It's not hard to see
why Lemn Sissay was the obvious choice to adapt Benjamin Zephaniah's
teenage novel, Refugee Boy, for the stage. Zephaniah's book tells the
story of fourteen year old Ethiopian boy who is forced to flee his
homeland following a violent civil war in his homeland. As Alem and
his father take flight to London, a litany of thwarted attempts at
asylum and institutional red tape ensues.
While Sissay was born
near Wigan in Lancashire, his mother too left Ethiopia for England.
That was in 1966, when she was pregnant with Sissay, who, for most of
the next two decades, was shunted from foster home to children's home
by a care system that was bound by less explicitly hostile but
equally bureaucratic measures.
By his late teens,
Sissay was working with a community publishing company in Manchester,
and by twenty-one had published his first book of poems. Tender
Fingers in A Clenched Fist was a street-smart collection that could
be said to have picked up the mantle of Birmingham-born Zephaniah,
who, as the dyslexic son of a Barbadian mother and Jamaican father,
published his first book, Pen Rhythm, in 1980 aged twenty-two.
The result of such
umbilical cultural and artistic links can be seen in Gail McIntyre's
West Yorkshire Playhouse production of Refugee Boy, which opens at
the Citizens Theatre tomorrow night, hard on the heels of Glasgow
Girls, an even more contemporary refugee-based play. As Sissay
himself observes, since he took Zephaniah's story off the page, it
too has led something of a nomadic existence.
“Theatre is a sort of
refugee in itself,” Sissay muses. “It comes to a town, sets up
home, and then leaves. Fortunately,” he stresses, perhaps thinking
of some refugees unhappy experiences in transit, “there is a lot of
love around this play.”
It's a love that was
there from the moment McIntrye first suggested that Sissay write the
stage version after recognising him as a kindred spirit, both of
Zephaniah and Alem.
“Although I was born
in the north of England,” Sissay says, “I'm both Eritrean and
Ethiopian, and I'm the only professional writer in the country with
that experience, so all these things seemed to fit.”
While this may be the
case, it begs the question why Zephaniah, whose playwriting has gone
hand in hand with his poetry ever since his first stage work, Playing
The Right Tune, appeared in London and Edinburgh in 1985, didn't opt
to do it himself?
“That's a serious
question,” Sissay admits. “Benjamin is probably one of the five
most famous black poets in the country, and is also respected as a
thinker, so being asked to do something like that is an honour. Doing
an adaptation is like a musical remix, so even though it was a bit
scary, having watched Benjamin go from poet to novelist with this
book that adults read as well as teenagers, I really had to inhabit
it, and Benjamin just let me get on with it.
Sissay relates the art
of adapting other people's work by way of an encounter with
best-selling Australian writer Peter Goldsworthy.
“One of his short
stories was made into a film,” Sissay explains, “and he said that
to truly adapt a text, you have to disrespect the original and grab
hold of it. It sounds terrible, but it's a creative exercise. You've
got to tear it apart, find it's heart and grow a body around it.”
Like Zephaniah, Sissay
draws inspiration from black writers such as Linton Kwesi Johnson,
the Jamaican-born, Brixton-raised poet whose 1978 album, Dread Beat
an Blood, did much to popularise both dub reggae and poetry as a
performed form. If Zephaniah and the late Michael Smith can be said
to be the next generation, Sissay and the likes of Jackie Kay, who
was born to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, have continued
the tradition of a black English and Scottish poetic diaspora.
“Coming to Scotland
was a rites of passage,” says the Canongate published author, who
spent six of the twelve years he was in foster care in Scotland. “I
was brought up in England, and was the only black kid in the village,
and became other people's experiment. Race was more of an issue then
than now. Boys would give me nicknames, spit on the back of my coat
or just pick a fight. What hurt me wasn't just the personal racism,
but also the institutionalised racism.
“Oddly, I always used
to think Scotland was more racist than England, even though my
grand-father was called Duncan Munro. Then I came up to the Edinburgh
Festival when I was about nineteen, and I thought the people were so
tuned in. I've never felt safer, and I realised that not all white
people were racist. Then I went to Mayfest in Glasgow, and to St
Andrews, and I realised that that the Celts really have it going on.”
Racism, however, still
exists, as recent events in Glasgow testify to. These include the
filmed abuse of a Nigerian busker by two white men which was
broadcast in TV documentary, The Street, while a man was recently
arrested for allegedly abusing Glasgow MSP Humza Yousaf, who was
selling The Big Issue outside Queen Street Station.
“You could say racism
is an act of insecurity,” says Sissay, “and its something every
new generation of immigrants has to face, with some people from
previous generations being prejudiced towards them. It's easy to slip
into this attitude, and it's something you have to fight against.
It's the power of art that can make us realise that.
“In Refugee Boy, Alem
and his father are told that they're not one of us anymore, and
aren't wanted here. That can happen on a turn of a button, and you
become the enemy. These people haven't done anything wrong. They've
just been born into a set of historical events they have no power
over.”
The day before we talk,
Sissay took part in an open forum that looked at the questions of
race and diversity in theatre. The event was attended by 150 people,
with speakers including former National Theatre of Scotland director
Vicky Featherstone.
“It was such a warm,
honest idea,” Sissay says, “and it reminded me that the idea of
diversity is about appreciating the other, and being open to a person
to make life better. Diversity's much bigger than being black or
white, but is about the idea that the world is your oyster.”
Refugee Boy, Citizens
Theatre, Glasgow, March 12-15.
ends
Lemn Sissay – A life
in words
Sissay was born in
Billinge, near Wigan, in 1967 after his pregnant mother left
Ethiopia.
Sissay was put into
foster care until he was twelve, when he was put into a children's
home. These events are depicted in Sissay's 2006 play, Something
Dark.
Aged eighteen, Sissay
moved to Manchester, where he became a literature development officer
at a community publishing co-operative.
Sissay published his
first poetry collection, Tender Fingers in a Clenched Fist, in 1988.
His second, Rebel Without Applause, appeared in 1992, and was
republished by Edinburgh-based publishers, Canongate, in 2000.
Sissay's first play,
Skeletons in the Cupboard, was produced in 1993, and was followed by
Don't Look Down and Chaos By Design, with the latter also produced
for radio.
In 1995, Sissay made
Internal Flight, a BBC documentary film on his life.
Sissay's play, Storm,
appeared in 2002, while in 2006, Something Dark, which also appeared
on radio, won the Race in the Media award from the UK Commission For
Racial Equality.
A further volume of
poetry, Morning Breaks in the Elevator, was published in 1999 by
Canongate, for who Sissay edited The Fire People for their Payback
Press imprint. Since then, Sissay has published The Emperor's
Watchmaker in 2001 and Listener in 2008, as well as the play-scripts
of Something Dark and Refugee Boy.
In 2011, Why I Don't
Hate White People appeared onstage and on radio.
In 2010, Sissay was
awarded an MBE, and in 2012 he was the official poet of the 2012
London Olympics.
Sissay's adaptation of
Refugee Boy first appeared in 2013.
The Herald, March 11th 2014
ends
Comments