Review: Raise the Bar at Arnolfini

DJ Ngaio’s deliciously upbeat set perfectly captures the mood for the evening as audience members file into Arnolfini’s theatre for Raise the Bar’s September show. This Thursday evening performance is RTB’s first event of the season and first time in this venue and the riotous mish-mash of afrobeat, hip-hop and r’n’b flooding the theatre makes it clear that they are set on making a big noise about it.

Host Danny ‘Craft D’ Pandolfi kicks off proceedings by getting the audience warmed up for the evening of spoken word, which means shaking off traditional theatre etiquette. Out-loud reactions are encouraged, whether that’s through an “ooooh”, a gasp, clicking or stamping – whatever takes your fancy.

Craft D hones our reactions for every eventuality, including for the moment when someone “drops the most shit-hot line of poetry”. It’s a good job, as this comes in handy at several points throughout the evening.

Former RTB team members Connor Macleod and Kathryn O’Driscoll are first to step up and each demonstrates the power of a single poem to change the mood. Macleod’s To the loneliness of Alfred J. Prufrock initially seems to be an irreverent spin on the T S Eliot original, though the plaintive note of his ending line signals a much darker conclusion.

O’Driscoll’s piece charting her relationship with her disabled sister is similarly melancholic, although an underlying spike of defiance prevents the mood from miring too early in the show.

Next up comes Ngaio Aniya, demonstrating her multiple talents. The cool self-assuredness that she displayed on the decks is replaced by a carefully-considered and lyrical refusal to pander to stipulations of male desire. The poem, written in honour of International Women’s Day, is clearly deeply resonant with members of the audience judging by the tone of their audible responses.

Laureate’s Choice 2016 winner, Tom Sastry, takes to the stage next. The emotional complexity of his verse, at once harrowingly honest and self-deprecatingly humorous, displays a deep understanding of the human condition. Sastry is clearly well-tuned to his audience, putting the room in stitches during a rant against hipsters. In one poem he asks: “Don’t you hate their £2,000 laptops on which they crowdfund their trips to Nepal?”

Then comes Sarah McCreadie. Watching her stroll casually onto the stage, strawberry blonde hair piled high and rocking a football shirt, there is no way that the audience is prepared for the rhythmic reams of attitude about to pour forth from Sarah’s mouth.

As she dances from foot to foot, half-singing, half-reciting, she entrances the room with topics ranging from things she wished she was told as a little girl, the weirdness of goalkeepers, through to same-sex love. Her proclamation that “girls are gods with perfect patience who bleed profusely on a monthly basis” earns whoops of approval.

Sarah is a tough act to follow, but newcomer to the RTB team Saili Katebe shows that he was more than capable, as does Kat Lyons, who rounds off the warm up acts with a moving piece on clearing her mother’s house after her death.

Finally, the person we’ve all been waiting for, Danez Smith, takes to the stage. Three days ago Danez became the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Forward Prize for their collection of poetry Don’t Call Us Dead. Danez’s presence lights up the room instantly, proving that their skills extend far beyond the written word. Evidently out to woo the British audience, they wax lyrical about Greggs and Primark and joke about Brexit, commanding the room with their natural American charm and the ease of a born performer.

From the opening of Danez’s inital poem, Genesissy, the room is electrified. Moving seamlessly from humour to rage to despair, and delving into shiver-inducing soul music, Danez has the audience agonising with them over the conflict between religion and hate.

Danez is not afraid of making the audience uncomfortable. They expose the ugly truth of police brutality and white supremacy in Dear White America and invite, “all the white people not to excuse yourselves from this conversation”, just because we’re not American.

Far from alienating the audience, Danez draws us all into their universe and shows us the world as they see it. Their raw honesty and self-effacing humour enable them to tackle subjects of great emotional depth with both fierce passion and humbling vulnerability. It is awe-inspiring to witness, and galvanising in a way that only poetry written from the heart and soul can be.

If their performance was anything to go by, there’s no way that Danez’s star will stop rising anytime soon. This is a person with things to say and the power to express those things in ways that the world will stop to hear. To (mis)quote one of their own poems: Danez Smith, you’re my president.