mango juice, or interviewing The Last Poets on street corners in Harlem. From walking on stage at Paul McCartney’s book launch at the Queens Theatre or giving a workshop to homeless surfers in Durban, South Africa, I have been blessed with living my entire life as a poet. A life based on word of mouth above all. The life of a poet, and yet it only feels like it’s beginning now.
So here is Gold From The Stone: New and Selected Poems. I have been a poet since I was twelve years old. I knew it then. I know it now. My journey has been kicked and punched at different times, and to be honest I am aware that I’ve tried to sabotage it myself at times too.
The best poems are unseen and unheard by anyone other than the person who wrote them and the persons they were intended for. They are read at funerals or between lovers or between daughters and fathers. They are kept within the family. Writer, audience, performer, performance and applause. It is the perfect journey for a poem: beginning, middle and end. The closest to that is a reader and a book.
‘The idea that poetry is a minority sport has never rung true with me. Ever.’
At the start of Rebel Without Applause is the quote: ‘if you are the big tree I am the small axe.’ It is a quote from ‘Small Axe’ by Bob Marley. I was a fan of Bob Marley before I knew I was Ethiopian. My father was a pilot for Ethiopian Airlines and co-piloted The Emperor, Haile Selassie. Although my father died in 1974 I still have a picture of him in which he has the exact same ring on his finger as Bob Marley had on his hand.
An Ethiopian man said, ‘Do you know what your name means? It is an unusual name.’ I told him that I didn’t. ‘It means Why?’. If you are not from Ethiopia please don’t think Ethiopians give their children questions as names. It is an unusual name in any culture. I had no idea what it meant until I was thirty-two. How could I be anything other than a poet with a name like ‘Why’?
PERCEPTIONS OF THE PEN
Well ‘I’
Well, I am a poet and it is my life.
I would slit my wrist with a pen not a knife.
Well, I am a poet from now until then.
My life is my paper, my knife is my pen.
Mother
Mother, what will I say to you?
Will I tell you about what I’ve been through?
Mother, will you criticise?
Mother, will you see it through my eyes?
Mother, what will you say to me?
It’s through your eyes I’d like to see.
Mother, will you criticise?
Mother, will you see it through my eyes?
Mother, what will you say to me?
Mother, will you read my poetry?
Am I just what you want me to be?
Mother, will you see it through my eyes?
Mother, what will you say to me?
Am I just what you want me to be,
Or, Mother, will you criticise?
Mother, will you see it through my eyes?
Ain’t No
Ain’t no clothes to wear, no
Ain’t nobody to know
Ain’t nowhere to come, nowhere to go
Ain’t no belongings that last
Ain’t no reminder of no past
Ain’t no reason to give
Ain’t no reason to live
Ain’t no love to take
Ain’t no love to fake
Ain’t no reason to cheat
Ain’t no body to beat
Ain’t no body to belong
Ain’t no one heard this song
Ain’t even got a tune
Ain’t even got a bloom
Ain’t no mother
Ain’t no father
Ain’t no sister
Ain’t no