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G21 ASIA: STEVE OGAH part of the Crossing Borders writing programme talks with performance poet Dinesh Allirajah about his art.
Lagos, NIGERIA - G21: I have just read your book?A Manner Of Speaking and it apperas that most of the stories are crafted from personal experiences. Is this the case?
Steve Ogah DINESH: Very much so. The stories represent a transition from my voice as a performance poet, in which personal exposure, identification and self-expression are prominent aspects, into short fiction and writing 'for the page'. What I've retained from the performance poetry, in these stories, is that aspect of being rooted in personal experience. How I've treated these experiences varies from story to story != in some cases, I've built a complete fiction on the foundations of a few real experiences; in others, it's something close to autobiography.
G21: How easily do you recollect experiences for your fiction?
DINESH: It's not that it's easy, so much as it's a natural function. Life will always throw up experiences, even if t hey're only fleeting moments, that will automatically appeal to my consciousness as a writer. Very often, I'll start with a memory != an image that has stuck in my mind, an incident I've experienced or witnessed, a thought that may have entered my head by chance != and try to find ways to build a story around it. The reality is easy to recollect; it's the fiction that's the hard part.
G21: How would you describe your family, considering the fact that you mentioned it several times in your narratives. Did anyone in?your family influence you to take up writing?
DINESH: My family background is Sri Lankan. My late father was Tamil and my mother is Sinhalese; they met while he was working and she was studying in London in the early 1960s and, although they returned to Sri Lanka (Ceylon as it was at the time) to marry and start a family, lack of work opportunities for my dad meant that they and my elder brother came back to London, where I was born in 1967 and where I grew up until moving to Liverpool initially to study when I was 18.
The circumstances around my parent's decision to move back to the UK had much to do with repressive policies by the mainly Sinhalese government towards the Tamil population. This laid the foundations for the civil war that erupted in 1983 (on the day I arrived for my visit to the country, as described in one of the stories in the book), that still hasn't found a lasting resolution 23 years later. So my upbringing was decidedly British: English was the common language for my parents, my mother in particular was an Anglophile anyway, and my childhood was like any other English kid's, with maybe some extra influences and baggage.
My own family, if there can be a distinction, in Liverpool, consists of my partner, Joanna, and our two young sons, Bruno and Rufus. They're all major inspirations for what I write, but I should credit my mother for feeding my enthusiasm and interest in writing when I was younger.
G21: In view of the fact that you are a strong member of Asian Voices, Asian Lives what can you?tell us about the organisation and your role within it?
DINESH: Asian Voices Asian Lives is dormant these days, most of its members having moved away, both from the Liverpool base and from the specific pursuits of writing and performance.
It was active, and quite prolific, in the period 1992-98 and was part of a national upsurge in the culture of what we now call the British Asian identity. When we first started meeting, as a creative writing workshop group, we consisted of young (early 20s) South Asians who had lived all or most of their lives in the UK and at this time experienced a cultural confusion. Were we British, were we Asian, were we Black (which in the context of British post-war race relations had originally been applied as a political term to cover immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean). We were part of all these identities yet felt central to none of them, and this desire to locate ourselves influences our early discussions and writing.
Within a year or so, we were beginning to bring our work into public settings != local radio and performance venues != and there was plenty of interest in the sudden emergence of about a dozen young, expressive Asian writers and performers in a city without a significant Asian population, and on a literature scene where Black writers of any description struggled to gain a foothold.
Two prominent Black performance poets, Levi Tafari and Muhammad Khalil, were immensely supportive and influential in helping our group and other writers get access to the main platforms for performance poetry and we swiftly developed a distinctive style, combining personal and political poetry, with Indian and African percussion, and satirical comedy.
Asian Voices Asian Lives (the name given to the original workshop, which stuck when we started performing) then began to appear at Black and Asian literature and comedy events around the country, with appearances and features on radio and TV, and we collaborated with several writers and performers in other cities.
For most of this period, from about 1993, I was the group's co-ordinator, facilitating the writing workshops that were now used to recruit new members and taking care of the arrangements for our live work. By the time we'd completed a tour and then a major performance commission in 1997, I think the confusion, that had been a motivation for starting the group, had disappeared.
We knew who we were and were comfortable to embrace all aspects of our identity. Similarly, 'British Asian' was no longer a hidden or undisclosed presence in the context of the UK multicultural society != if anything, it had become trendy and mainstream. So the group's activities slowed down and we went off variously to pursue other careers, start families or, like Destiny's Child, concentrate on solo work.
Interestingly, there's now renewed unease (post 9/11, the war on terror and the bombings in London) about the notion of British Asian identity, and I've also recognised that, without the strategic support to develop new writers from various ethnic backgrounds, the old barriers start to come back into place. So I'm about to start a creative writing course for British Asians, run through Lancaster University, in the North West of England, but conducted online so participants can enroll from anywhere.
G21: How challenging are the creative writing classses you offer and?how successful are your students turning out?
DINESH: I'm not sure I'd describe them as challenging because I think that creative expression is a natural and uncomplicated function that people should allow themselves to do.
I tend to concentrate on the process of generating ideas and writing != which can be applied to groups of very young children as well as to experienced adult writers. The challenge of professionalism and dealing with the literature industry is something I can respond to, but I feel it's down to the individual whether he or she has this urge to take on the industry.
I work with such a wide variety of students and in so many ways, from long-term mentoring to one-off hour-long workshops, that success is impossible to measure because working with me is only one influence. It's like there's a car driving along an incredibly long road: if I can supply enough fuel to get the car to the next petrol station, that's probably a success.
G21: You are widely-travelled, allo ver Europe.How has this infruenced your writing and performance poetry?
DINESH: I would say that travel has influenced general themes and approaches in my writing, as well as providing many specific inspirations and influences.
After I left University in 1988, I was on the dole for six years and used that time to immerse myself in the business of becoming a writer. I eventually got a literature-related job that meant my partner and I could afford a holiday, which we took to Barcelona. The initial influence came simply from the change of scene and culture. I'd been walking the same streets and seeing the same faces and writing under the same sky for years, so encountering new tastes, sounds, sights, languages, histories and rhythms meant my imagination was flooded. Most trips abroad thereafter would be marked by some poetry or story, hence the overseas locations for so many of the stories in A Manner Of Speaking.
Some influences are subtler. The whole business of communication between cultures and languages alters the way we understand meaning: what's straightforward and commonplace in one country might be abstract and alien in another. So I like to play with that in both writing and performance != how can the written and spoken word absorb some of the dynamics of painting, dance, music or film?
G21: Recently, you were in Nigeria and I watched you performed at ritish Council Garden, in Lagos, with a lot of energy and passion. How do you manage to be so dramatic over a long period?
DINESH: In that particular case, I got much of my energy and passion from the fact that this was my first ever performance on African soil and I wanted to do the moment justice. In general, the key is in the writing, fitting the words to my voice so I can bring out both the meaning and the music, and then it's important to practice so you're not a stranger to your work when the time comes to perform it.
G21: What is your professional assessment of the writers you worked with in Nigeria? Did they show promise?
DINESH: I was thrilled to work with the Crossing Borders participants and, right across the board, they impressed me greatly. What I got from those writers - that maybe gives them an edge over some of their contemporaries - was a sense of focus in their approach to writing.
There's clearly a great lyricism about Nigerian literature, and all the writers I met were passionate about bringing the truth != good and bad != about their country to the rest of the world. What I felt the Crossing Borders writers had developed was the ability to express this lyricism and passion, but with a language that you could pick up, hold in your hands, sift through your fingers.
G21: The British Council is in the forefront of promoting a new class of African? writers. How would you assess this ?effort?
DINESH: The reason I specify the skills of the Crossing Borders writers is because I think the British Council's efforts can be seen to have had an influence. The dialogue with writers in the UK and the space to think about and work on their writing has, I believe, given these writers a formidable preparation for their professional development. I think the awareness that there are similar communities of writers in other African countries will have an effect as well. I know Crossing Borders is coming to an end and I believe it would be a missed opportunity if something wasn't set up to pick up some of the threads it has laid down.
G21: You have mentored some Nigerian writers. How would you describe them, Mordi?Ochi, specifically?
DINESH: I mentored Mordi ('Storychild') in 2004 and had the pleasure of welcoming him to Liverpool to perform at my book launch, where he made a great impression on the audience.
Mordi is a pioneer by nature. While I was mentoring him, he tended to sway between sometimes quite grandiose lyricism and a cooler modern style. He had developed his own form of poetic structure != Pacet != in which each line would be one syllable longer than the last. It sounds unpromising but it created a contemporary, lilting, conversational tone that I think marked Mordi's best poems.
Last year I mentored Nk'iru Njoku, who also acts in one of your soap operas ("Us"). Nk'iru is a marvellously assured and talented young woman. I loved her attitude to writing, which was extremely liberated in style and subject.
G21: Would you leap at?the next?chance to anchor a creative writing class in Africa?
DINESH: I'd love to return at some point. It was an unforgettable experience and a beautiful environment in which to work.
G21: Briefly,what? are you working on at the moment and?what is the nature of the current creative writing classes as advertisd on your website?
DINESH: I'm slowly piecing together another collection of short stories. Having been so preoccupied with location and travel in the first collection, I wanted to leave that behind as an obvious theme and try to concentrate more on characters. It's a slow process because the lot of the freelance writer is first and foremost to keep finding work, and not a lot of people queue up to pay you to just write, so I'm busy with various teaching and workshop commitments.
G21: Thank you for finding time for us.
DINESH: It's a pleasure, Steve.
