 I don't expect that you know how to live. You've been running, perhaps even hiding. I don't expect that you know how to live. You've been fighting so hard, trying to survive. You remember the warmth of your mother's womb before you learned of the world's denial of the color of your skin. Before you knew what's in between your legs determines your place in the world. Yes, you were born, but with all of this how could you possibly claim to be alive? By the time the illness of the decade came so many other illnesses had already consumed you. You walk the earth with borrowed courage in a capsule. You swallow it down, along with who you are. Have you become the objects that were looted from your home? Have you forgotten how to breathe? Heal Mdagamah. Sikon. Sogusegeil. Convince us. You know how to live. Awaken the mother mind within every one of you human beings. Our people believe that every human being, male or female has got two minds. The mother mind and the warrior month. We must awaken the mother mind within us. We must feel what is going on in the world. Today we stand in memory of a woman who would become a martyr for our community. That was 1979. Today is 2019. And all you have to do is look at the current headlines to see that Bonita's heartbreaking story feels all too familiar. Saaz. Now Saaz is the special anti-robbery squad unit which the government rebranded to SWAT. After disbanding the said Saaz over three times and twice in one year. Saaz have a track record of more daylight robbery than actual robbers. They've murdered more innocent citizens than murderers in the society. More rape than the public is even aware of. Constantly exhibiting their lack of intelligence and training by harassing Nigerians either because of our look, the hair we have, the cars we drive or if we have tattoos on our bodies. When you speak up and ask what you may have done wrong they beat you up, lock you up or kill you all together. Human trafficking continues to be a challenge for government in South Africa. Statistics show that 23% of children who are abducted are never found. Delaying the treatment of non-COVID cases will cause the health system to suffer for decades if we don't act now. We mustn't just listen to newspapers. We must ourselves feel. It is said by our Zulu people that we may think with their pelvic area where children grow and are born. We must think that way. I must no longer look at a tree but I must see a living entity like me in that thing. I must no longer look at a stone but I must see the future lying dormant in that stone. What minerals are there? We must think like grandmothers. And can we please also say a huge thank you to Tayu for the wonderful translation and presentation. Wish that she had been here, because I have so many questions that I would have loved to ask her. She is, of course, a South African-based artist, multidisciplinary artist, and I don't need to tell you about how astonishing her work is because we have just seen this amazing film. But she uses her work to explore issues of spirituality, ancestry, commemoration, and the indigenous culture of indigenous African knowledge, the tacit knowledge that we have, a really beautiful artist. But stories are told in so many different ways and as storytellers we know that when we tell a story it will hit people in different ways and it will hit people at different times depending on where they are in that journey of life. And her way of exploring these stories is as you have seen through the visual arts, but I'm going to tell you a story because my form of expression is through the oral tradition. And I am also interested in issues of ancestry and spirituality and the importance of passing down these stories, of handing down our names because every single one of us here, we are who we are because of where we have come from and our stories do not start with us. They do not start with our parents or our grandparents. They go further back, much, much further back. And the story that I'm going to tell you is a story of a woman. And this woman found herself living in a land far, far away from the land of her childhood. And in this new land she had a child, a beautiful girl, large eyes, fat cheeks, a beautiful, curious spirit. And the mother would tell her daughter stories. Story after story after story. And when she was very young, she would tell the stories of the fish who swam in the sea. She would reach into the stories of her childhood and tell the stories of the animals who lived in the forest. She would tell her daughter stories of the eagles and birds that flew across the skies and the girl would listen. Her eyes wide, full of curiosity, taking it all in. And sometimes the mother would reach into the stories of the world in which she now lived and she would tell her daughter stories of princesses who pricked their fingers on spinning wheels. Stories of little children who got lost in the forest and found sweet candy houses. Story after story after story. Filled this young girl's imagination. But as she grew, but was still a young girl, her mother became ill. It was a creeping illness, the kind that steals you piece by piece. And she tried to fight it as hard as she could, but as time passed, she found herself becoming weaker and weaker and she knew that she might not make it after all. But there were things that her daughter needed to know, important things. And so the nature of her stories began to change. She introduced the shadow man, a creature who in one story appeared as a slithering beast. In another story, he was a great cloud of dust and in yet another he was a beautiful golden angel. But the girl was young and she did not understand these new stories and she begged her mother to tell her the old stories but her mother insisted, there are things that you need to know. But time passed and the girl grew up and the mother still grew weaker and weaker and weaker until she knew that she had no time left and it was then that she took a box, she opened up the lid and she began to pour in new stories. The myths, the legends, the folk tales, the memories. Usim sahau nyanya, usim sahau rahami, usim sahau rehema, usim sahau grandfather, grandmother. She poured in her stories, memories, ideas, languages. She poured them all in and when there was nothing left for her to say, she closed the box and she fell backwards onto her bed, wheezing, desperate for breath. Just then her daughter walked in and the mother beckoned her. The girl approached cautiously, not wanting to disturb or cause her mother pain. But the mother beckoned her forward and gifted her the box. The girl took it, but it was then that the mother noticed that death had entered the room and she pleaded silently for just a little more time. Death took pity on the woman and he stepped back and the mother held her daughter to her chest. She stroked her curls and with every ounce of energy that she possessed, she began to sing one of her favourite tunes. And she was gone and that is my little story for you. I wrote that story for a show that I performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019 now. And it was looking at the legacy of colonialism and slavery and how sometimes we are often separated from our stories. And of course, I don't know if some of you noticed, but I drew on my Scottish cultural heritage as well as some of my Kenyan cultural heritage. But stories, as I said, are told in different ways. And we have now a new kind of story. I'm really, really pleased, slightly disappointed that again he's not here, but David Ellington has created this wonderful film, Liberty. And through his work as an actor, using his physicality, using his hands, using his expressions, he explores his world view as a black man, as a gay man, as a deaf man in this world that we live in. So he has done a huge amount in his life. He has performed at the opening ceremony of the Paralympics. He has taken part in so many different dramas on television, on The Last Leg, in a documentary called Extraordinary Bodies. So I'm really, really pleased to welcome the next film. Thank you very much. Notions of freedom in ourselves often does come from the stories that we believe about ourselves, the stories that we tell of ourselves. And those stories come down, pass down the generations. And I'm going to be telling another story for you tonight. And I keep forgetting actually about the audience at home. So hello, welcome. And I hope that you are also enjoying these films and the stories as well. Yeah, this story that I'm going to tell you is a story again from Blood and Gold, the show that I did in 2019. And it's inspired by a true story, a story of a young man whose name was Ahmed Sheik. And Ahmed Sheik was a Somali student who came to study in Edinburgh and he was stabbed to death in a racist attack when somebody saw him talking to a white woman. And in Scotland we, I suppose we call it the Stephen Lawrence case of Scotland because nobody was ever brought to justice for his murder. But I think that for me the story is also important, just having watched and listened to the stories that have been told here because we can have all the stories in ourselves but we have no control about the stories that other people take into themselves and the stories that have been passed down and we actually live with the consequences of the stories that exist in our societies. And so it's so important that every single one of us finds a way to tell our stories because the story, the two films that we've just seen, such important messages that come through. But this story, it starts off in a far away land and there was a husband and a wife and they had a beautiful son, a child whose eyes sparkled like the stars and the planets and the universe. They loved him. They thought he was the most precious thing in the entire world. And where they lived was a beautiful land and from a distance you might think it was paradise but if you got closer you would see that there was a poison in this land and this poison crept into the hearts of the rulers and it stripped them of their humanity and their compassion encasing them in a cold hard shell and so life was difficult for the little family but every single evening they would sit down they would eat together and they would tell story after story. His mother spoke to him about Umwango and Umali and his father spoke to him of his grandparents and his great grandparents and all the adventures that they had had and the young boy grew up listening to such stories. But he was so curious and so smart that his parents began to wonder that perhaps this boy might be the one to help rid their land of this poison but to do that he needed skills he needed knowledge and experience something he could not find in his own land but there was a place far away the land in the sky and stories abounded of this place it was filled with opportunity filled with wisdom and knowledge anything could happen but it was far and it was difficult to get to so they began to save all their money and they built it up all the pieces of gold they placed it in a bag and the young boy he grew up and older and older into a young man and then it was time for him to take the journey they gave him the bag of gold they packed him some food and off he went he crossed the shimmering sands he climbed up the mountains he crossed the rivers he marched and he marched and he marched until he saw a rope descending from the sky he had arrived and he grabbed that rope and he started to climb higher and higher but the land in the sky does not accept people too easily and when they saw this young man beginning his ascent they sent wind and rain to knock him off the rope but the young man gripped on as hard as he could and when the wind and the rain had eased he continued to climb higher and higher but the land in the sky does not accept people too easily and when they saw him continue his journey they poured oil down that rope and he began to slip and slide and he gripped on with his fingernails and his teeth and when the sun had dried up that oil he continued to climb but the land in the sky does not accept people too easily and when they saw the young man they sent hornets that stung his shoulders stung his back, stung his legs he cried out with pain but he continued to climb and just as he was approaching the land in the sky they set fire to that rope and as he saw it beginning to fray he brought out the gold and when they saw it gleamed they smiled, their eyes widened they grabbed the young man and they welcomed him in and as he looked around he saw that his parents were right it was a beautiful place and there were many opportunities everything that he wanted to do was available to him and so he dived right in and he made friends with people who had come from distant lands like his own and some who had only ever known the land in the sky but they saw the names sparkling in his eyes they saw the starlight pour out of him and they loved him and he loved them in return but one day the sun was shining high in the sky they felt the warmth on their skin and they knew that this was a good day to go out and enjoy themselves so off they went dressed up in their finery they went to their favorite restaurants they drank their favorite drinks the band was playing and they were dancing and shaking and shimmying and having a wonderful time when suddenly he saw the most beautiful woman in the world her hair was the color of the sun and her smile was as white as the world and she saw the starlight pouring out of him and it wasn't long before they were engaged in conversation telling each other all kinds of wonderful things but on the other side of the room there was a young man with a furrowed brow and he was swirling his drink and he was staring at this young couple he did not like what he saw because for him he was empty he did not know where he came from who he came from instead he heard the stories that he had been fed of the others and as he watched them the shadow man began to slither across the cobblestones up the table leg over the top and into his drink and when the young man with the furrowed brow peered in the shadow man began to cast his spell look at him all smiles and laughter look at him what he's after violent aggressive no sense of shame always in trouble always to blame I tell you all the time this beast it wants to gorge it wants to feast it wants to take the good the just but you can stop him and emboldened by these words the young man with the furrowed brow stood up the shadow man swirled around him taking words sharpening them into weapons and handing them over and the young man with the furrowed brow did not see any sparkling eyes or starlight instead there was a hideous creature a head too big for its body large eyes protruding out of its head its fists were clenched ready to smash and crush and destroy and he took those weapons and he aimed them at the beast and the young man with the sparkling eyes he felt the words pierce his skin and he whipped around to face his enemy and there it was a loathsome creature saliva dripping from its jaws it was hunched over hungry thirsty for blood its claws glistened in the moonlight and it lunged and soon the two of them were tearing at each other ripping and gouging slicing and smashing flinging each other to the ground pounding when suddenly there was a glint and the young man with the sparkling eyes he fell backwards onto the ground he clutched his stomach he looked up to the skies and he saw the moon and the stars and he heard the voices slowly starting to call him home humwanga gumali nyanya babu and as he heard their names resound in his head he slowly closed his eyes his arms fell to his side his chest stilled and his body slowly began to fragment into a thousand tiny shards of light and they floated upwards sparkling and twinkling towards the sky and far away in a distant land there was a husband and wife sitting around a fire preparing a delicious meal when they noticed there was a bright new star it reminded them of their son the starlight in his eyes and they imagined all the wonderful adventures that he was having in the land in the sky I have this here for the simple reason that there is too much for me to remember because our next performance is going to be by the wonderful Raymond Antrovas who was born in London to an English mother and a Jamaican father so mixed, mixed heritage and he is the author of To Sweet and Bitter and the Perseverance here comes the list of accolades which I always love doing this because it must make you feel so good listening to it in 2019 he became the first ever poet to be awarded the Raphbone Folio Prize for the best work of literature in any genre and other accolades include the Ted Hughes Award the PBS Winter Choice a Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Guardian Poetry Book of the Year 2018 and he has also been shortlisted for the Griffin Prize, Ford Prize, T.S. Eliot Prize he was also awarded the Geoffrey Derma Prize judged by Ocean Vuong for his poem Sound Machine and his poem Jamaican British this is a good one was added to the GCSE syllabus in 2019 which I think also deserves a round of applause so yes, wonderful so he is going to be here sharing his poetry with us accompanied by the wonderful Katrina Nisbet who is a child of deaf parents this is how she communicated with British Sign Language at home and through this she understood the importance of gesture, body, language and facial expression which we've already seen through the films we have already seen on the stage we are now going to see it again she began dancing at a young age and believes that the link between British Sign Language and dance is a powerful tool within her work that allows storytelling without spoken dialogue in 2017 she founded Deaf Jam Fitness which is a project that delivers dance to the deaf community so if you could please welcome Raymond and Katrina to the stage Hello my name is Raymond thank you so much for having me here having us here I'm going to perform some poems from this book it's called All the Names Given and it begins looking at my surname so my surname is Antrobus and I leave the country a lot I'm going to come back in to the UK border 99% of the time I get asked where is this name Antrobus from has anyone heard this name before by show of hands has anyone come across the name Antrobus before one person big up the one person at the back so most people assume it's from foreign it's something else but Antrobus is actually an English name it's a name that is so English but it's become foreign to itself it's a Norse name it's a locational name because there's a little village in Cheshire called Antrobus and that's where my name comes from so I went to this village my grandmother had always spoken to me about it and I went there with my mother and I wrote about the day that I spent there I should also say that I am the grandson of preachers my grandfather was a preacher that kind of comes into some of the work as well Antrobus or land of angels wherever you are you touch the bark of trees different yet familiar Shizlok Milos I can be fiendish I can't be English some with shaved heads some with cane rows muttering themselves into notebooks the barman's eyes his arms become sharp gates when I claim to be English my mother born here my grandfather for local preacher oh well then welcome he says or land your angels there are enigmas in my darkness I stare at the crest of gold lines behind the bar I scar the cross of davidic's line behind the bar hear my ghosts say fiendish English the barman calls the whole village and my name does the rounds my mother drives us to antrobus hall two german shepherds surround the car I climb out it's raining the dogs jump their paws scraping a new coat of earth from my chest a farmer appears asked if we're descended from Edmund Antrobus Sir Edmund Antrobus Third Baronet Slaver, beloved father Ovesia, owner of plantations in Jamaica British Guyana and St. Kitts I shake my head avoid the farmer's eye my mother and I tread the cemetery of St. Mark's Antrobus and see everyone here buried here is of Antrobus and we look up and see hawks in the ash tree and sparrows in the wheat fields and the rain soaks stones of Antrobus and after we walk for slick mirrors of wet roads the curves of barbers lane between trees I take a photo of our shadows flung over the red berry bushes like black coats this next poem is called Language Science Sound of connection across time so one of the most powerful things that I have inherited physically are my grandfather's sermons and every now and then I've got a stack of them and every now and then I go in and I read some at random and this is the only poem I've written so far where I've taken some of the language from my grandfather and put it into the poem Language Science How shall it be known what is spoken for ye shall speak in the air 1. Corinthian 14. 8. 9 J. K. Antrobus grandfather I drench you returning your reading glasses to your eyes opening your Bible pointing at the words you couldn't say you pointed at mercy and failure and then you pointed at your white hair and your lips and then at the ceiling of your church as if it were the roof of your own mouth you stood as much as a stone plaques on the walls or the pews which were wood a word which once meant tree all the men that raised me are dead those bastards I'm one self-pity and prick of a son how do I bring back men who couldn't speak men lost in books drinks, graves where do I turn knowing they left the hot taps running I want to say sorry cut the hedges in your face so I can read your lips her taste funny that my mother was a clown a college dropout who joined the circus with another clown who made inflatable giants it's funny his name was George a Marxist who swore he was serious when he said the men who tried to mow him down in a car were sent by Thatcher so he fled England to hide where my mother pulled another man at a scar and reggae night in Hatney who was tall and afroed and swooned her under her music I'm Seymour he said pointing at his eyes saying the more I see the more I see and she burnt George who was serious when he said he didn't want children he left England to find my mother pregnant and he struck her in the face but ended up staying in the same house saying it helped raise the child but wasn't serious he left and my mother and Seymour who was my father raised my sister and me and 30 years later my mother says she's holding her head higher at 70 she never needed a man of course I wonder where her taste came from her own father was quiet detached and serious all his life reaching out his arms for God while his children crawled at his feet arose my father called my mother rose for short once I asked him how he ever worked out between them the sex he smirked the sex was that good I was 12 and betrayed but I'd seen him in my mother's garden that summer growing sunflowers I'd seen him paint all the walls in her house I'd seen him bend by my mother's bicycle mend her tires rock his head to a record she was playing and ask her if he could borrow it I'd seen the way he walked down the street grinning with new music once I'd seen him stand behind my mother's market store when a woman held up a necklace my mother made and asked him how much it was he turned to my mother said rose and he said it like something in him grew towards the light this poem is in the voice of a friend of mine who I hadn't seen since school and I bumped into him outside a chicken shop and it's funny wherever I go in the world when I come back I'm always like you know what you know where I'm really from I'm really from I know there's something about Hattney that will always be in me something very specific it's history, it's sound, it's music and that's something that grabs me in poetry that poetry is music from the place you were born and so when I bumped into this friend of mine I came away thinking man I'm going to have to write this poem it's in his voice and it's called and that chicken wins and that boss man salt in them and that don't assault man give man a napkin big man no steroid and that dark times, new street lights and that and house man I'm getting by and that still boy them harass not beefing, not tag man still trap cycle man peddling and that unrolled new pavements leveled and that we E8 East Manet got to adapt our kingdom got no land to hand back man chat breeze, chat trade wins and that you out ends got good job legit and that, lots off man them, stayed plotting and that raw way flower shorts, you were hipster and that man gone vegan no chicken wins and that this next poem is for a friend of mine Tyrone Givens who commits suicide a few years ago and what happened to him was so wild and unexpected but also totally avoidable and I was asked to write a poem in response to a human rights declaration and one of the human rights declarations is number 5 which reads no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment and my friend Tyrone had ended up in a situation where he was about to start a prison sentence and he had his hearing aids taken away from him and asked for them again and again in prison, never got his hearing aids and we lost him in that spiral for Tyrone Givens the paper said putting him in jail without his hearing aids was like putting him in a hole in the ground there are no hymns for deaf boys but who can tell we're deaf without speaking to us Tyrone's name was misspelled in the HMP Pentonville prison system once I was handcuffed shoved into a police van I didn't hear the officer say why I was saved by my friend's mother who threw herself in the road and refused to let the van drive away who could have saved Tyrone James Baldwin attempted suicide after each of his loves jumps from bridges or overdosed he killed his characters made them kill themselves Rufus Richard black men who couldn't live like this Tyrone I won writing awards bought new hearing aids and heard my name through the war I bought a signed board rainbow the man who sold it to me didn't know you me or Baldwin I feel I rescued it I feel failed Tyrone the last time I saw you alive I dropped my pen on the staircase didn't hear it fall but you saw and ran down to get it handed it to me before disappearing said you might need this this poem is called plantation paint it's after the poet Lorna Goodison who is a painter and a poet former lawyer of Jamaica and this painting which I saw while living in New Orleans which is called plantation burial this painting is still currently in the historic New Orleans collection painted in 1860 oil on canvas by John Antrobus and Tabitha is the name of my wife Tabitha the art conservator squints at the color tells me the paint depicting the black of these men huddled for a burial will decay before the cypress trees surrounding them will decay there are several kinds of black she says and the cypress trees surrounding them is all I see as we stand alive in this otherwise empty gallery why am I like this what am I like who does it matter to all details question my way of seeing I worry what kind of black would mark me I am not the paint made from vine twigs or burnt shells I am not the lamp full of oil Tabitha tell me how you paint me I am closer to the white painter with my name but I am to the black preacher his hands wide to the sky the mahogany rot of heaven sorry but you know by now but I can't mention trees without every shade of my family appearing and disappearing this is a poem I wrote while in therapy in talk therapy I find myself needing to check myself into therapy when I'm writing a lot and a lot of things come up and for those probably people here that have done therapy I've spent a lot of time I've spent the last 10 years different kinds of therapy and I found this a useful thing a useful practice to have alongside writing poetry so this poem came out a lot of the questions that came out of a particular therapy session which I didn't want to put up in a poem but kind of ended up doing that anyway I ran away from home to see how long it would take my mother to notice are you my drunk teacher who took our game of rounders way too seriously are you the boy who said I had the ugliest smile on the playground are you the girl who toe punted my balls and made me a piss sack of blood the girlfriend who slept with women behind my back said it wasn't cheating what I'm saying would you be my friend I spent hours in the house alone as a child I left fingerprints on my sister's CD so the music kept skipping I wanted her friends to be my friends but I wasn't invited to her parties are you the party are you my dad lying on the sofa saying I'll soon be dead when I pull what is existentialism of my mother's shelf Simone de Beauvoir says the origin of my transcendence appears futile I don't know what that means so I put it back who loves me I'm testing everyone I need space for all my old and new gooey needs and projections I need constant blaring validation alarms give me award ceremonies please observe my wall of fame best second guessing over achiever monologue while drying dishes best self-promoter at the charity fundraiser best awkward silence in a moving vehicle best bad advice to a couple in crisis best non-smoker in the smoking area most self-centered fear during the global pandemic lifetime achievement award for most convincing head nod in a crowded pub most triggered person in an empty house this is my last poem thank you so much for listening and watching I deeply we deeply appreciate your eyes and your ears this poem is called Sutton Road Cemetery after even Boland his mother had driven him back to London in the half light he sighed in the passenger seat he stopped by the south end seas as the winds picked up and clouds thinned into English women over stone to said nothing of their names as he skimmed them wide across the waves earlier when he'd found the grave of his great grandmother by the elderberry tree it was the one time he wanted someone white to appear to ask where he was from it would have been no skin of him to point at her stone and say here could we have another round of applause for Raymond and Papina just really beautiful beautiful we have unfortunately come to the end of this evening but Raymond and myself will be signing books outside in the foyer and you've heard a very small selection but yes if you would like to read more I'm also interested in kind of reading the one with the different the Hackney language because I don't know the Hackney language so like a whole other language so yes we'll be in the foyer afterwards but just to say a huge thank you to Raymond and to Katrina but also to the Africa rights team to Marcel for bringing us all together to Tayu for her amazing work that must be mind jumping from everywhere basically and also to the team up here as well who have done an amazing job with the technicals and also to and David Ellington for the amazing films that they have given to us and to you guys as well for coming today and to everybody who is at home and joining us there so another round of applause for everybody just to end tonight with just some questions, some thoughts this is all about the names that we inherit we take on an awful lot and sometimes names can liberate us and give us a sense of pride and inform and inspire us of who we are and sometimes names can also imprison us or entrap us in different ways and it's not just the names of people it's also just when you were talking about Hackney it's a name so names trigger things inside us as well and sometimes these names they allow us to manifest our own truth and sometimes they limit what we are capable of and sometimes we don't even know who we truly are because we believe ourselves to be this particular name that we have attached ourselves to so I just want you to think of a name either one that has been passed down or one that you have acquired for yourself it's a story that has been told to you and just think of one of these names and if it is a name that brings you joy, that brings you love, that pushes you forward that guides you and gives you a sense of who you are the names need to be spoken into being to keep them present but if it is a name that you feel limits you and keeps you backwards because we are not our ancestors we are ourselves we are just a conversation with that name and think about it's time to let it go so thank you very very much and we shall see you downstairs, thank you