You couldn’t make it up: after Zena Edwards performance at the British Council, I was lucky enough to be standing nearby when a young girl of maybe fifteen came up to Zena and said ‘wow, you are AWESOME!’
And she was – her poetry is consistently heightened, its rhythms are in its words, in her movements, in the startling musicality of her voice. Everything there is to be drawn out of the poems she draws out, moving seamlessly between speaking and singing, and what feels like dancing. Zena’s opening poem was about a party and as she provided its beats and mayhem you really did feel you were there, the latest guest, moving from room to room in wide-eyed surprise. The poem that seemed to strike everyone nearest, however, was about her – our -‘old friend Lonely’. She looked into all the usual hiding places and guises of Lonely; she tried to escape to a host of places and was newly disappointed as he gate-crashed each occasion with his unsavoury associates, ‘his friend Self-Pity’ and ‘his brother Boredom’.
Zena Edwards’ poetry is associative in its makeup and associative in what it does to its listeners. At one point I was distinctly reminded of the dancer and choreographer Akram Khan who will sometimes stand still and simply speak aloud the rhythms of kathak dance. Zena, at that point in the poem, was on a journey in Southern Africa. It struck me, listening, that this was a naturally multicultural occasion (as we all grow more naturally multicultured) and that this sort of performance poetry had just the sort of expansiveness to speak in many tongues at once.
The evening was full of delicious poetic incidentals. Zena recounted being in Malta during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, and delighted in the gulping acronym that described the stately event: CHOGM. As she moved into one of the poems Zena began quietly to play the kalimba (which she had introduced to us as an instrument she’d learnt to play in South Africa). She stood very still, concentrating on the small wooden instrument in her hands, as though she were playing it for herself alone. She could have been playing a game or working beads: she looked like she was trying to get something exactly right. It was an intimate moment played out in front of an audience, as with her fingers she made music like running water and we registered that the wild and various sounds of the evening had issued from one small person.
I have to stop for a moment to tell you about the audience and hope that you will be as impressed as I was. It is not often you see an audience of young teenagers gathered at a theatrical event (without parents or teachers or any such subversive influences). The last thing I remember as coming close to Zena Edwards’ audience at the British Council was the audience at Baz Luhrman’s La Bohème. Working in the arts it is just the thing you want and it is a real pleasure to look around a room and see a brand new audience in force. Zena Edwards spoke directly to this audience and they responded wholeheartedly.
What they didn’t quite respond to was that Zena was, I think, genuinely afraid of the big red ant that appeared on her microphone! When she whimpered and asked if someone would remove it her audience just laughed again, taking it in the relaxed spirit of the evening, not moving to help.
My favourite moment was towards the end of the evening when Zena peformed a poem made up entirely of different words for laughing. She ricocheted to their rhythms, gathering momentum like a belly laugh, and gradually her young audience began themselves to get the giggles.
Review by: Sunila Galappatti ©
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and should not be interpreted as being representative of the British Council in Sri Lanka or the organisation as a whole.
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