On the arts and the legacy of the slave trade

As Bristol’s inaugural poet laureate Miles Chambers reaches the end of his term in office, he looks at the effect that poetry has had on his life as well as his views on other issues in Bristol from slavery to immigration.

There’s something about Bristol. It’s got a unique and quirky character. I call it the city of paradoxes. It’s got extremes about it: good and bad education, good and bad views, good and bad housing, very rich people and very poor people. Bristol, at this time particularly, wants to try and mend itself and address those issues.

……………………

The people of the city are generally concerned that there are some people who are homeless and some people that are living very well, and that some people who are equally as intelligent are going to get a bad deal at school. Bristol is clearly making an effort to resolve that.

……………………

The Colston Hall is a public hall. It is there for the whole of Bristol to go and enjoy and I think they have an obligation to choose a name which gives everybody access and makes everybody feel they belong there and everybody who’s from Bristol or a part of Bristol can feel comfortable being there. Changing the name on the Colston Hall is symbolic as a reaction to what we now understand that Colston made his money.

I think before the trans-Atlantic slave trade we didn’t really have a distinction between ‘you’re black so you’re inferior’ and ‘you’re white so you’re superior’. If you go back far enough, Europe between the eighth and 12th centuries was dominated by Moors, West African black people who basically created the foundation of what we know as civilised Europe. They created binary, our numerical system, the three-course meal, the first streetlights and the first forms of central heating. Universities, libraries, medicine, algebra. You could go on and on. No-one has told us this.

……………………

In the fifties and sixties, they said to the Afro Caribbean community, ‘Come over to this great country and we’ll look after you’. Then, when they got here, they said, ‘No sorry, you can’t do that, you can’t work here, you’ve got to go and live in the slums’. As we’ve grown up and progressed, we’ve permeated into the fabric of the city. Some of us work in the city council, some of us work in the industry of business. There’s not as much as we should do but we’ve progressed and we’re in positions where we can influence, challenge and question.

There are stereotypes in black culture and in West Indian culture such as ‘a trailer load a girls’ – an expression that indicates that the determining factor of how much of a man you are is the number of women you have and the number of children you breed. I personally believe that this concept comes from the idea that when the plantation owners and slave masters saw a big strong slave they would encourage him to mate with a big strong athletic woman and produce big strong athletic children – even if that woman was his sister or his mother or part of his family.

……………………

This is why if you look at Africans and Americans you see how much bigger and stronger Americans are – that’s because they’ve literally been genetically created to be these bigger, stronger people and that’s come from slavery. The slave traders and plantation owners used to take their big strong slaves around to different plantations and different islands in the West Indies to breed these men like cattle.

Miles Chambers is handing over the poet laureate baton to Vanessa Kisuule this month

I got into writing in two ways: through church, where we used to write poems all the time when we were kids. The other way was when as young teens, we used to get dub plates over from Jamaica with a heavy beat on and try and chat lyrics over them. We went to reggae parties where sound-systems used to battle against each other and we were these little boys trying to emulate great DJs chatting on the mic to the beat. In those days, to DJ or to toast was to chat on the mic to this beat and your lyrics, and whether you could get people dancing would determine whose sound-system was the best. My mates got quite good at it but I started not doing it to the music, hence I became known as a dub poet like Benjamin Zephaniah and Lyndon Kwesi Johnson.

……………………

In the mid 1990s, I joined a black writer’s group in Bristol at the Kuumba Arts Centre in St Paul’s. I found there were a lot of young writers that had a voice and something to say but who also wanted to explore their identity as black people. We encouraged each other in our writing and as the group grew we did workshops and got other writers to come in. Then we started getting offers to do stuff: writing plays, writing scripts for TV and slam poetry. We started being invited to slams, and then some of us started to win those slams, so we got known for spoken word and it evolved from there.

……………………

I’ve enjoyed being given a period of time to express my voice about Bristol and also to hear and encourage other people to express their voice, whatever they’re writing about. We’re engaged by the stories that we tell. To be put in a position where I can help Bristol discover its voice and I can express my own has been great. It’s also been fantastic going into schools, prisons and working with businesses to look at the many different ways in which your voice and poetry can complement that genre, that area or that project.

……………………

Rebecca Tantony said that she sees the role of a poet as the person at the front of an army before battle, speaking these words to motivate. They inspire, they motivate, they question, they’re social commentators and they also tell history in a certain way. To question and ask if you need a poet laureate is to question and debate the role of art. I’m not going to sit here and try and justify what role art plays in our society – it’s clear and it’s obvious.

……………………

You can’t monetise inspiration. You can’t put a price on being inspired or being moved to do something – it’s unique. I’m no lesser or greater than any other poet but many people have come up to me after a performance and said ‘that really touched me’ or  ‘I’m inspired to do something after those words’ – you can’t monetise that.

……………………

Miles Chambers presents The Remains of Slavery, exploring how slavery impacted peoples’ lives as part of the BBC Arts series Civilisations, available now on the BBC iPlayer.

As told to Nicola Heaney