Aucklanders rise out of the mud for Zephaniah's poetry

By SARAH ALLELY* and SUSANNE TAYLOR*

To be a true poet you have to raise the people out of the mud, says Benjamin Zephaniah.

He certainly did that last night at the ignite2001 festival with his show Laugh, Cry and Get Angry.

His ability to slip into laid-back Jamaican drawl and then jump into fast-paced eccentric poems kept the audience guessing and begging for more.

Zephaniah captivated and delighted the crowd at the Herald Theatre with snippets of his life story and his reasons for being a poet. One particular poem he recited had them in fits of laughter as he mimicked how Jamaicans walk hearing "da rhythm in their head".

He began with a poem inspired by Martin Luther King's speech I Have a Dream. Zephaniah's I Have a Scheme brought modern day realities into perspective:

I see a time when affirmative action will have sexual connotations

Black people all over this blessed country will play golf

All black people will speak Welsh

Hundreds of black and Asian female formula-one drivers racing around Birmingham.

The true spirit of his poetry came to life through a mishmash of words, energy and the emotion of his performance.

Barriers of race, class and sex were simply and poetically broken down to the echoes of reggae rhythm and rhyme that appealed to young and old.

Zephaniah thrives on audience participation. Several requests from a young boy in the front row, who had seen an earlier show, added to the spontaneous mood of the night.

After a colourful showcase of 12 of his poems, Zephaniah exited the stage only to be persuaded back with loud clapping and stomping by the audience. He treated them to four more poems and wished them a "Merry Christmas" as it was his last performance in New Zealand this year.

* The author is a journalism student at Auckland University of Technology.

Feature: ignite2001 festival

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