Off the Dome
Summer encroaches. So much to do, so little time. Pottering away, tying loose ends, cutting others. If you’re in the process of clearing out your life this season, I salute you. It’s a time for pushing through.
For now, I want to share some of what I’ve been reading, listening, and thinking with recently. Recommendations that have moved something in me, or helped me move towards a place I’m trying to reach. Hoping they are of interest!
I’ve been immersed in Alice Notley’s poetry since her passing in May. I wrote my own tribute to her life and legacy here. Notley lived a poet’s life, which is no mean feat in a society designed to mercilessly beat that impulse out of you. Celebrating those who stuck it out, maintaining their hard-won independence, is worthwhile. This is from one of my favourite Notley poems.
Another poet I’ve been enjoying has been Calvin Hernton, who has been receiving long overdue recognition. (A recently published Selected Poems, heightened critical and academic interest, the usual flurry of positive appraisal). Hernton was unrepentantly incendiary, confronting the social and political schisms of his era. A co-founder of the pioneering Umbra Poets Workshop, he was a figure both central to and hovering on the outskirts of the Black Arts Movement. (He also brushed up against the Caribbean Artists Movement and its luminaries during his time in 60’s London). I first came across Hernton’s work in the pages of Black Fire, the landmark, multi-genre anthology of Afro-American writing published in 1968 (edited by Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal). “Jitterbugging in the Streets” is a brawl of a poem, but Hernton’s essay “Dynamite Growing out of their Skulls” is what made me seek him out as a thinker. It’s doggedly honest. Hernton is concerned with the existential crises plaguing the streets, with the kind of radicalism-for-hire that is so blatant, “even little children can see what is going on.” He quotes one of his peers, a young poet disillusioned with an anti-poverty government programme.
In 1987’s The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers, Hernton proved himself as one of the rare critics capable of writing about the literatures produced by Black women with sensitivity and unflinching rigour. Here is Ishmael Reed at a 1977 reading, introducing Hernton and K. Curtis Lyle in his habitually bolshy way. (The Poetry Centre’s digital archive is a treasure trove).
Under African Skies is a 1989 BBC series exploring the varied musical styles emerging from the continent. It’s one of those insightful documentaries that justify the license fee. This episode on Ethiopia’s musical lineage is a banger. Funnily enough, the journey begins in Washington D.C., a diasporic hotspot. Last year, I was able to access community archives in the city, and was startled by how deeply embedded the Ethiopian presence was in D.C. Amharic phrases are scrawled across murals at the encampments of 1968’s Resurrection City. Histories interact haphazardly. I love this documentary’s shots of a heaving Mercato, the evocative cassette tape economy, Mahmoud Ahmed performing with gusto.
Something I’m glad to have found in video form. Micheal Smith chit-chatting with CLR James and Linton Kwesi Johnson. Are they in a bedsit? Where was this aired? Where is this conversation going? Not a clue. Grateful it exists.
Arthur Russell was a genius, in the sense that he was crushingly swept up in the vision of a future only he could see. This is my song of the month.
I was at Photo London this May and was reminded of how much I appreciate Mitra Tabrizian‘s work. Her first film Gholam (2017) is touching, flood-lit, real. The symbology of the London cab driver, whose past invades the frame.
I’m not sure but I think this YouTube channel belongs to Mahmood Jamal, the late writer, producer, and founding member of the Retake Film and Video Collective. Jamal was a pioneer in those feverish days of “multicultural” television, when you’d switch on Channel 4 and see programmes on everything from Jamaican ska to South Africa's Dirty War fronted by the likes of Tariq Ali and Ziauddin Sardar. (Open University-core, as I like to call it). Jamal was also a lead writer on Family Pride, Britain's first Asian soap opera, which aired in the early 90’s. This channel is full of gems in the shape of poems, documentaries, qawwali deep cuts, performances, and conversations. Enjoy.