 So, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the project, the Playboy of the music, Playboy of the West Indies, the musical. First of all, the play came into existence sometime in the early 80s when Nick Kent, the producer, director, was at the time in Oxford, and he commissioned the play from Mustapha, and it was first produced, I think, at the Oxford Playhouse. Nick is here, as is Mustapha's wife, Ingrid, lovely to see you all. So Playboy had great success as a play throughout the UK and the United States, between the 80s, 90s, and up to fairly recently, I think. And then, a few years ago, Nick got together with Mustapha and they were having a rethink about the play, and they thought, what about if we made, we added some songs, we made it into a musical. So then, two composers were brought on board. Mustapha suggested one composer, who was me, and Nick suggested another composer that he had worked with on another production, Clement Ishmael. And so they brought both of us together, and together we wrote a whole bunch of songs working with Mustapha and Nick, turning the play into a kind of hybrid play musical. So the end result is a piece that has about 22 songs with lyrics that we all worked on. We spent about four years working on it, just constantly sort of trimming, tweaking, writing, rewriting, and so on. We also did a workshop at the National Theatre Studio in 2018. We were supposed to go into production in 2020, I think, and of course COVID put a halt to that. And yeah, we were really lucky to get a production on in June of 2022 in Birmingham, at the Birmingham Rep. And now, we're going to play, Gleann played the role of Peggy, and the actor who played the main role of the playboy, Ken, is actually with us here tonight, Jerome. So we're going to do, we're going to give you two songs that I wrote, they're two ballads, so Gleann will interpret them for you, and she'll tell you a little bit about her impressions of playing Peggy. This song is called, this is not the life I dreamed of. This version of life, which is really about go-getting, and she tells him exactly the sort of things that make her life happy and make her happy. This one is called Green Mango. To get my wonder, well first of all, it's an absolute honour to get to play Peggy and to work with such an amazing team, and playing Peggy gave me quite a few realisations, so on one hand it showed me how much more simple life is than trying to dad, how happy, you know, liming on the beach with your friends, your family, and there's a bigger sense of community, I think, than there is now, a more sense of freedom on one hand. But saying that also on the other hand, I would also say that playing Peggy showed me how women in the 50s in Trinidad and in the Caribbean also lacked a lot of freedom. So in the show Peggy has kind of her whole life kind of set out for her already, she has her job decided for her, she has who she's going to marry, decided for her, and I think, you know, when this mysterious guy comes into the town and shakes things up a little bit, it tantalises her and gives her the opportunity to make a decision for herself on her own life. So I guess for me as Gleanne, what Peggy has kind of taught me is to be bold, to be brave, myself permission to take risks, because in taking the risks, risks are really scary, but in those scary moments is where you learn most about yourself, I believe, and I believe that's the same for Peggy in the show. Yeah, and then to twist yourself. So I think that's what I've kind of learned from playing Peggy. Yeah, it's really pertinent actually that you talk about taking risks because about a week before we were due to open the show, the actor who was due to play the lead role of Peggy had a health problem, got ill, and Gleanne who was understudying the role stepped in with just one week's notice and suddenly found herself propelled into the lead role and she held that role with absolute mastery. So congratulations to you. And while we've been singing you've been seeing some of the photos, some of the production photos from the show in Birmingham. So that's us done for Playboy. Thank you. And of course we've got the bokehs team in discussions. You've just been orchestrated by Randolph Machu's, you've been a cappella, not only a cappella, you've been orchestrated. Now Melanie, as you know, is the founder of Nization that motivates and brings the light of the public, not only the rhythm, because as you know, bokehs from the Spanish meaning mouth, we celebrate both be very important as if I could inflict a little linguistic diversion. This is not brilliant, even though it's the British Museum, but since I'm a very politically correct man, I wouldn't say the acoustics is bad. Let us say it is sonically challenged. Or linguists, when British soldiers were at based in Trinidad and the associate Lyme as a cure for scurvy, they got the nickname Lymes. And I gather from my linguistic friends, they were seen liming or loitering outside of Brothels. That was the reality, hence the name liming. But when we speak of liming in the Caribbean, and Melanie has been initiating evenings of liming, liming isn't a case of doing nothing. It's a case of people, human beings exchanging ideas, arguing about politics, arguing about cricket, touching their frail selves, exposing their egos, you might say a limer. We say that the Guyanas were liming. So within that shall we say psychic context, and having been, you know, constricted by Randolph, we can afford the liming. But I want to take you back even further, I want to take you back to the mosquitos that saw Columbus on his arrival. And this is what the mosquitos have to say. We mosquitos, you like to boast, we consider ourselves these island hosts. We are original colonists, not by sword, by proboscis. We've been around for millions of years and we ain't going nowhere, have no fear. The ancient Egyptians tried fishing net, they tried frankincense, we ain't extinct yet. Joining this mosquito chorus, buzz like you is one of us, buzz, buzz, buzz. Let me hear you people, enter the mood of the mosquito, line by line after me, let me hear you. Joining this mosquito chorus. You can do better than that, you had a long day, but you know, the limers got a lot of energy. Let me hear you, give it to the British Museum, suck it to me. Joining this mosquito chorus, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz like you is one of us, buzz like you is one of us. We like to bite democratically, white brown, we bite equally. We don't agree with discrimination, we bite every pigmentation. No, we mosquitos, not prejudice, you could be a mister, you could be a miss. One drop of blood is all we ask. We ain't asking for a torus flask. Here we people, joining this mosquito chorus. Let me hear you, buzz like you is one of us, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Joining this mosquito chorus, buzz like you is one of us, mosquito biting high, mosquito biting low, from your head down to your to bego, mosquito biting high, mosquito biting low, from your armpit to your archipelago. Dinosaur, dodo and them gone to a place called oblivion, so we say bring on the pesticide. We mosquitos have God on our side, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz like you is one of us, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz like you is one of us. Thank you very much, thank you. We have a special treat. Some of you will be aware that there's a remarkable poem called Sunrise by Grace Nichols and we're about to experience an extract of it. So please give a very warm welcome to Grace Nichols. It's a lovely, lovely festival and I've noticed today so many carnival-less type figures around and lovely hummingbirds. So I thought I'd do this extract from a long poem I wrote on carnival. It's called Sunrise from a book of poems I wrote called Sunrise and it's a woman's journey through carnival in which she reclaims all the different strands of her heritage and at the end of this long journey she calls herself the mythic name Sunrise a combination of the sun and the goddess Iris who is the rainbow goddess connecting both heaven and earth. So she names herself Sunrise and this little extract from Derek Walcott, our Nobel laureate always struck me. He said carnival is all that is claimed for it. It is exultation of the mass will. Its hedonism is so sacred that to withdraw from it not to jump up, to be contemplative outside of its frenzy is a heresy. So I love that comment and it's just a short extract from this poem. I did it at the National Theatre a long time ago in which I was accompanied by a steel pan playing in the background. Out of the four day morning they come in, out of the little houses clinging to the hillside, they come in, out of the big house and the hovel they come in to lift up this city to the sun to incarnate their own carnation. Symbol of the emancipated woman I come, I don't care which one from, from the depths of the unconscious I come. I come out to play mass woman. This massapotone is not to hide me. This massapotone is visionary, a combination of the right cypher son, a belly band with all my strands, a plume of scarlet ibis, a branch of hope and a snake in my fist. Join me in this pilgrimage, this spree that looks like sacrilege and is the whole island awash in a deep sea sound, is humming bird possession, taking flight from the ground, is blood beaten and spirit moving free, is promiscuous wine, is sanctity. Hands, hands is all a matter of hands through the shaping and the cutting, through the stitching and the touching, through the bright door of love come the splendor of hands. Feet, feet is all a matter of feet for the spirits take entry from the feet, high priestess and devil, at-stack king and me, midnight robber, saint Teresa, all carried by the rise and fall, the rise and fall, the trans unstoppable rhythm and death mingling free in his white wing beats. We end stopping till Ashwensley puts a kick in we heels. Father, forgive us for we know not. Forgive the man who just placed his hand on my promised land. Later, he will take the ash and close he eye. Man born of woman, you're born to die. Spirit, preserve my harvest from there, fat choose the eyes. And is the whole island awash in a deep sea sound, is humming bird possession, taking flight from the ground, is blood beaten and spirit moving free, is promiscuous wine, is sanctity, or history is a river that flow to the sea, lest with a bone of memory, I riding high, her choreography, I paying homage in ceremony. Thank you. Special, special thanks to Grace Nichols for her beautiful poem. Before we go into the next artist that I'd like to introduce, all of you here in this space is testament to the Bokas Festival, and I'd like to give some thanks because many of you have been here all day, and thanks so much for your warmth and generosity throughout the day. I'd like to give a special thanks to the British library team, in particular Jonah Albert, Bee, and Nicole Rochelle Moore, as well as many of the other team behind the scenes that made this happen. So let's please give them some applause. And also the Renaissance One team, there's six members of the team that have been around throughout the day, selling books and being around. And then to the wonderful Bokas Festival, they're large in number, but in particular, I'd like to give a big shout out to Marina Solandi-Brown, who created Bokas Festival. To Nikolas Linn, to Shivani Ramlachan, to Lucy Hannah, their chair as well, and to all of the Bokas team that have worked tirelessly for today. And also, you've been experiencing the many costumes and this sense of mass and carnival within the space, so Clarice Solandi, please give it up for Clarice Solandi and Mahogany in her team. So now we're moving on to another form of liming, and it's my pleasure to be introducing Fred Degas, who's currently over here from Los Angeles on a UK tour. And many of us have been experiencing not just his words and his poetry, but also his recent memoir, Year of Plagues. So please give a very warm welcome to Fred Degas. Thank you, sir. Good evening. Yes, since both Grace and John are Guyanese, and both Grace and John have won the Queen's Medal for Poetry, and I'm Guyanese, maybe I'll get the Kings. No, no, no, no. I have two short poems for you, and I'm only going to do them because one of them, which I wrote in the 80s, I know I was alive, it's on the O-Level list. And so if anybody in the audience is doing an O-Level, I'm going to give you the secrets. You hear? I'm going to give you the secrets for the poem. It's a poem called Papati. And when I grew up in Guyanese, I was born in London. When I was two, my parents posted this back to Guyanese for a proper upbringing. And then I came back here after ten and a half years in Guyanese, came back to London. And my granddad, on my mom's side, was a merchant seaman. And when he went away, he would learn a poem from the Palgrave Treasury. In that was Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, which he memorized. When he came back, he sat us all down, just a bit like you are here, a captive audience. You don't realize it. You try and leave and see what will happen. No, no, no, I'm joking. You can leave. But what would happen is he would begin to do Tennyson from memory. And we'd all be fidgeting because we are speaking Caribbean Creole Guyanese. He's doing a Victorian poem. You can imagine the translation that's necessary. But one thing he would do is if you interrupted him, he would stop and tell you off in Creole, and then he would go back to the poem and continue in Victorian English, which we thought was miraculous. If he was really mad with you for interrupting him, he would start the poem from the top all over again. And then afterwards, you'd jump the person and beat them up. So what you're going to hear is exactly what I've just told you. I've just given away the entire poem. But you're going to hear it in a kind of English pentameter, which I was trying to emulate. Papati. When Grandad recited the Tennyson Learned at Sea, I saw companies of redcoats tin-soldering it through rugged country, picked off one by one by poison-tipped blowdarts or arrows from nowhere. They're drums panicky rattle, they're buglers yelp, musket clap, and popping cannons smoke everywhere. Grandad would cut short to shout, if y'all don't pay me mind, I going to give you a good looking and send you to bed. Resuming as he breathed in, his consonants stretched past recall into a whale's crying place, beginning polyp kingdoms shipwrecked into Amerindian care for months. We'd sit tight, our eyes on our sweet sea salta, for that last line sound someone mistimed once, making him start again. These days, the perfect lined face of a blank page startles at first, like Papati's no-nonsense recitals. It has me itching to bring him reeling off in that tongue, on the charge they made, on the light brigade, noble 600, to hear, to disobey. In the last poem, none of the last, but my last contribution tonight, I'm going to keep writing poetry. Would you like it or not? Actually, you know, for this one, it's called Mandela, and it's about what Mandela meant to me, and all of us who were active in an anti-apartheid before it happened, when he was released, the kind of meaning of it. But I needed audience participation, not very much. You don't have to give me your credit cards or anything. All you have to do is, when I raise my hand like this, you would say Mandela. So let me let's rehearse. It's been a long day, I know, but that's terribly bad. Okay, so when, you know why? Because when you say that word, I can read the stanza. You only have to do it three times, and then you can go home. No, no, you can't. Then you're off the hook. Okay, so great. Okay, so we'll start now. Okay, so when you start, you say the word, I can give you the stanza. You say the word, give you the stanza, and the only three and a half stanzas. So three times. Ready? Made me believe in a salmon's waterfall climb, grizzly claws and jaws dodge and spawn where so many salmon spawn before made me see the toot in toots and the made towels. When I and I seen enough for two lifetimes and the scales, the weighted scales fell from my eyes made me taste the just injustice in coconut water offered lukewarm in the green nut, which his cutlass cracked in two, Wiley held it and I scraped jelly using a spoon carved by him from the husk of the nut. You touched me and I had no idea until it dawned on me that your bony forearm draped my shoulders, radius and the ulna no heavier than scentless orange sun, a messenger's son chasing me on my morning run. The wonderful Fred de Gaulle. So you may have seen Shivani Ramlachan, not just as a member of the Boca's Festival, an important member of the team. She's also a wonderful poet and you would have experienced her, some of you who were at the earlier event. So we're gonna invite her again in a different guise. This time the suggestion of Juvay and Carnival. So I'd like you to give a very warm welcome to Shivani Ramlachan. I promise this is not the Shivani Festival. This is the last time you'll see me on this stage tonight. But he said something really sweet up here. I've been very proud to be a part of the Boca's Litfest family since it began. It's been 12 years of working with committed, passionate, irrepressible people and it's profoundly impacted me as a person and as a writer. I don't think this book could exist without my Boca's family. So Marina and Nicholas and everyone else on the Boca's team, I love you very much. Who has been to Trinidad Carnival? Who has been to specifically Juvay? That's how I seem like more hands, which you know what, fair enough. This poem is about Juvay and all the spirits that attend us living and dead when we cover our bodies in paint and other various substances and remind ourselves that we are all free people. All the dead, all the living. At Juvay, it doesn't matter if you play yourself or somebody else. Play your dead eight-year-old granny who had tongue like scorpion pepper, two foot like twinned fish tail in Cora River, a smile like a butter knife cutting through hot Sada. Play your living mother who made of more parts glitter than flower, who teach you softness have more than enough space to leave a cutlass waiting, glistening between fat folds, ready to chop your from a bed of ample waste. Play all the dead and all the living in you, in your short pants, in your barge on drawers, in your ragged fishnets and curry gold batty riders, in your half top, in your no top, breasts swinging under electric tape nipples, panty forgotten in a culvert overflowing with holy water and hell liquor. Your own perspiration sliding between bodies at play like the wetness from your body is purgatory unction. Play yourself, clay yourself, wine on point and wine to the four stations of the cross, dirty angel, braggadang batting, St. James, Sukhya, Deepbush Dwen come to town to make a killing in mud and modern law on fresh doubles after. Play like you are playing in your public servant office on Ash Wednesday, calves aching and twitching in sensible slingback heels, a pulse in your lower back blossoming. Each time you bend down to file a papers, salute a clock, say grace before ashes. You know where you are, really. Just how you know the clock is a chantwell, the office is a concrete anti-chamber before the final mass, the pavement is a bus-head convergence, the parking lot is a guile, the savannah is an arena where paint and a beer might wash, but spirit does linger. You are waiting until next year, where you plant yourself this juvie is where your spectral midnight lager who rattles in Shikofin turn in wolf to woman to wolf again. Thank you. Poets are inspired by very various genres, influences. You can think, for example, of Lyndon Quasey Johnson and Jean Bentebreeze exploring reggae. You can think of a big hand, a poet like Jean-Couper Clarke exploring punk. Even as a little boy, I was always fascinated by the sound of the Calypso, even if your mother tell you she'll box your mouth. So, at eight years old, going to Roman Catholic Jesuit school, not ever thinking I'll be a poet, I was fascinated by that sound, making love one day with a girl they call in meme, I pick up meme by the real way. One might intellectualize and say it's macho and sexist, etc., but at that time in the ears of a nine-year-old boy, what I was responding to was the incantation of syllables. And my work resonates with the satirical impulse of the Calypsoian, who can be bawdy and political in one breath. And in the eighties, I coined an expression poet-sonian. I'm not a Calypsoian by any means, but poet-sonian. So, I could read some of the stanzas, but intersports Calypso chorus. And I hope you all, when I come to the chorus, join in and Randolph will surprise me. To learn how this thing, diversity, does operate. I went by Brixton Market to investigate how the fruit and veg them does integrate. I saw apple and mango conversing cosily. Right planting had no quarrel with broccoli. Aubergine, Dombeer grudge, Gains piri piri. I was impressed how pineapple spoke sweetly. And when red pepper responded discreetly, I knew the fruit and veg them could teach a nation the secret of harmonious cohabitation. So, if you want to learn about this thing, diversity, observe but not squash. And the little lychee in the fruit and veg market, it was plain to see. The red, yellow, purple and green live in harmony. The fruit and veg them show each other respect. Cucumber never raise a finger to courgette. No, let me hear you join in the chorus line by line. Let me hear you suck it as we leave this premises. In the fruit and veg the market, it was plain to see. The red, yellow, purple and green live in harmony. The fruit and veg them show each other respect. Cucumber never raise a finger to courgette. Cucumber never raise a finger to courgette. Then I saw saltfish chatting up chorizo. Like the two of them that stalk the same lingo. Gaman and mackerel held no grievance. Black pudding and salami struck up alliance. So, if you want to learn about social etiquette, study the ways of the ox tail, the veal, the brisket. In the fish and meat market, it was plain to see. The black, white, pink and brown live in harmony. The fish and meat them show each other respect. I never see a fight between two fillet yet. No, let me hear you line by line. In the fish and meat market, it was plain to see. The black, white, pink and brown live in harmony. The fish and meat them show each other respect. I never see a fight between two fillet yet. I never see a fight between two fillet yet. I never see a fight between two fillet yet. Thank you very much. Long live Bocas. Long live Bocas. Give it up for John A guard and I'd like to welcome back all the answers you just seen. So, we welcome back Grace Nichols to thank you. Grace Nichols, Fred Degard, Shivani Ramlachan, John A guard, Randolph Matthews and I'm Melanie Abraham. Let me tell you a secret. Books need to sleep at night. Otherwise, they don't wake up the next morning. So, the books in the British Library need to go to sleep. So, they're going to kick us out very soon. But, there are lots of bars and pubs around King's Cross in Pancras, I'm told. If anyone wants a party, to go out and find a new local pub. Everyone, thank you so much for coming. Thank you to the writers. Thank you British Library. Thank you Renaissance One. Thank you audience. Good night. See you next time.