Sing Like a River

The Evolution of 'Sing Like A River'

by Graham Mort

Listen to a reading of this poem
by Melissa Bailey

The original version of Sing Like A River emerged from a performance poetry workshop that I ran at the Beyond Borders festival in Kampala in October 2005. Over a period of three one-hour sessions, a group of African writers took part in a process designed to produce a collaborative ‘choral’ work.

I arrived at the festival without a clear thematic focus for the poem, though I did have a technique of composition and assemblage through metaphorical writing – or poetic ‘imaging’ – that I had tried and tested elsewhere. By the time the first workshop took place, language itself had become the focus of many discussions at the festival, especially the troubled relationship between English and indigenous African languages. At a festival representing 17 countries, each with a complex linguistic culture, English is a necessary lingua franca - but it is also a language metonymic of empire and the oppression of colonial rule.

I chose language itself as the theme of the workshops and asked the participants to write down all the words they knew - in any language - for speech or utterance. Since most Africans speak two, three, or even four languages, the result was a charged mass of words in languages ranging from Arabic to Sepedi, English to French, Afrikaans to Luganda and Kiswahili. We then began to work in English from a sense of common curiosity at finding ourselves at the confluence of linguistic and poetic cultures, assembling a draft of our poem through a process of personal endeavour, collaboration, negotiation, editing and re-drafting.

The resultant performance piece was regarded as a ‘score’ available to interpretation rather than as finite, stable, or finished text. The poet Val Bloom, who writes in Jamaican patois and English, worked with me to create a performance that retained many improvised multi-lingual elements whilst being mediated predominantly through English. Those verbal linguistic elements were, of course, underpinned by the performers’ body language – that universal gestural system.

The poem was performed at the festival and the writers involved in its creation dispersed. But I remained interested in the poem and decided to re-draft it as a piece that might work on the page, removing some of the rhetorical flourishes that had been devised for performance and tightening its focus a little. Then I wanted to see if the poem could become fluid again when translated back into some of the languages from which it had been precipitated by my workshops. I wanted to know how the poets involved would feel about that process and how they might talk about it. Could English act as a catalyst for indigenous African languages, rather than always occluding them? If so, what kind of polyphony might emerge?

The results, I think, are a fascinating account of a process that indicates the possibility of opening up the troubled interface between English and indigenous African languages through a creative dialectic.

February, 2006

Biography

Graham

A former freelance writer, Graham Mort has worked as a poet, educational writer, editor, and tutor in a wider range of settings throughout the UK and is a distance learning specialist. He is director of postgraduate studies for the Creative Writing courses at Lancaster and project leader of the British Council/Lancaster University African writers mentoring scheme, Crossing Borders (see also the Crossing Borders section on this site).

In recent years this research project has taken him to Uganda, Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, S. Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. He was a participant in, and the UK adviser for, the Beyond Borders pan-African literature festival in Uganda in October 2005, an event hosted by the British Council and involving writers from the UK and 17 African countries.

His research interests include contemporary fiction and poetry, literature development project design, emergent African writing and narratives of diaspora. He was a co-applicant on the ongoing Mediating Marginalities research project, which received an AHRC award of £365,000 to research the writings of migrant communities in Greater Manchester since 1960. He also co-organised the Department of English & Creative Writing Trans-Scripts seminar series on writing, location and culture, linking academic research to readings by contemporary writers – these will take place throughout the 2005/6 academic year.

Graham's first collection of poems, A Country On Fire, won a major Eric Gregory award from the Society of Authors; his last collection, Circular Breathing, was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. A new collection of poems, A Night On The Lash, was published by Seren in 2004. He has also written short fiction and radio drama for BBC Radio 4 and performed his work at literature festivals and venues throughout the UK and overseas.

go to Graham's page
on the Department website

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	Sing Like A River

The Evolution of 'Sing Like A River' by Graham Mort		Listen to a reading of this poem by Melissa Bailey
The original version of Sing Like A River emerged from a performance poetry workshop that I ran at the Beyond Borders festival in Kampala in October 2005. Over a period of three one-hour sessions, a group of African writers took part in a process designed to produce a collaborative ‘choral’ work. I arrived at the festival without a clear thematic focus for the poem, though I did have a technique of composition and assemblage through metaphorical writing – or poetic ‘imaging’ – that I had tried and tested elsewhere. By the time the first workshop took place, language itself had become the focus of many discussions at the festival, especially the troubled relationship between English and indigenous African languages. At a festival representing 17 countries, each with a complex linguistic culture, English is a necessary lingua franca - but it is also a language metonymic of empire and the oppression of colonial rule. I chose language itself as the theme of the workshops and asked the participants to write down all the words they knew - in any language - for speech or utterance. Since most Africans speak two, three, or even four languages, the result was a charged mass of words in languages ranging from Arabic to Sepedi, English to French, Afrikaans to Luganda and Kiswahili. We then began to work in English from a sense of common curiosity at finding ourselves at the confluence of linguistic and poetic cultures, assembling a draft of our poem through a process of personal endeavour, collaboration, negotiation, editing and re-drafting. The resultant performance piece was regarded as a ‘score’ available to interpretation rather than as finite, stable, or finished text. The poet Val Bloom, who writes in Jamaican patois and English, worked with me to create a performance that retained many improvised multi-lingual elements whilst being mediated predominantly through English. Those verbal linguistic elements were, of course, underpinned by the performers’ body language – that universal gestural system. The poem was performed at the festival and the writers involved in its creation dispersed. But I remained interested in the poem and decided to re-draft it as a piece that might work on the page, removing some of the rhetorical flourishes that had been devised for performance and tightening its focus a little. Then I wanted to see if the poem could become fluid again when translated back into some of the languages from which it had been precipitated by my workshops. I wanted to know how the poets involved would feel about that process and how they might talk about it. Could English act as a catalyst for indigenous African languages, rather than always occluding them? If so, what kind of polyphony might emerge? The results, I think, are a fascinating account of a process that indicates the possibility of opening up the troubled interface between English and indigenous African languages through a creative dialectic. February, 2006		Sing Like A River It’s dead and not yet born the first wordless cry of life a blessing and a curse I learned to sing. Sounds circled me tried to find one another like bats flitting through a dusk of silences. My tongue - a bell behind my teeth - longed for deeper sounds she yelled at the sun a shrill noise, unhappy song. Laughing, I mimed the music in my mind: now words bless and curse each elusive thought. It’s a ladder going up into darkness, a lightning strike, a beam of light in the dark, dark, night. The electricity that gives your memories life, a stabbing dagger a bitter pill, a drop of water in my parched throat. I learned to sing like a river babble like water then foreign tongues broke over my head. These tales, these streams flowing into unknown rivers meet at the sea of familiarity telling the strains of ancestry. A blessing, a curse a serpent, an angel with dark wings, the hooting of an owl the toad on your tongue A foe that torments when experience hurts it’s the friend that stays when loneliness strikes. It’s the key to open yourself, the lock that closes you a death rattle, a plea, a prayer the beginning and the end a rainbow splashed on the belly of the waterfall.
Biography A former freelance writer, Graham Mort has worked as a poet, educational writer, editor, and tutor in a wider range of settings throughout the UK and is a distance learning specialist. He is director of postgraduate studies for the Creative Writing courses at Lancaster and project leader of the British Council/Lancaster University African writers mentoring scheme, Crossing Borders (see also the Crossing Borders section on this site). In recent years this research project has taken him to Uganda, Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, S. Africa, Zimbabwe and Nigeria. He was a participant in, and the UK adviser for, the Beyond Borders pan-African literature festival in Uganda in October 2005, an event hosted by the British Council and involving writers from the UK and 17 African countries. His research interests include contemporary fiction and poetry, literature development project design, emergent African writing and narratives of diaspora. He was a co-applicant on the ongoing Mediating Marginalities research project, which received an AHRC award of £365,000 to research the writings of migrant communities in Greater Manchester since 1960. He also co-organised the Department of English & Creative Writing Trans-Scripts seminar series on writing, location and culture, linking academic research to readings by contemporary writers – these will take place throughout the 2005/6 academic year. Graham's first collection of poems, A Country On Fire, won a major Eric Gregory award from the Society of Authors; his last collection, Circular Breathing, was a Poetry Book Society recommendation. A new collection of poems, A Night On The Lash, was published by Seren in 2004. He has also written short fiction and radio drama for BBC Radio 4 and performed his work at literature festivals and venues throughout the UK and overseas. go to Graham's page on the Department website