I have been blessed with an amazing team of people to make the next phase of the development of the Conversations project.

There is so much to talk about in terms of the dream for this project…will flesh it out later.

But I will say that this is  technically phase three of the project because I started to incubate and develop the concept 3 or 4 years ago. Back then the team was myself, Moss Velez, Henrik Jensen and Randolph Matthews at the Poetry Cafe in 2002…
Oops, that’ll be 7 years… my, don’t time fly!

But here we are in 2009 and now I’m looking at forging some strong bonds and digging some deep roots for a sanctuary to exist, where professional and emerging artists can come together and make work in new ways.

CONVERSATIONS: TO INTIMACY AND BEYOND exploring human connection in the 21st Century. Click for more info.

@ The Albany, Deptford, Douglas Way,  London SE8 4AG

Tickets £9, £6 concs

Box Office 020 8692 4446 / www.thealbany.org.uk

Musical Cinema-sculpting by:
Jason Yarde – Saxophone
Soweto Kinch – Saxophone
Ben Hazelton – Bass
Jon Speedy – Guitar
Cheryl Alleyne – Drums
Thebe Lipere – Percussion
Simon Colam – Keys and FX

Poetic Lushness with
Zena Edwards – Poetesting
HKB FiNN – Spoken Herbs
Maxwell Golden – Wordsmithery
Leeto Thale – Poetic Lucidity

Sight-sensatizing by

Your Mum Visuals – Kelly Budge and Matt Williams

It’s been just over a month since I performed at a gig to raise awareness of the injustice done to Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 other Ogoni activists, by Shell Oil. I had already written a poem for a Tribute anthology called “Dance the Guns to Silence” with the poem, “Baba Wiwa’s Trees”, in 2006. When I was commissioned to write this poem, I learned so much about this brave, smiling man Ken Saro-Wiwa and what he was fighting for. Writer, activist and Eco-warrior, he and 8 of his fellow Ogoni’s, stood up against the Nigerian government and Royal Dutch Shell (Shell Oil) to speak out against numerous abuses of human right down to the laying of pipelines through the homelands of peoples from the Niger Delta. For that, they were hung.

To write a poem this time round had more resonance for me because those who were fighting for justice were at the brink of a winning a significant part of the war. I wanted this to be a poem for going into battle. I would not deign myself a great war poet or anything but what I felt when I wrote this piece inspired me to want to learn more . The desire to pay homage to Ken and the Ogoni 9 brought to my attention the issue of the power of human rights law, or its lack of, should I say. It might sound slightly incredulous that human right law is non-existant in the area of economics when you live with the cushtiness of four solid walls, a full fridge and a flat screen TV but organisations like Amnesty are fighting every day for the rights of us, “human beings”, to live decent lives – to have a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT OF EXISTENCE. Sometimes we just have to sit with that concept for a while and give thanks.. “There, but for the grace of God…” as my Mum would say.

As corporate, criminal and governmental law is constantly changing to protect the money of a few wealthy individuals, the goal posts for human rights keep shifting too. Human beings actually are in dire need for laws of protection and it seems human rights law is a few steps behind. This imbalance is obviously… putting it flatly…..outta order.

The Ken vs Shell case raises the awareness to the fact that there is no law for human rights abuses by corporate businesses. So it has been fine for decades, for Shell oil to pay the myopic Nigerian government and  military to “protect” their interests, even if it means ordinary civilians are losing their lives due to gas flaring, crude oil poisoning of the wells and sickness due to breathing in methane gas. Peoples livelihoods are under ruined as crops are failing and fresh water fish are dying in the rivers. Shell called on the Nigerian military to suppress any peaceful protest against the ravaging of the environment.

Also, civilians are injured every day as they siphon off oil from fractured pipelines because there is no electricity or other source of energy to power their homes. The situation is dire. Unemployment is as high as 86%, and the moral of the Delta people is so low.

But Victory has a sweet, sweet taste.

“After 13 years, the Ogoni plaintiffs whose loved ones were killed and injured in the military crackdowns that Shell facilitated in the 1990s, won an out of court settlement of $15.5 million. In every way, this sets a precedent for corporate accountability, and the universal application of human rights.” - a quote from Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa email newsletter.

Click to read an article from Ken’s son, Ken Saro-Wiwa Jnr in The Guardian.
And to find out more click to go to thewww.remembersarowiwa.com to find out more.
For Images that inspired the poem click – Curse of the Blackgold

Untitled

by Zena Edwards

Ken, there is a photo of a girl
12,13 slim wrists long neck
she walks wearing peach, blue flip flops
stepping with familiarity
over the slippery backs of 8 pipelines
she is at 5
holding an umbrella with a bright yellow shell on it
she seeks protection from a gentle rain falling from an African sky
behind her, between giant palm leaves
dragons roar, bellowing black billows, seething
belligerent belches of acridity in the sky
when I put my ear close to the glossy paper I can hear
her asthmatic breath

each clap of her plastic flip flop against her heel
makes a poem, applaud the poem in her step
it is the sound of everyday people who live between the pipelines, tapeworms
vampiring the placenta, excreting toxic
into the bloodstream of a nation
the rivers are graveyards, the wetlands thirsty for clean breath
the land is haemorraghing
miscarrying cocoyam and vegetable seed

Boys who have given up waiting for jobs to come
Idly eye her as she walks by
A generation numbed by the futility of existence
It is ironic that their most valuable asset is their Achilles heel
As the stagnancy of fervent youth
Dumps them in the hands of AK47 robber gangs
who howl in the night to the tune
Of their masters – myopic madmen in business
Grappling for a fist of flaccid dollars
Greed at the price of a village

But then again, everything has it’s price in this world
Like this girls poetry in her step, her lungs
A fair currency, fat with poisonous air
Her mothers sludge garden, her fathers chest
Face and shoulder, burned in the last accident

The truth is a jealous but patient thing
It brook no hazes of the facts or credibility gaps
There is only one fragrance it will lie with
Time, the scent of time moves from fresh to death, rot to humus fertilisation of new days

It is between the pages of a day in court
That a mystery will be solved
Why it takes twelve long years to walk the twisted violent gauntlet to justice
Why nine lives were thrown into a wound cut with knives of lies

How the spirits of the tortured and the murdered
Can be redeemed from the dispassionate mouth of brutal
greed
And how with the wondrous alchemy of Nature, instead of bitter bile
Rising into the mouths of fishermen and farmers

work songs will rise over the trees
Will dance with the fish along the creeks
Will paint across a sky uninterrupted by fire and towers of black smoke
And how the poem of the girl with the blue flip flops can be fetched
From under the fattened rump of human disregard

And raised to re-imagine the world
Why she close the umbrella with the yellow shell
And walk in the unpolluted gentle rain falling from an African sky

Written by Zena Edwards (copyright)

Dedicated to the artist – the warrior engaged in daily struggle for all the truth in creativity, untainted and ego-free. Seeing past the masks of the industry to the reach the heart and spirit of the open ear and eye.

The Artist

So here it is
Nothing more nothing less
This
My body
These bones
This muscle
This voice
These eyes
These feet Nothing more nothing less
But

this,
This body
With this spirit
This life
This light
This
Is all that I have

This sound
This painting
This vision
This song
This lyric
This potion
This magic
Is all that this body and spirit have
To offer
Nothing more nothing less
And yes

This power
This beat
This breathe
This passion
This fire
This desire
Is all I can stand
And I stand

Tall
In my light
In my darkness
In my might
With my tongue
With my body
With my God

With my song
With my poem
With my dance
With my drum in my heart
With my muscle
And my Dream
With my People
With my Tribe
With my Culture
Veiled and revealed

I burn candle
I burn night
I burn stages
I burn bright

With my song
With my poem
With my dance
For my People
For Tribe
With my drum in my heart
With my muscle
And my dream

With just my body
And my spirit
I fight battles
And win wars
And the mighty
Shall tumble and fall

Under my poem
And my song
With my dance
With this
This, my body
These bones
This muscle
This voice
These eyes
These feet
Nothing more nothing less

So here it is
Nothing more nothing less

The Artist© – written by Zena Edwards

Corr Blimey! It’s nuts!!

Emails, phone calls, meetings, emails fone calls, meetings, femails, mone talls eetingz teephails lone malls peetfings…!!
No food. No sleep… as for writing a poem? When’s that miracle supposed to happen?!!! ……aaaarrggh!!

And I wake up some days thinking. “What the (expletive)!! What The (beep beep) am I doing all this (can’t say that) work for!!!
I’ve been busting a gut trying to get figure out how to get an agent, meetings for new projects and getting the two other blogs up and running. Conversations and Security.

I’ve had some very exciting progressions though, because sometimes, doing this poetry thing is as abstract as a Jackson Pollok piece. (tho I happen to think he’s quite cool.) But you know when you feel like you’re one step away from a major breakthrough? The one that is the catalyst for divine enlightenment? Like you’re about to understand the meaning of life? well the reason for why I do this Poetry malarky is about ….5 of those steps away. But its all good though. a step closer than yesterday.

I’ve had some great chats with the like of Malika Booker, Francesca Beard, connected with Lemn Sissay. And funny enough, I got a request to do an interview from an MA Poetry student on the necessity of network in the development of an Poets. IT’S CRUCIAL! That would be the answer to that. Interview done. I’ll be reflecting on that a a bit later.

But hey, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t writing at all. A journal entry and the odd squeak of creativity will filter though the other mental static. Besides, if I didn’t think all the madness and mayhem was worth it then I’d be bovvered about what people thought of me when I come out my house looking as bedraggled as Lilly Allen on a good night out, after 21 hour, 18 hour, 13 hour stretches at the computer hooking up the blogs. Appreciate it if you took a look at them and commented. Particularly for spelling mistakes cos I can’t see straight anymore…. singed retinas and all.

Back on the other side of the weekend

Peace and Candy

*~Z~*

Check this Pollok Link. Jacksonpollok.org Its WIKKID FUN!!

Now I gotta tell you, there is a multitude of reasons I love the Albany in Deptford. I’d go there just for the food. But what I love about the place is that as a community venue, I feel it is used BY THE COMMUNITY!

There’s theatre, live (really live) music, performance poetry, evening courses, childrens ballet, an OAP choirs, Heads for Business advice service if your just starting out as a new business, a special needs disco… I mean I could go on.

Young, old, disabled, every culture and creed that I believe makes up the area of Deptford, thus representing the city of London, uses this space. It feels like a family home with the same tensions and bubble Love you get in any family home. It’s real. No pretences or pretensions. I put that down to the staff and the programming of events that go on there. I find that too many venues lose their way in how they provide art for their local community because of funding. It’s all about ticket sales -  “bums on seats.”

It’s a kind of tyranny when a venue is at the mercy of fulfilling the criteria set by funding bodies. But I get it. I’m not mad at anyone. The Olympics are coming to town and everyone is feeling the pinch as cuts are made to budgets of community venues, charities and arts project a like. I myself know a couple of people personally who have seriously felt the slash of the blade and their organisations are “not waving but drowning” or have well and truly sunk. It ain’t fair.

But what amazes me – and it really is a testament to the spirit of creativity – there are artists who just keep on keeping on. Broke as broke can get; they’ll build a bridge when there’s a ravine, they’ll build a raft if there’s rushing water, they’ll spit on a fire if they thought it would hold back the flames from consumming an arts project, a gig, event , screening or exhibition. They find a way out of “know” way. Aside from this being very Hip Hop, it is also a testament to those who believe in filling that gap in the spirit of society where the heart of survival exists. Make art. Everybody make art. And The Albany is a place where they hail this motto.

Yesterday it was all about the power moves and the sweat pants and hairspray. I have never seen so many mad hair do’s stuck to foreheads, flying off every which-a-way. Then there was the ants-in-yer-pants massive, jiggling bodies in tank tops or heavy cotton sweats. So many budding young dancers itching in their seats to up rock, body wave, head spin, you name it they’ve contorted their bodies to do it. Bass bin speakers in Sadlers wells were working hard, Makes me feel old. Not that told but old enough. Ken Swift’s 7 Gems made me relax. Old skool moves by b-boys and b-girls who just had hip hop in their bones and it flowed out of them effortless. Loved them. The highlight was a rendition of Korean military dictatorship history, told with humour, sensitivity, and some badass body popping and break dance. They made the big finale with the girls screaming and the boy woofing. If you haven’t been to Jonzi D’s Breakin’ Convention then you need to get there. Website address FYI – http://www.breakinconvention.com/

Peace and Jollof

*~Z~*

Yes it certainly has been that. Too long. But a good long. A long enough to have me here for 5… I lie, 7 hours, beautifying and updating my other blogs.
http://zenaedwards.wordpress.com and
http://zenaedwardsconversations.wordpress.com/

One woman show has been taking on a life of its own and, really, after two years, it ’s behaving badly or shall I say uncontrollably and taking on a life of its own. But I do not begrudge it. It the best thing to happen to me.

So here on WordPress, eyes are stinging, sun is up, birds singing and I’m about to make some rice crispies with warm milk