Next year, Nottingham Poetry Festival will be celebrating its tenth anniversary. The longevity and success of the festival, which began as a project by Confetti and is now its own company, is an ode to Nottingham’s burgeoning poetry scene. This year, part of a jam-packed programme, is a screening of three films featuring poetry by the late, great, Benjamin Zephaniah. We spoke to the film's director and friend of Zephaniah, Benjamin Wigley, along with the festival’s creative director, Alma Solarte-Tobón.
Showing in this trio of films is the 2012 feature-length documentary Paa Joe & the Lion produced by Anna Griffin. It follows legendary Ghanian fantasy coffin maker Paa Joe and his son-come-apprentice Jacob, as they battle to keep their trade alive.
The film documents the duo's trip to Nottingham as they undertake their international artist residency at Clumber Park. The residency was sponsored by City Arts and facilitated by Wigley’s collaboration with Solarte-Tobón. The footage shows Paa Joe and Jacob hand carving a lion-shaped coffin as onlookers visit the park.
The documentary illustrates not only that their art is captivating, but that it creates a dialogue too. Wigley and Solarte-Tobón reminisce that the project “opened up the conversation about burials and how people wanted to go”. The documentary includes interviews with passers-by who vary in their responses to Paa Joe and Jacob's craft. As one comments that choosing a casket is “morbid” another ponders their own coffin choice, and it is clear that discussion around death varies widely.
Yet another hair in the project's mane, Wigley explains: “we worked with City Arts to build a kind of workshop infrastructure that enabled us to reach communities. It was a fantastic project because it was a very poor, predominantly white, ex-mining community who were introduced to all this African art.”
Zephaniah’s lyricism adds a distinct magic to Paa Joe & the Lion. It showcases his powerful ability to give energy and life to words where they may otherwise have been left to lie sleeping on the page.
What really weaves the documentary together is captivating narration by Benjamin Zephaniah. Wigley explains that this narration is bespoke: these poems were “written to guide the shape of the film under my direction.”
Wigley reached out to Zephaniah in search of “a different way of telling stories rather than traditional relationships.” It is certainly fitting that a trade as unique as fantasy coffin making - a trade that carefully chisels caskets to suit the buyer - should have narration that is equally bespoke. As such, the documentary features poems whose rhythm and rhyme have been consciously crafted.
This crafting by Zephaniah reflects the same themes the documentary inspects: art, love and death. Naturally, this is combined with his never-ceasing sense of justice. Zephaniah reads a few lines towards to documentary's end:
“We all came here to go down there,
We all came here to disappear,
We are all going to the truth of the self,
Regardless of earthly possessions and wealth”
Zephaniah’s lyricism adds a distinct magic to Paa Joe & the Lion. It showcases his powerful ability to give energy and life to words where they may otherwise have been left to lie sleeping on the page.
This same magic is similarly conjured in the two accompanying film's in the festival's programme: the 2010 short film P.S. Your Mystery Sender, and 2021’s In this World. Both works highlight Zephaniah’s writing because they exhibit his use of the oral tradition in poetry. It is this spoken performance - sometimes playful, sometimes political, often both - that encouraged many people who were felt excluded from traditional poetry to enjoy it.
Solarte-Tobón explains that the festival was already set to include Wigley and Zephaniah’s films when they planned it last year. When Zephaniah passed away last December due to a brain tumour, the pair decided to donate all funds to the Braintrust charity. Solarte-Tobón stressed the importance of raising awareness of brain tumours: “They can be very isolating, it’s such a shame that we lost Benjamin for that reason, but we can raise awareness and show that there is support for people.”
Solarte-Tobón enthused that there will be poets on the day of screening who will read both Zephaniah’s poems and their own. In this way, they can pay tribute through reflecting on his words, and continue his legacy by reading their own. “It’s going to be a really beautiful day for poetry,” she says, “We’ve got a panel discussion at Rough Trade, and a poetry slam between Nottingham and Derby.”
When asked about inclusivity in regards to the festival, Solarte-Tobón said, “We open the festival up to different communities who put on different poetry events so it’s almost like a fringe. Everyone gets to submit what they’d like to do”.
The screening of A Tribute to Benjamin Zephaniah takes place on the final day of the festival on Sunday 16 June at 3pm. Another event in the festival's week-long calendar is also a tribute to Zephaniah: Eat Your Words is being led by Chris Oliver and Olga Andrade at New Art Exchange on Friday 14 June.
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