THE SKINNY
A Celebration of Emergence Interview: Eliza Gearty
I
nua Ellams is looking forward to visiting mind but it isn’t what I address in the poem.” He doesn’t let on what topics he will be Edinburgh again. “You guys seem to have addressing – you’ll have to be there to find out controlled the pandemic far better than we – but does hint at a night filled with magic. Each A have,” he says wryly. “So I’m looking forward to escaping the madness of this part of the country.” Toast to the People event brings together two Ellams, a Nigerian-born, London-based poet, spoken-word artists and Ellams is partnering with playwright and performer, first came to Edinburgh the legendary poet, musician and activist Saul for the festival season in 2009 with his debut Williams – one of his earliest influences. “I think play, The 14th Tale: it won a Fringe First. Since then Saul is an incredibly talented metaphysical poet at he’s been back and forth various times with various heart,” he says. “He’s also a musician. He’s also an projects – and he’s been busy. Over the past African American. He’s illuminative and vast. John decade, he’s released two poetry books (CandyKeats said that poets are the midwives of reality. I Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars, The feel as if Saul fell off the edge of reality and keeps Wire-Headed Heathen), written numerous plays on dragging what he found back to Earth, bringing (including the sensational Barber Shop it back to us.” Chronicles, set in Black barber shops in six cities Artistically, Ellams thinks of himself as being over the course of one day), organised and thrown “more grounded in reality” out of the pair – which R.A.P parties and seen his dusk-to-dawn cultural he describes as a “compliment” to Williams – but walking tour The Midnight Run (inspired by slow adds that they “echo and support and contrast night-bus frustration) grow into an internationally each-other in gorgeous ways.” He says, “Saul is an celebrated event. Now, he’s returning to Scotland’s old friend, an old acquaintance, an old inspiration capital to take part in A Toast to the People, of mine. I hope that this event will be vast and Edinburgh International Festival’s five-night series beautiful and emotive and explosive but also of poetry, discussion and story-telling, performed human and humane. Yeah, it’ll be fun,” he adds by ten acclaimed spoken word artists. with a glint of mischief. “If I wasn’t performing Each poet participating in the series has myself I’d want to be there and just listen and try written a poem inspired by the phrase A Toast to to leave with some of the jewels.” A Toast to the People is billed as ‘a celebrathe People, taken from the Gill Scott-Heron song of tion of emergence, of the kind of world we might the same name. What does the expression mean to find and of a new world Ellams? To him it’s all order that we might about “respect, giving imagine and make credit where it’s due.” possible.’ With every“The ‘people’ could be thing that has happened NHS workers or nurses over the past few years or doctors, or other – the stark reality of people who survived the inequality exposed by pandemic,” he says, “or COVID-19, the hurtling even those who passed dread of climate change away because of the and the movements to pandemic. It’s about counter it, the global rise recognising your comof Black Lives Matter munity and raising them and resistance against up.” Having said that, the police brutality and poetry he’s written for racism – does Ellams the series is not explicitthink that a new world ly about COVID-19. could be on the horizon? “When I sat down to “I’d like to think we write this, I didn’t write are on the brink of about the pandemic. change but I just don’t Trying to create art about know,” he replies after a it feels a little premature pause. “There have been seeing as we are still in so many revolutions at so it,” he notes. “The Inua Ellams many times in so many pandemic was in my
“There have been so many revolutions at so many times in so many ways... and the cycle just perpetuates itself where voices get louder against an establishment that finds ways to silence those voices or ignore them”
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Image: Courtesy of Inua Ellams
August 2021 — Feature
Theatre
Poet and playwright Inua Ellams chats to The Skinny about politics, performing and working with Saul Williams for Edinburgh International Festival’s new spoken word series, A Toast to the People
ways... and the cycle just perpetuates itself where voices get louder against an establishment that finds ways to silence those voices or ignore them.” He speaks about rulers “doubling down” when they sense dissent, referencing Priti Patel’s “draconian” anti-immigration policies – “the deep irony being that Britain colonised half the world by crossing vast bodies of water and arriving illegally and shooting down whoever spoke out or tried to stop them from doing so.” While not blindly idealistic, however, he is hopeful. “It’s been great to see young people on the streets protesting – seeing that global support against tyranny, sparked by Americans but echoed right across the world,” he says. “Even in Nigeria there were Black Lives Matter protests – because a lot of the police force and the soldiers committing extreme violence there are trained by western powers.” The poet’s challenge, Ellams reasons, is to ride the tide of change: trying in the meantime to “digest” the most complex aspects of “all this” and release them back into the world, as articulations that are simple, clear and true. “It’s about holding a mirror to the world and saying: this is what you guys did,” he reflects. “Not even to ask, what are you going to do next? But just to hold it there and see what happens.” A Toast to the People: Inua Ellams & Saul Williams, Edinburgh International Festival, Old College Quad, 24 Aug, 8pm, £14 eif.co.uk
