How do you take a life as colourful and boundary-pushing as Benjamin Zephaniah’s and summarise it in one book or show? Well, Benjamin Zephaniah both succeeds and refuses to do this.
With the release of his new book of the same name, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah, the writer and activist came to Birmingham Town Hall for an evening of storytelling and poetry.
However, like his autobiography, Zephaniah doesn’t start his story with the beginning of his life, but the arrival of his inspiring mother in the UK as part of the post-Windrush generation.
Still the activist has never played by the rules and done all the better for it. We wouldn’t expect anything less and it sets up a brilliant evening of The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah.
A Born Performer
The evening opens with the poet strolling confidently across the stage and revelling in the fact he has returned to his home-town of Birmingham. Or not quite, he reveals to the audience that he is actually from the Aston area.
Zephaniah quickly sets up an easy camaraderie with the audience as he sees a flurry of raised hands and cheers from his fellow proud Brummies before he teases the Londoners in the audience to leave.
In fact, he then jokes that one gentleman is giving him a geography lesson as both the audience and performer get into the nitty-gritty of Midlands geography.
It’s interesting to see how snappy his jokes are, almost as if he’s a comedian rather than a poet.
So much of his show and book concern complicated questions of identity and belonging, especially in relation to geography and outward appearances.
Yet Zephaniah balances humour with his more shocking experiences of childhood racism.
Storytelling talent
As the only black children in an all-white primary school, teachers asked other pupils to bring in their favourite golliwogs for the young Zephaniah and his twin sister.
This story elicited gasps from the audience, especially when he follows it up with how stereotypes of West Indians led to his headteacher’s assumption that he would be good at cricket.
This led to a broken finger for Zephaniah and a scar that he showed to an audience member. But the strength of his show comes from reminding us how little things have changed.
It’s not hard to notice that few instances of positive mainstream representation of black men continues to be related to their sporting achievements.
Yet even then, outside of stadiums or buildings like Town Hall, Zephaniah reminds us that he still faces discrimination for the colour of his skin.
His choice to buy his dream car of a white BMW became a nightmare when trying to travel across London for a gig and the police repeatedly stopping him.
Similarly, he comments that he no longer has to explain what Windrush is owing to the recent controversy. But after speaking about it for years, it only came to mainstream attention from largely white institutions choosing to address it.
Bringing People Together
In fact, the traditionally white audience associated with Birmingham Town Hall and Symphony Hall wasn’t as present that night.
As evidence that the arts organisation is trying to diversify its audiences, the crowd saw a reasonable mixture of faces.
The majority were characteristic of the organisation’s usual audience but even then, there was the sense that parts of Zephaniah’s story resonated with them in other ways, as proud Brummies or members of the working class.
Alternatively, as Zephaniah remarked, there were a fair few more vegans in the audience than he encountered a few years ago.
Whatever the reasoning, it’s clear that the poet has a knack for speaking to all levels of society and connecting with them.
The Nation’s Favourite Poet
However the evening definitely wasn’t a quasi-comedy routine. Zephaniah interspersed the journey of his life with poems, both new and old, before finishing with a Q&A section.
When performing some of his more serious poems, the lights dim for Zephaniah and his voice This nicely offset his more light-hearted works and a particularly nice moment was when he deliberately searches for a question from younger audience member.
This resulting query about the story behind one his most famous poems ‘Talking Turkeys’ leads to an equally hilarious and awful revelation. We find out that there was a mishap when filming the video of the poem with for the BBC.
Here, a light-hearted performance of this poem rounds off an enjoyable evening. The event winds down slightly with many staying a little later, eager to get their copies of The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah signed.
