Benjamin Zaphaniah with student interviewers Isabel Dickens & Vincent Sery

Can you remember your first live performance?
My first performances were in front of my family around the breakfast table. My first public performance was in church actually and was completely unexpected. My mother got up and said “my sons going to read you something, here he is”. And she just dragged me up! It wasn’t really a poem, I was good at memorising stuff and knew parts of the bible and that’s what I recited, it impressed them. <<To top

Who is the most inspiring person you’ve worked with? Creatively I would say…Sinead O’Connor. She’s a great singer and also very spiritual. When you go into recording studios they do this thing called double tracking. They have a machine called an automatic doubt tracker which records voices twice at 2 different pitches, you can hear it sometimes when you listen to pop music. When Sinead O’Connor sings on her own, it sounds like two voices. <<To top

The ease at which she sings is amazing. I’ve sang with her in my house and she’s just burst out into song and it sounds so angelic. I was lucky enough to do a duet with her once, a recording.

What advice have you got for young people who want to do something with their poetry, writing or rap?

The most important thing I’ve always said it to be honest. I really don’t have many tips when it comes to style and the history of writing, I don’t really know much about it. I think whatever you’re writing about, poetry or novel, it’s best to write about what you know about.
If you’re writing your first novel, you shouldn’t be doing a lot of research you should be writing from your experiences of what you know. With your boyfriend, girlfriend, family, experiences in school. Your flow should be moving, you don’t want to do anything that stops that. You get some writers who do a chapter then some research then go and do a chapter and so on. You don’t want to be doing that on your first novel.
For me though the key word is honesty, being honest and true, even if you’re writing a novel you can be honest and true to your subject.
We live in a time now where you can very quickly become a celebrity and I think it’s always important to know WHY you’re writing or WHY you want to write. Don’t start writing because you want to win awards or because it’s the latest fashion. To me that’s really corrupting what art is really about. You should do what you want to do and if you win great and if you don’t it doesn’t matter. <<To top

"For me though the key word is honesty".

What was your worse subject at school?

I really didn’t have a very good time at school. It’s very strange because I didn’t like English. I loved words. I loved language, but didn’t like the English lessons. I’ll give you an example why.
I wrote a poem and put it in my pocket because I knew we were going to be doing poetry in English. The teacher came over and I said, “Miss, do you like poetry?” And she said, "No, can’t stand it, but I have to do it because it’s part of English". I wanted to show her my poem but it just completely put me off and I put the poem back in my pocket. The point is, the teacher was not passionate about the subject. Her parents were probably teachers and got her into it and she was just doing it. Most teachers now have a passion for teaching, they’ve got to, to keep it up. Look at the teacher who brought me into school today, she’s not even working here now and it’s hard work getting someone like me here. Especially in the political climate now, teachers have a hard job and the money’s not great.
We NEVER had something like this when I was at school. No way would a teacher try and get a poet to visit a school. I said it on stage, we had a fireman and a policeman and they approached the school to come in. <<To top

How do you think schools have improved?

I’ve partly answered that. I think teachers are a lot more passionate. On the whole they try to understand why boys like me get excluded and not just exclude us. They try to look behind what’s happening in the family. They might ask is there something happening at home? Where as with me it was just “You’re a bad boy, get out!” And that was it, let the police deal with me.

I’d also say, how schools have got worse..in that they've got so politicised. You get politicians who come on TV and say we’re going to do all this for schools and teachers are the problems corrupting our young people. Then after they make all these promises and get elected, they don’t do anything. I remember hearing some talk a few years ago. Politicians saying, they were going to pick out some of the top performing schools and invest in those schools. I remember saying to this politician ”That’s crazy!” That’s why people think, politicians have a lot of education, but no common sense. If there’s a school that’s not doing so well, that’s the school that needs the funding. It’s a bit like having a house that’s ok and a house that needs fixing, and spending your money on the house that’s ok. It’s a crazy philosophy. <<To top

"I was in a room, surrounded by girls, living it large and didn’t want to admit I couldn’t read the contract".

What would you say to young people who think school is a waste of time?

Education, I think, is the most important thing there is.
It doesn’t matter what you want to do in life, if you want to be in the music business, you may be a good singer or a good rapper, but without education, you’ll just be ripped off. If you don’t understand your contract or have some sense of business, you will be ripped off. Some people say “Ahh.. I just want to be in the music business maaann..I don’t have to have education”. You do.
Imagine me, I’m a ghetto boy, coming from Handsworth, I’ve been penniless, suddenly I’ve got some big hits. I’ve got money for the first time in my life. I’m laying in a hotel room and people are serving me. I’ve got a girl massaging my shoulder and another massaging my legs, I’m living the life. A man comes it and says, “We’re gonna do the John Peel show, I want you to sign a contract”. I’m like “Yeah man, I’ll sign the contract, give it me man”, then he went away. A couple of years later, we had a legal problem.
I had signed all my record writes over to him. Why? Because I was in a room, surrounded by girls, living it large and didn’t want to admit I couldn’t read the contract. So when it came, “No problem man, I’ll sign it”.

"Education is the most important thing.. because it liberates you".

Even if it’s education so you learn how to read your contacts, even if you want to be a housewife, if you haven’t got an education, you haven’t got no sense your mans not gonna walk all over you and you might be trapped there. Education is the most important thing because it liberates you. You could be stuck in a prisons. There’s a physical prison, but there’s also a mental prison, because you can’t got anywhere with what you know. You can’t work because nobody wants you, you can’t read and write properly. The friends you make are friends like yourself who are uneducated so you start believing all types of crazy stuff. Like..to be a man you think, it’s not about your level of intelligence, you think it’s about how big you are. You walk around the streets with your chest up, feeling you’re hard.. and the truth of the matter is, people just walk over you. You’ll be there, bigging your chest up, thinking you’re big and people will be laughing behind your back. <<To top

Sometimes people have a really good education in English and they write really snotty poetry that no one in the really world understands. So you can have an education but no common sense, like a lot of politicians! So it’s a balance of what you learn through experience. In one of my poems it says - I passed through university, I passed through sociology and then I got a dread degree in dreadful ghetto-ology. I was kicked out of school at the age of 13, I have 11 honorary doctorates. I’m not just Doctor Zephaniah, I’m Doctor, Doctor, Doctor Zephaniah. The thing is, although I left school without an education, I got myself one because I realised to progress, even it the world of poetry, I needed to have an education. <<To top

Thanks to:
Isabel Dickens and Vincent Sery for being great interviewers.
Helen Evans and the students who wrote to Benjamin
Those teachers and students who helped out on the day
Vicky Morris for arranging the interview and transcribing it.
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Click on a link here to jump down or scroll and read on...

*Can you remember your first live performance?
*Who is the most inspiring person you’ve worked with?
*What advice have you got for young people who want to do something with their poetry, writing or rap?
*What was your worse subject at school?
*What would you say to young people who think school is a waste of time?
*Has being dyslexic made it difficult to write books?
*Who has influenced your poetry?
*Who do you think speaks the most sense in rap and hip-hop at the moment?
*What are some of the obstacles you have overcome during your career?
*What wisdom can you share with the young people of South Yorkshire?
*What are your ideas and inspiration behind your book, ‘Gangsta Rap’?

"What dyslexia made me do is compensate in another area".

Has being dyslexic made it difficult to write books?
See, being dyslexic doesn’t measure intelligence. Some of the most creative people I know are dyslexic. They say there’s only one language you can’t be dyslexic in, and that’s Chinese because its all pictures. If we were inventing a new language it makes sense to do it with pictures. What dyslexia made me do is compensate in another area. If you had asked me this question a few years ago, I wouldn’t be able to answer it but since talking to people, everyone always talks about my memory of words. I don’t remember other things like phone numbers but with words, with my poems, I’m ok. I compensated, and learnt to come at things from a different direction. <<To top

I met an architect the other day. A guy who had designed loads of famous buildings in London and places. He showed me some of his drawings and he’s very dyslexic. His drawings were so visual, really advanced, I could really imagine the buildings. His writing at the side was like baby writing. His spellings were all over the place. He just didn’t see things it terms of words. <<To top

Who has influenced your poetry?
It’s really easy to talk about the Martin Luther Kings and the Malcolm Xs and famous people, but actually, one of the biggest inspirations for me are normal everyday people. If I said John Smith or Mrs Betel, you would think, who? Well there is a lady called Mrs Betel who goes around all the big businesses and gets all their old computers when they just throw them away and gives them to elderly people and women. Especially Asian women, who don’t get a chance to get out there and get involved in community life, she gets them on the internet and inspires them to go out and vote and take part in politics. So..very ordinary people inspire me.<<To top

Who do you think speaks the most sense in rap and hip-hop at the moment?
The people I would mention, but they’re not all commercial, are.. KRS1, Klashnekoff, Dead Pres, Blackalicious, Miss Dynamite. <<To top

What are some of the obstacles you have overcome during your career?

I think the first one was trying to get published. I would walk into buildings and they would say, “We don’t do Black Rasta Poetry. I’m Black and Rasta, but my poetry is not Black Rasta Poetry, my poetry is for everybody. They were lazy, it’s a bit like seeing a women and saying we don’t publish Feminist Poetry. The interesting thing is, when I say I overcame it, I didn’t really, I just thought - never mind you - and got on performing. <<To top

All those publishers came running back to me, every one of them, because they didn’t like the fact that I was popular and they weren’t on the seen.
Some of the newspapers always used to hate me and I thought, what have I done to them? I thought I’d upset someone in the Daily Mail because they would come to my performances and write horrible things about me. Then I’d see the Guardian and Observer writing really nice things about me, then I realised, that’s how it works – there’s a right and left thing in newspapers. I used to think it was an obstacle, and how do I overcome them?! Then I realised, you don’t overcome them. <<To top

"Anyone who wants to know how Benjamin Zephaniah feels can find out through me".

What I do is, I always connect with people, and as I said earlier about writing, you must remember why you started writing. I didn’t write to impress newspapers, I wrote to connect with people. And even if people don’t agree with me, the things I say on stage, I want them to go away and say, at least he had the guts to say it himself, at least he’s expressing himself and not leaving it to some man in a suit to speak on my behalf. Anyone who wants to know how Benjamin Zephaniah feels can find out through me. My MP will not give you a true picture of me. That’s why I try to get everyone in their own way to write, be creative, whatever it is. Even if it’s not published. <<To top

"..if people don’t agree with me, the things I say on stage, I want them to go away and say, at least he had the guts to say it himself".

When I go to a country and want to get a feel of it, I read the writers of that country and talk to the people to find out about it. If you talk to politicians they will always say “It’s alright, women have got a good deal here” or whatever, and it’s not always true. <<To top

What wisdom can you share with the young people of South Yorkshire?

Here’s a bit of wisdom. Words are always difficult to translate from one language to another and sometimes people will use a word from one country in another sense. An example is... in many languages PEACE is a doing word, a verb, you ‘do peace’. In western culture or in English, we tend to see peace as an absence of war. They say in the west the place you see the most peace is graveyards. In Hinduism peace is a verb. In Rastafarian, although we use the English word, peace is a doing word. We say “Yeah man, you got to do more peace”. Here’s the wisdom, there is no way to peace...peace is the way. Wisdom politicians don’t get that. That’s why they think they can go and bomb a country to peace. You can bomb the country to pieces but you can’t bomb the country to peace. It’s an idea that’s getting us into so much trouble, it’s not working.<<To top

"You can bomb the country to pieces but you can’t bomb the country to peace".

What are your ideas and inspiration behind your book, ‘Gangsta Rap’? Partly the fighting that was going on in the states between the East Coast rappers an the West Coast rappers, and the whole thing with Tupac, Biggy Smalls and Puff Daddy, and all that stuff.

70% of our architects are dyslexic and something like 60% have been excluded from school at some time. Salvador Dali was a great painter. He didn’t get excluded but he walked out of school because they were trying to teach him strict rules about painted and he was breaking them all. So that interests me, how we deal with this. That’s why I have this real problem with this thing called the National Curriculum. I think a teacher should be able to look at a class and think.. we can come at this from another angle, these kids aren’t interested in doing it this way.
I was coming out of a school once, just like this, in fact it was in the middle of Devon so it wasn’t like this, it was an all white school. No Black or Asian kids. This teacher had been doing creative and performance poetry. I came into this school and these kids could quote Jamaica poets, Pakistani poets, Irish poets. She’d got through a whole season of getting performance poets in and I was the last one. When she was saying goodbye to me at the school gates she said, “I’ve got such problems now, I’m gonna have a really hard time”. I said “what’s the problem?”. She said, “I have been getting poets in for the last few months. We’ve been talking about poetry, they’ve been writing and performing their own poetry. Performing it before school, in assembly, after school…but to fit in with the national curriculum.. I have to go back to Romeo and Juliet! How can I do it!”. I felt really sorry for her because all these kids were really enthused by poetry. <<To top

"..the relationship between a teacher that can think outside the box, with kids, who are thinking outside the box".

I think some standards have to be set, but that teachers have to be given the freedom to work with the students in whatever way suites them. I wanted to explore all that in Gangsta Rap. The relationship between American Rap and British Rap, the relationship between Rap and Hip-Hop, the relationship between a teacher that can think outside the box, with kids, who are thinking outside the box. Kids that are intelligent, who really want an education, but feel stifled by the system…all these things.

Big thanks to Benjamin Zephaniah