Download - Survivors Poetry

Book SlamThe Tabernacle, Powis Square,W11, 21st April 2011This memorable event featured Ben Okri, Philip Wells andmusician Tanya Auclair, emceed by Charlie Dark. Therewas a ten–minute gap between Charlie’s preliminaryannouncement and the actual beginning of the show. Isensed the punters (myself included) getting restive. Ifelt that the intervals were a bit on the long side, butthis was offset by the high level of animation of a trulyinvolved audience. The hall was filled to capacity.Philip is known as ‘The Fire Poet’, and is one of thiscountry’s foremost ‘protest poets’. He has performed inprisons, psychiatric units, and in front of major politicians,including declamations in front of the Prime Minister’sNewsnight. Tonight he made the radical statement: “As anactivist, I’ve found words nebulous.” Admitting to having‘a problem about being English’, he read St. George’sDay. This poem wove back and forth through history, fromthe Avebury stone circle, through churchbells and theBeano to ‘ordering organic cucumbers on the Internet’.Then he presented a pastiche of names – ‘Milton andBlake, Wills and Kate – a mixed breed of emerging gods’.He read Storm of Creation – cosmically visionary: “crackin the egg shall sky/fly out beyond to the highest skiesof fire.” Dying Wishes reaches out for the extremities ofexperience: “hold me in the nape of your neck; the worldis ending.” and Rap Poem, which he introduced witha quote from Nietzsche, “live as though the time washere”. This poem certainly demonstrates his multiculturalaffiliations: “Put away that accent . . . I’d be a Jamaicanborn Welshman – imitate your redemption fire.” Incisiveaside comment about ‘expensive compensatory fixes’;great proclamation of optimism: “Mother earth wouldwake up . . . fear will dissolve in the blaze of the sun”declaimed against some dramatic sound effects.Ben regaled the audience with his poems, someperceptive truisms, and the opening of his fame–makingThe Famished Road. His opening poem More Wishes ThanStars, has been made into a song by Harper Simon (I hadn’tknown that Ben collaborates with singer–songwriters!) Itwould have been nice to hear the sung version during theinterval! A great spirituality in the words: “I’m not surewho I am/I’m sluggish like the ocean when it moves . .. I’m not chasing success/I want to transcend happiness. . .”. Next came The World is Rich, struggling throughdespair to optimism: “They tell me that/the world isrich/with terror// I say/the world is rich/with loveunfound// It’s inside us/and all around// There’s terrorin the air/and we have put it there// We have made/Godinto/an enemy . . . But the world is rich/with great love/unfound//Even in the terror/there is love/twisted roundand round//Set it free/River, flow/to the seaHis ‘philosophy’ is admirably expressed in his seriesof linked essays The Time for New Dreams: “To seesomething I must be something . . . I must become myself. . . one must be established in the art of self . . . To seeI must first be . . . All seeing depends on being . . . Alllooking before we find ourselves is not true seeing.”He continued in the same vein with The Romance ofDifficult Times, which crystallizes the essential dualismof his outlook: “You cannot rise without a fall and viceversa . . . Great civilizations can be built on great failures. . . Difficult times either break us or force us to go backto the primal ground of our being, who we really arein our simplicity . . . Too often we go through life withvague dreams . . . Adversity never deceives, flatters, lies. . . A high point is not necessarily a golden age . . .Difficult times are more romantic than good times.” Thisis all supremely in the spirit of William Blake’s “Withoutcontraries there is no progression”.After extensive opening and closing passages from TheFamished Road. This work merits every iota of acclaimit has received, a true synthesis of poetry and the novel,as the exquisite opening fuses the natural river withthe man–made road. Its scope embraces archaeologicaltime: “. . . just returned from the world of the living . . .drawn back to the land of origin.” Much of its utterance isposited as coming from ‘spirit beings’, deeply attached tothe ‘spirit world/the world of pure dreams’ in which halfof their being are always located. “Not one of us lookedforward to being born” . . . they had “the ability to willour death”. Their emergence into materiality came frombeing ‘seduced by the enunciation of wonder’.The passage from the conclusion began by describing hisfather being in a coma after a fight with a spirit being. Hereturns to the image of the road as a universal channel ofcommunication: “Our road must be open; a road that isopen is never hungry. A great assertion of ‘spirit–power’:“a single thought of ours can change the world”. On to thecosmic dimension, poetically embracing sci-fi: “electionsin heaven and under the sea . . . a great something isgoing to come from the sky.” A cautionary note: “Bewareof empty spaces and invisible civilizations . . . look atthe world with new eyes . . . Human beings are godshidden from themselves . . . the whole of history is anundiscovered continent.”A truly apocalyptic conclusion: “We need a new language. . . all roads lead to death – wonderful things that cannever be finished. Angels and demons win us. Beforebeing born first the spirit . . . everything is energy we canuse. Death has taught me the religion of living.”Ben completed his set with his poem On The Death of MyFather, evoking the ‘father lion, roaming in my being.’ Hewanted his father’s spirit to live on in him, “. . . Multiplymy powers, be the invisible warrior . . . some good battlemight be won . . .”26