1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:10,110 As I'm sure many of you know, Daljeet has become a conspicuous figure on the contemporary literary landscape ever since his debut collection. 2 00:00:10,110 --> 00:00:17,830 Look, we have coming to Dover and with its work, you learn very quickly to read out punctuation marks. 3 00:00:17,830 --> 00:00:29,010 Look, we have coming to Dover exclamation mark when it won the Ford prise for the first best the best first collection in 2007. 4 00:00:29,010 --> 00:00:33,660 Since then, he's published two further volumes, also with Faber and Faber. 5 00:00:33,660 --> 00:00:41,100 One, the Tipu Sultan's wonderfully titled Tipu Sultan's Incredible White Man Eating Tiger Toy Machine. 6 00:00:41,100 --> 00:00:46,350 Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. That's from 2011. 7 00:00:46,350 --> 00:00:52,620 And the latest one, The Ramayana, a retelling from 2013 from last year. 8 00:00:52,620 --> 00:00:58,620 I'm pleased to say that Dalgaard has not only agreed to read from all three volumes this evening, 9 00:00:58,620 --> 00:01:04,470 he's also obligingly gone along with the format that I proposed for this evening's events, 10 00:01:04,470 --> 00:01:11,520 which is based on the long running BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs. 11 00:01:11,520 --> 00:01:17,340 The difference is that whereas the guests choose their favourite tunes in the original, 12 00:01:17,340 --> 00:01:26,250 I take the prerogative in this version to choose some of my favourite poems from the guest body of work, which they then read and we discuss briefly. 13 00:01:26,250 --> 00:01:36,960 We're also very keen to open up the discussion at the end for questions from you, so please make notes. 14 00:01:36,960 --> 00:01:45,360 Choosing a sample of tollgates work from across those three collections, of course, hasn't been easy to make it more manageable. 15 00:01:45,360 --> 00:01:51,000 I focussed on four of his guiding preoccupations and there's kind of four segments to this evening. 16 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:57,030 We'll take you through all of these. The first is his interest in questions of cultural diversity. 17 00:01:57,030 --> 00:02:03,000 The second is his preoccupation with language and in particular with the English language and its history. 18 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:07,980 The third is the canons of English literature and his awareness of an engagement with that. 19 00:02:07,980 --> 00:02:19,380 And the final point is his interest in translation. Yet my choices mainly reflect what I've decided to opt on and mainly reflect what I 20 00:02:19,380 --> 00:02:26,040 find most compelling about the experience of reading and hearing delegate's work. 21 00:02:26,040 --> 00:02:39,420 The often unnerving sense that I am watching a skilled, daring, verbal, high wire artist performing an exceptional balancing act. 22 00:02:39,420 --> 00:02:46,500 The voice Dalgaard has fashioned for himself, which is as much written as spoken as I think we will hear this evening, 23 00:02:46,500 --> 00:02:57,150 somehow manages to contain and encompass within itself high seriousness and St. Jerkiness, 24 00:02:57,150 --> 00:03:04,410 the raucously bawdy and the studiously reflective a degree of literary, 25 00:03:04,410 --> 00:03:13,560 perhaps even postmodern self-consciousness and an unabashedly unironic strength of feeling. 26 00:03:13,560 --> 00:03:23,310 And at the same time, with all of this, a capacity to absorb a wide range of contemporary English idioms in a way that would probably upset both Eric 27 00:03:23,310 --> 00:03:31,860 Pickles and Nigel Farage and a keen interest in archiving the Englishes of the imperial past and so much more so. 28 00:03:31,860 --> 00:03:44,730 I hope you'll all get a sense of these tensions this evening and like me, enjoy the spectacle of Daljeet unique highwire style of performance art. 29 00:03:44,730 --> 00:03:52,380 So thanks for agreeing not only to come this evening, but to play along with this particular format. 30 00:03:52,380 --> 00:03:57,510 Right. OK, you do want to mention that because there was a quote. 31 00:03:57,510 --> 00:04:07,290 Oh, yes. That was the reference to Eric Pickles in a parliamentary interview actually, for I think it's called the House magazine. 32 00:04:07,290 --> 00:04:15,120 And a few years ago, two years ago, you know that Eric Pickles has been on a campaign about immigrants needing to learn English. 33 00:04:15,120 --> 00:04:19,470 And in that statement, he made the particular use. 34 00:04:19,470 --> 00:04:23,640 The particular phrase of the key thing was that people, immigrants had to not only learn English, 35 00:04:23,640 --> 00:04:28,230 but they had to learn English like a native is the phrase that he used. 36 00:04:28,230 --> 00:04:38,640 That was that was the bit that a lot of native. Right. So, as I said, I've chosen various bits from across all of Daljeet, three volumes. 37 00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:44,130 And the first one that I've asked if he could read has come from his first collection. 38 00:04:44,130 --> 00:04:50,460 Look, we have coming to Dover and it is called Cover Questions, 39 00:04:50,460 --> 00:05:00,000 got a wonderfully long punctuated title cover questions, the ontology of representation, the catch 22 for. 40 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:06,060 Black writers, dot, dot, dot. Yeah, sorry. 41 00:05:06,060 --> 00:05:15,720 So you go for it, you are going to start really negatively because I hardly ever read this poem and this is good good for me to have to read it, 42 00:05:15,720 --> 00:05:20,970 because sometimes I have a sense of a voice for them and that I write them and then I find a way to interpret them. 43 00:05:20,970 --> 00:05:30,030 So I'll give this a go. This is based on the NEA Bee GCSE anthology, which I think you remind me of. 44 00:05:30,030 --> 00:05:37,560 It was 1996 for about a decade and it kind of cornered the market in British GCSE. 45 00:05:37,560 --> 00:05:43,740 That of you might study that, I think at about 92 percent at one point of all GCSE students. 46 00:05:43,740 --> 00:05:48,000 And, you know, because they were given the anthology free to all schools to give out to students. 47 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:51,240 And that was a kind of a new new approach in education. 48 00:05:51,240 --> 00:05:57,930 So they suddenly kind of cornered the market and with the poetry they had as one section where they had Heeney, 49 00:05:57,930 --> 00:06:04,770 sometimes Mahayni, sometimes oblique, and sometimes the Gillian Clark, and then had a section of poets from other cultures. 50 00:06:04,770 --> 00:06:11,400 And it's called other cultures. And I guess one of the issues, me, when this poem was that some of those poets from other cultures actually born here, 51 00:06:11,400 --> 00:06:19,090 like Menezes', Ravi and the others were the ones who were born here and actually doing it. 52 00:06:19,090 --> 00:06:23,850 A Welsh poet and a and an Irish poet was seen as being partly in English, 53 00:06:23,850 --> 00:06:29,040 whether in England, studied in certainly Spain, might might speak as a father. 54 00:06:29,040 --> 00:06:35,340 I guess he's complained to a teacher about this anthology. And then in the poem this the father turns on me. 55 00:06:35,340 --> 00:06:42,510 He's going to turn them in and he mentions Boram Bagram's, another character, and another one of my poems. 56 00:06:42,510 --> 00:06:47,610 Yeah, I it's really get a sense of the madness of it. 57 00:06:47,610 --> 00:06:55,770 Why give my boy this freebie of a Silky Blue GCSE anthology with his three poets from three parts of Britain? 58 00:06:55,770 --> 00:07:04,440 You're HBC of any Blakelock showing us how to think and feel for Part two US 59 00:07:04,440 --> 00:07:10,500 as a bunch of Gunga Din newgroup poems from other cultures and traditions. 60 00:07:10,500 --> 00:07:17,880 Other is all we are to you, to this country, other, to my sons, kabbadi posse, all your poets, 61 00:07:17,880 --> 00:07:27,150 other what free mounding teacher are you to love our poem where a goat's neck is cut for Blaesing new house? 62 00:07:27,150 --> 00:07:33,600 Our [INAUDIBLE] poet saying such houses same as Duco, my boy. 63 00:07:33,600 --> 00:07:39,600 Will he think every new baritone Muslim have got blood party barbecue? 64 00:07:39,600 --> 00:07:51,180 All we do is think all we do you think is pray for the curse of incarnations as in that Scorpion Sting poem where the mother is mantid to death. 65 00:07:51,180 --> 00:07:57,720 That I do not know. We have doctors and rocket rickshaw. Ambulance you teachers. 66 00:07:57,720 --> 00:08:03,360 I like this Daljeet Balram, micken of me as Kabah. 67 00:08:03,360 --> 00:08:12,690 I say for the garment of my voice. Maybe Sestina Sonnett Tangka with best words please. 68 00:08:12,690 --> 00:08:17,460 A dictation of the way I lecture Punjabi to my boy after school. 69 00:08:17,460 --> 00:08:22,080 So what can I do? He too shy to use his voice. 70 00:08:22,080 --> 00:08:26,610 He brought me as funny or a type even worse. 71 00:08:26,610 --> 00:08:39,630 So he is used in British anthologies. He hide in these whity fantham English Blackett to make me sound foreign language. 72 00:08:39,630 --> 00:08:45,540 OK, what are one of the things I just wanted to ask you about that is that in a sense reading that poem now. 73 00:08:45,540 --> 00:08:49,890 So this comes from the 2007 anthology, although you've been publishing, 74 00:08:49,890 --> 00:08:57,780 you've been published since the late 90s, but so your publishing career sort of overlapped that anthology. 75 00:08:57,780 --> 00:09:06,870 But now, in a sense, history is caught up with you because you are now an expert in the Akua anthology, 76 00:09:06,870 --> 00:09:12,090 which I was hoping you weren't going to mention that. So you've now got caught up in all of this. 77 00:09:12,090 --> 00:09:19,110 And it's particularly with the poem, again, from from this collection called SING-SONG And again, 78 00:09:19,110 --> 00:09:25,410 typically with ah, with delegates work, you need to check the spelling. 79 00:09:25,410 --> 00:09:31,110 So it's singing in each song. That's that's the poem that's been anthologised. 80 00:09:31,110 --> 00:09:39,810 Can you get a cheap joke at the moment. Seeks the male seeks out singing and the middle name. 81 00:09:39,810 --> 00:09:43,080 Could you just talk a little bit about that sense of having, you know, 82 00:09:43,080 --> 00:09:51,430 writing a poem like this in which you you're taking on the GCSE anthologies and indeed yourself and now you've become part of that big machine? 83 00:09:51,430 --> 00:10:00,850 Yeah, yeah. I guess when you mention the title of the previous one in a couple of questions and talking about the catch 22 of black writers. 84 00:10:00,850 --> 00:10:05,800 It probably ties him to sing song in a way, because I was trying to think of when, 85 00:10:05,800 --> 00:10:11,080 you know, when you see an Asian people background anthologies in British anthologies, 86 00:10:11,080 --> 00:10:20,890 often the poems use the ones that sound authentically Indian, even though the poet may have had a Western education or Western upbringing. 87 00:10:20,890 --> 00:10:27,140 So it's quite difficult in a sense that he wants to be recognised, but as a as a sort of person from an Asian background. 88 00:10:27,140 --> 00:10:32,920 But you have to you feel like you have to put on an Asian to be accepted. 89 00:10:32,920 --> 00:10:39,480 And I don't say that's cynical. I guess I just mean it realistically is quite often when I seen sort of reviews of 90 00:10:39,480 --> 00:10:46,990 it's often always been that been seen in a kind of line of other black Asian poets. 91 00:10:46,990 --> 00:10:53,170 And I was aware of that. My first book came out as being seen in terms of other Caribbean poets and Indian poets 92 00:10:53,170 --> 00:10:57,740 who'd come to Britain since the late 50s and some of whom I actually read at all. 93 00:10:57,740 --> 00:11:02,410 And I was much more familiar with, say, Shakespeare or Milton, people like that. 94 00:11:02,410 --> 00:11:07,390 But I guess there's an inevitability to see you in a line. So I guess in terms of. 95 00:11:07,390 --> 00:11:12,790 SING-SONG Yeah, on one hand they don't have the other culture section anymore. 96 00:11:12,790 --> 00:11:20,000 So I was pleased that they got rid of that. And it doesn't surprise me that sort been there. 97 00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:23,980 It's always quite jolly perky, happy go lucky kind of poem. 98 00:11:23,980 --> 00:11:28,540 And I did it in a really thick Indian voice, 99 00:11:28,540 --> 00:11:36,820 but I guess hopefully the of will find this little bits of subversion and that if I gets taught in schools and also said that shopkeeper I, 100 00:11:36,820 --> 00:11:45,730 I would see shops, Indians having shops in a very positive light because you know, from my background you come from Lunik and uneducated education. 101 00:11:45,730 --> 00:11:51,490 You're going to work in factories to to buy a shop would be a great economic achievement. 102 00:11:51,490 --> 00:11:58,410 So partly a celebration of that. But I don't know if that would ever come across and on by the school curriculum. 103 00:11:58,410 --> 00:12:05,920 Mm hmm. And it's also it's a kind of it's a it's a positive, uplifting, in a sense upbeat and funny, funny poem. 104 00:12:05,920 --> 00:12:13,480 But in a sense and it's also it's as in the the title suggests, it's also a love poem in many ways, a kind of a curious sort of love poem. 105 00:12:13,480 --> 00:12:17,950 But one of the things is that when you look across your whole the whole they've 106 00:12:17,950 --> 00:12:22,210 chosen that poem to kind of represent you in this for the GCSE syllabus. 107 00:12:22,210 --> 00:12:26,080 But there's also other poems that are maybe a little bit more unsettling, 108 00:12:26,080 --> 00:12:29,560 dealing with similar sort of subject matter in many ways and often some of the sort of voice. 109 00:12:29,560 --> 00:12:33,100 But something like Darling and Me is also a love poem. 110 00:12:33,100 --> 00:12:42,130 But it's a it's a slightly more menacing Yeah. Love poem. And so what about the fact that they've they've selected that aspect of it? 111 00:12:42,130 --> 00:12:44,660 Yeah, I think you're right. I guess to sing songs. 112 00:12:44,660 --> 00:12:51,430 I mean, one of the things I was trying to do is write that in first generation, second generation Indians in dialogue. 113 00:12:51,430 --> 00:12:55,300 So SING-SONG isn't really threatening to white Western audience because it's 114 00:12:55,300 --> 00:13:00,640 not really saying anything about non Indians as that kind of debate there. 115 00:13:00,640 --> 00:13:11,500 So it can be just read in a humorous way about one generation talking back to another and almost be interpreted in a sort of other cultures way. 116 00:13:11,500 --> 00:13:16,900 Still, what are we learning about Indians? And that's something I guess I was aware of. 117 00:13:16,900 --> 00:13:23,860 My poetry would be seen as news, you know, given information about particular small community. 118 00:13:23,860 --> 00:13:31,540 And so for me, it's very important to make sure I kind of had as many contradictions in the work as possible, as many different perspectives. 119 00:13:31,540 --> 00:13:38,620 So there's I guess since I'm quite happy about arranged marriage as well to some degree, and there's pain, there's an apron, 120 00:13:38,620 --> 00:13:48,490 which isn't, as you know, frankly, they saw games as little tricks that unsettle settled perception of the world. 121 00:13:48,490 --> 00:13:53,590 But in a sense, what happens with the presence of anthologised thing is it kind of it resettles it. 122 00:13:53,590 --> 00:13:57,640 And so it's very important for people to get back to your whole collection to get the range. 123 00:13:57,640 --> 00:14:01,390 Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I guess what really happened school. 124 00:14:01,390 --> 00:14:05,140 But I mean on the positive, I'm very happy to be on anthology's. Great. Yeah. 125 00:14:05,140 --> 00:14:13,270 You know, it's just as a poet, you know, when you start writing you expect to have no audience and erm for the book came out I was 126 00:14:13,270 --> 00:14:16,720 still expecting to have no audience and even when it came out I was expecting no audience, 127 00:14:16,720 --> 00:14:21,110 you know, no interest to be in anthologies of any wonderful things. 128 00:14:21,110 --> 00:14:23,380 I'm actually happy about it. 129 00:14:23,380 --> 00:14:29,780 And presumably it's also because as I said before, for most of us now, that's the first encounter with poetry is by the school. 130 00:14:29,780 --> 00:14:40,840 So it's a vital word. Yes. It's great to maybe move on to the next one, which is so we're the other side of it, as I mentioned, of of of work. 131 00:14:40,840 --> 00:14:42,520 That certainly fascinates me is that, yes, 132 00:14:42,520 --> 00:14:50,860 there's this incredible year for contemporary English idioms in all their variety, which we'll hear more of later on. 133 00:14:50,860 --> 00:14:58,540 But there's also this fascination with archiving, in a sense, the old imperial Englishes. 134 00:14:58,540 --> 00:15:07,430 And I've been. I struggled and I think we'll have to watch the time, but but I've struggled to choose between two poems for this bit. 135 00:15:07,430 --> 00:15:12,620 This is the history of the language bit. And the one was a wonderful poem, which we probably won't have time for. 136 00:15:12,620 --> 00:15:14,830 But I really recommend you have a look at. 137 00:15:14,830 --> 00:15:26,360 It's just called a scent of a Victorian woman, which is about a colonial Victorian woman making the journey from Calcutta up to Darjeeling. 138 00:15:26,360 --> 00:15:31,310 And sort of it's all in her idiom and it's actually presented as a journal. It's a wonderful poem. 139 00:15:31,310 --> 00:15:42,190 But for the purposes of this bit, the the poem that I've selected instead is called Appropriately for those you know, your love. 140 00:15:42,190 --> 00:15:46,400 Can this be the PUCA verse? 141 00:15:46,400 --> 00:15:51,620 And it comes from the Sultan Collection. Yeah. 142 00:15:51,620 --> 00:15:57,200 And you can mention I've taken a few words from Hopsin Jobs and the Victorian Glossary. 143 00:15:57,200 --> 00:15:58,730 I mentioned a couple of them. 144 00:15:58,730 --> 00:16:09,140 I mentioned fishing fleets with the women that went to the various places in the Empire to try and find themselves a man, a husband, best women, 145 00:16:09,140 --> 00:16:15,380 shame and partly thinking towards the end about mixing the mixing of cultures with letters which led to 146 00:16:15,380 --> 00:16:22,070 children being born and the Indians who want the children because they were seen as half breeds or half caste, 147 00:16:22,070 --> 00:16:27,320 that kind of thing. And they're obviously British. And what my says, there's a whole kind of history of those sort of children. 148 00:16:27,320 --> 00:16:33,110 And I was partly thinking about the pleasure, the leisure goes and this is the ultimate leisure at the end. 149 00:16:33,110 --> 00:16:42,860 And this is considered to be the Buckworth are the Raj mother in carnet Victoria Imperatrix 150 00:16:42,860 --> 00:16:49,880 rules accepted Sfeir overseeing legions of maidens fishing fleets that break the waves. 151 00:16:49,880 --> 00:16:59,630 Tonette The Love of a Heaven Etonians faits on lawns with mansion whacking banks or dances by moonlight at the Viceroy, 152 00:16:59,630 --> 00:17:13,790 the Viceroy's Ball, the backroom Baraa Pegs of Brandy Barny and Pink Gin and tody to do flapping on Jolanda Panta for six meal days, 153 00:17:13,790 --> 00:17:18,170 including tiepin with Hump's and peacock and tongue, 154 00:17:18,170 --> 00:17:25,160 the lock stock and bobbing palanquins for summers on Gothic verandahs where dawn Himalayans 155 00:17:25,160 --> 00:17:32,240 through powerbomb or outI Mist for Halsy House seat and hummocks under the Milky Way. 156 00:17:32,240 --> 00:17:43,730 Tallyho in topi of karki with Swiger stick for Barberi Chigas and by Amoretta What a 12 bore Holli's howdah from Housers 157 00:17:43,730 --> 00:17:54,260 Bang bang bang in photogenic Tiggers Panthers Leppard's Blackbox and Bustards and Kipling or Tatler to hand Atalay 158 00:17:54,260 --> 00:18:05,390 gunge the rum twirling sabr curved moustachioed lavish zinfandels behind bars with a fruity hooka for the breathless 159 00:18:05,390 --> 00:18:15,470 norge the norge that leads to IR's and PASSERS-BY Goody's girls snookered for Cyb sport that ends in the hushed up. 160 00:18:15,470 --> 00:18:19,730 Besty Birth's of Half-Breed Half-Breed [INAUDIBLE]. 161 00:18:19,730 --> 00:18:26,300 Growing up, Kirsty's mad dogs and vagabonds in a jolly good lingham land overflowing with Hobson, 162 00:18:26,300 --> 00:18:34,760 Dobsons of Holly and opium and silk and spice and all the gems of the Shafted Earth. 163 00:18:34,760 --> 00:18:44,870 Great, the Hopsin Jobs and so many people. No, but it was a dictionary of Anglo-Indian words put together in 1886. 164 00:18:44,870 --> 00:18:53,150 A Victorian dictionary editor put together by, by and Bernell. 165 00:18:53,150 --> 00:18:56,210 And I just when I thought about that poem, 166 00:18:56,210 --> 00:19:06,500 I also thought about a review that Rushdie wrote of a Rutledge's edition of that Dictionary of Jobs and Jobs, 167 00:19:06,500 --> 00:19:11,930 and they republished the dictionary in the mid 1980s and Rushdie reviewed it. 168 00:19:11,930 --> 00:19:18,230 And I just thought in terms of what he said right at the beginning, what what the the the way that he ended that review. 169 00:19:18,230 --> 00:19:24,800 He said this to spend a few days with Hobson. Jobson, this is Rushdie in 1985 to spend a few days with Hobson. 170 00:19:24,800 --> 00:19:32,960 Jobson is almost to regret the passing of the intimate connexion that made this linguistic and you use the word as well, 171 00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:39,260 kedgeree possible, OK, is what he said. But then he said this. 172 00:19:39,260 --> 00:19:48,200 But then one remembers what sort of connexion it was and is moved to remark as Rhett Butler. 173 00:19:48,200 --> 00:19:54,200 This is Rushdi, as Rhett Butler once said to Scarlett O'Hara, Frankly, my dear, 174 00:19:54,200 --> 00:19:59,610 I don't give a small copper coin weighing one Tuller eight mashers and seven. 175 00:19:59,610 --> 00:20:09,450 As being the fortieth part of a Rupi, or to put it more concisely, a dam, you clearly, in a sense, 176 00:20:09,450 --> 00:20:14,010 both in this poem and in the Victorian woman poem and in many others, 177 00:20:14,010 --> 00:20:19,860 you actually do have this real interest in sort of you do give a damn in a sense about that, 178 00:20:19,860 --> 00:20:25,350 that that language, recovering that language and putting it alongside all these contemporary idioms 179 00:20:25,350 --> 00:20:29,440 that you're picking up in singsong and and many of your other your other poems. 180 00:20:29,440 --> 00:20:32,730 And I just I just wondered what sense what sort of triggered that that kind of 181 00:20:32,730 --> 00:20:37,860 archival interest and and and where do you feel yourself going in the way that, 182 00:20:37,860 --> 00:20:42,920 you know, Russia is clearly resisting a certain kind of ambivalence in 1985. But you've got also a fascination with me. 183 00:20:42,920 --> 00:20:48,790 Yeah, I do. I mean, I think on the one hand, it's various ways to look at it. 184 00:20:48,790 --> 00:20:58,350 So I guess one way I might look at it is if I'm writing about Indians or my job is to to kind of British audience of, say, 99 percent. 185 00:20:58,350 --> 00:21:02,790 I probably aren't Sikh Punjabi background. This is foreign material. 186 00:21:02,790 --> 00:21:08,160 And at that point it becomes the entry point for the outside is, you know, 187 00:21:08,160 --> 00:21:15,690 it's exotic and it's going to be exotic because if you're not inside that world, it has to enter an exotic space. 188 00:21:15,690 --> 00:21:22,830 And there's so there's that issue then where it becomes we hopefully the reader becomes 189 00:21:22,830 --> 00:21:26,610 at one with it is when they they kind of identify with some of the things they think. 190 00:21:26,610 --> 00:21:31,860 Actually, we have the same issues as he does or that that character does. 191 00:21:31,860 --> 00:21:35,850 But also, hopefully, if I can charge the language up as much as possible, 192 00:21:35,850 --> 00:21:43,350 the readers feeling there's a density kind of nuance which is implicating them beyond the exotic. 193 00:21:43,350 --> 00:21:47,550 So I want to go find exotic sounds, very technical difficulty. 194 00:21:47,550 --> 00:21:55,110 So I want I want the reader to feel an exotic have an exotic engagement with the text, but also a cerebral one. 195 00:21:55,110 --> 00:22:03,420 And and the way I feel I want to try and heighten the cerebral experience is by getting a very dense palette which is historically troubled. 196 00:22:03,420 --> 00:22:10,920 Where the words have historically troubled aren't just sort of, you know, standard English that that makes it the standard. 197 00:22:10,920 --> 00:22:14,370 English doesn't make it interesting enough for me. And on the political level, 198 00:22:14,370 --> 00:22:20,760 as well as the standard English feels to use to clean those two proper feels 199 00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:26,250 too Orwellian for an immigrant to to be able to speak in standard English, 200 00:22:26,250 --> 00:22:32,730 someone like myself for working class background. That's quite an achievement to be able to speak standard English. 201 00:22:32,730 --> 00:22:39,330 So I don't think that's the hard thing to do. So I want to put strain into my diction as well. 202 00:22:39,330 --> 00:22:44,970 I've sort of digressed down. Sure. But also, in a sense, it's is a strain that is also a historical one. 203 00:22:44,970 --> 00:22:51,420 I mean, it's also going back into to bring the historical in and clearly also a history of a non-standard English. 204 00:22:51,420 --> 00:22:55,530 I mean, that would that would be a non-standard English, which I mean, 205 00:22:55,530 --> 00:23:03,210 we were talking earlier about there's a wonderful bit of early playing with Hobson, Jobson with Edward Lear. 206 00:23:03,210 --> 00:23:06,450 It really is nonsense poem called The Cumberbund, 207 00:23:06,450 --> 00:23:10,350 which is one of the things that I've always thought about because I came in early in an earlier LLB version of this poem, 208 00:23:10,350 --> 00:23:18,510 you actually use the word cumberbund as well. And Edward Lear turns these words into a kind of monstrous births and characters that 209 00:23:18,510 --> 00:23:24,300 are sort of taunting a woman and her vulnerable woman with these monstrous things. 210 00:23:24,300 --> 00:23:32,790 So he's just playing with the sound of the words. So there were games going on then from about the late 19th century, 1874. 211 00:23:32,790 --> 00:23:37,680 I think he did it. But so you're also bringing that now into play. 212 00:23:37,680 --> 00:23:46,490 And he is also, in a sense, a key. You want that historical depth in terms of a non-standard ness that is playing alongside the contemporary nonsense? 213 00:23:46,490 --> 00:23:47,760 Yes, yeah, absolutely. 214 00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:58,650 And also, the points of engagement and historical engagement between Indians and English is there in the very words used Hopsin Johnsson word. 215 00:23:58,650 --> 00:24:04,650 I feel that I've had a great feeling of love in that word because the British mouth, 216 00:24:04,650 --> 00:24:08,460 those words, you know, were courteous enough to want to engage with those words. 217 00:24:08,460 --> 00:24:11,790 And I guess that's all very Victorian period. That sort of moves away a little bit. 218 00:24:11,790 --> 00:24:17,820 But before that, you know, from 1900 on with Joe Charnock going to India, marrying a Muslim woman, 219 00:24:17,820 --> 00:24:22,680 I think was on you know, I've had this real kind of cultural engagement between Indians. 220 00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:26,230 And those words are kind of suitcases carrying the two worlds there. 221 00:24:26,230 --> 00:24:28,210 Yeah. So it's a happy experience for me. 222 00:24:28,210 --> 00:24:35,580 And I think obviously, if it wasn't for the Empire, my parents wouldn't have come here in the late 50s and I would have been born here. 223 00:24:35,580 --> 00:24:40,170 So I necessarily viewed that experience as a positive one. 224 00:24:40,170 --> 00:24:44,340 The empire will see the bad, but there's also the good. 225 00:24:44,340 --> 00:24:51,120 Yeah, well, I mean, Rushdie begins it begins that review with a list of all the things that he also loves about the British Empire 226 00:24:51,120 --> 00:24:57,000 is he's constantly showing how many words come from that have entered the language of the British Empire. 227 00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:05,460 Many pundits now agree. Distended like a juggernaut upon the barbarians of the east in search of loot, 228 00:25:05,460 --> 00:25:12,810 every single one of the over emphatic words being that there's a section in Tom Stoppard's Indian 229 00:25:12,810 --> 00:25:18,900 India Ink the play and they play a game with as many words from Hopsin Jobson as possible. 230 00:25:18,900 --> 00:25:23,900 You know, there's great passage wants the hops and jobs and you skilfully. 231 00:25:23,900 --> 00:25:27,020 I think Tom saw parts of it wasn't that great. 232 00:25:27,020 --> 00:25:36,630 Well, before we move on to the third point, which is which is actually two for the price of one, because in this case I couldn't I couldn't choose. 233 00:25:36,630 --> 00:25:42,510 And I was glad that you mentioned that whole business of being put into a particular line and the ways in which 234 00:25:42,510 --> 00:25:50,700 in some ways your many aspects of your of your writing make it impossible to work out at least one single line. 235 00:25:50,700 --> 00:25:55,420 There's a whole series of possible lines that you could do, in a sense, align yourself to. 236 00:25:55,420 --> 00:25:58,680 And one of them is actually just the canon of English literature. 237 00:25:58,680 --> 00:26:04,530 There's a there's a tremendous awareness of that kind of alignment and the self-consciousness about it, 238 00:26:04,530 --> 00:26:08,550 which is also interrogating even what that alignment means. 239 00:26:08,550 --> 00:26:15,210 And the two poems that I've chosen for this aspect of your relationship to those particular canons. 240 00:26:15,210 --> 00:26:21,300 The first one is I should perhaps just say right at the beginning, it's a it's a Shakespearean sonnet. 241 00:26:21,300 --> 00:26:30,900 So that's a bit of a giveaway. But it's called fallacy. And I should perhaps reveal that it's fallacy with a P-H. 242 00:26:30,900 --> 00:26:36,720 And the second poem, which will go on straight after that, these are both come from the Tipu collection, 243 00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:42,690 is a longer poem called A Black History of the English Speaking Peoples. 244 00:26:42,690 --> 00:26:52,050 So we have those two shows to fallacy. And then, yes, they both they both reference Shakespeare for the finalists in the audience. 245 00:26:52,050 --> 00:26:56,700 Okay, so, yeah, there are a few Shakespeare references. 246 00:26:56,700 --> 00:27:01,120 And so I guess fallacy, I want to sort of roleplay anti macho behaviour. 247 00:27:01,120 --> 00:27:15,060 So this one is really about I think that how often do mate bang on at length about the length they're hung and grab their crotch to slash the air, 248 00:27:15,060 --> 00:27:23,010 then chuck an arm will around the chum while necking Stella till they're lashed. 249 00:27:23,010 --> 00:27:29,460 To tell the truth, I'm really not well hung and thus I hide from mates. 250 00:27:29,460 --> 00:27:35,100 My Princess State. This conc is king of my poor frame. 251 00:27:35,100 --> 00:27:40,170 No trunks with lunchbox fine to bank a lady's gaze. 252 00:27:40,170 --> 00:27:49,020 And yet I hope the guys won't feel too down when I recount my is hardly wimpish. 253 00:27:49,020 --> 00:27:58,290 Wotcher Stefanov calls from Lautz who check her out too long for she's not fit in bed. 254 00:27:58,290 --> 00:28:03,330 Most nights she'll sigh. Oh love, I love the woman's way. 255 00:28:03,330 --> 00:28:16,060 You work your subtle touch. Everyone uncomfortable moment is great, and if you want me to go straight to the next one. 256 00:28:16,060 --> 00:28:19,340 Yeah, you're great. OK, this is very, very long one. You ready? 257 00:28:19,340 --> 00:28:25,590 Ready. Just drones on because I put it in five sections because I might I guess the 258 00:28:25,590 --> 00:28:31,100 starting conceit for it was the Globe Theatre and even the Globe Theatre from, 259 00:28:31,100 --> 00:28:38,110 you know, from its inception to its and will have the kind of British Empire, you know, from the first globe, the second globe, the recent one. 260 00:28:38,110 --> 00:28:41,680 And then there's one before that one. The one for the first one. The latest one. 261 00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:43,870 We had the rise and fall, the British Empire. 262 00:28:43,870 --> 00:28:52,330 And I just imagine watching a Shakespearean tragedy the globe and then sort of wander around reflecting on myself as a black artist. 263 00:28:52,330 --> 00:28:57,190 I guess one way to think of it, certain an artist or signal sections. 264 00:28:57,190 --> 00:29:05,170 I think near the end I mention, yeah, I've got loads of references, but a Colonel Lawrence is kind of great line. 265 00:29:05,170 --> 00:29:11,230 He says the British under attack and he tells his soldiers to stand and fight to the death. 266 00:29:11,230 --> 00:29:16,790 And I've got a quote from that kind of great is a forgotten line now. And I think when I read up about it, it's kind of great war. 267 00:29:16,790 --> 00:29:21,550 Prysner The stiff upper lip cry, that was the one that I think one of the main ones anyway. 268 00:29:21,550 --> 00:29:31,960 So black history of the English speaking people. So one, a king's invocations at the Globe Theatre spin me from my stand to a time when 269 00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:39,700 boyish bravado and cannonade and plunder were enough to woo the Regal's seat, 270 00:29:39,700 --> 00:29:51,130 that the stuff of Elizabethan art and a nation of walled gardens in a local one would tame the four cornered world for empires. 271 00:29:51,130 --> 00:29:59,320 Dominion seems inconceivable between the birth and the fire and rebirth of the globe. 272 00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:05,620 The visions of Albion that led to a rule Britannia of Tradewinds and Gulf Stream, 273 00:30:05,620 --> 00:30:13,270 all conquering fleets that aroused theatres for lectures and Hottentots and chronology. 274 00:30:13,270 --> 00:30:23,410 Whilst Eden was paraded in Q between Mayflower and Windrush with each necessary murder, 275 00:30:23,410 --> 00:30:29,410 the celebrated embedding of imperial gusto where jungles were surmounted. 276 00:30:29,410 --> 00:30:38,500 So the light of learning be spread to help sobbing suits give up the ghost of a husband's flaming pyre. 277 00:30:38,500 --> 00:30:44,230 So the widows who would climb into the pie after husband die too. 278 00:30:44,230 --> 00:30:45,580 So much for yesterday. 279 00:30:45,580 --> 00:30:57,970 But today's time honoured televised clashes repeat the flag of a book Burning and Maids, Mohican, Churchill and all that shock and awe. 280 00:30:57,970 --> 00:31:07,870 That brings me back to Mr Wanamaker's globe and Americans thatched throwback to the King of the cannon. 281 00:31:07,870 --> 00:31:20,200 I watched the actor as king from the cast of Masterful Robeson, the CRA, to see my hotchpotch from the pacts and sects of our Evenflo. 282 00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:30,910 My forebears played their part for the Empire's quid pro quo by assisting the rule and divide of their ilk. 283 00:31:30,910 --> 00:31:37,690 Did such relations bear me to this stage, especially with McCallie in mind, 284 00:31:37,690 --> 00:31:46,660 who claim the passing of the imperial sceptre would highlight the imperishable empire of our arts? 285 00:31:46,660 --> 00:31:51,750 So does the red of McCauley's map run through my blood? 286 00:31:51,750 --> 00:32:03,520 And I see a noble scruff who hopes a proud Academi might canonise his poems for their faith in canonical illusions. 287 00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:08,680 Is my voice phoney over these oft heard beats? 288 00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:21,610 Well, if my voice feels vexatious, what can I do but pray that it rain bolshy through puppetry and hypocrisy full of gung ho fury. 289 00:32:21,610 --> 00:32:29,980 Three The heyday globe incited brave new verse modelled on the past, 290 00:32:29,980 --> 00:32:40,210 where Times Friction's courted Shakespeare's corruptions for Tung's mastery of the pageant subject. 291 00:32:40,210 --> 00:32:47,920 Perhaps the globe should be my muse. I'm happy digging for my Englands good garden to bear again. 292 00:32:47,920 --> 00:33:01,420 My garden is only a state of mind where it's easy aligning myself with a turncoat T.E. Lawrence and a half naked faqir and always the Groundling, 293 00:33:01,420 --> 00:33:07,250 perhaps to aid the succession of this language of the world for the poet reading the. 294 00:33:07,250 --> 00:33:17,360 Roots for the debate and ourselves, now we're bound to the wheels of global power, we should tend the manorial slime, 295 00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:28,820 that legacy offending the outcasts who fringe our circles for who believes a bleached yarn. 296 00:33:28,820 --> 00:33:34,700 Would we openly admit the living Levingston spirit turned Kurts. 297 00:33:34,700 --> 00:33:43,040 Our flag is a union of black and blue flapping in the anthems of haunted rain. 298 00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:48,260 Coming clean will surely give us greater distance than this king at the globe, 299 00:33:48,260 --> 00:33:57,170 whose head seems cluttered with golden age bumph whose suffering ends him agog at the stars. 300 00:33:57,170 --> 00:34:04,760 And five. I applaud and stroll toward Westminster yet softly. 301 00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:11,660 Tonight, the waters of Britannia bubble with flotillas of T and white gold, 302 00:34:11,660 --> 00:34:22,370 cotton and sugar and all the sweetness and light bloodletting and ultimately red faced suicides and how swiftly the 303 00:34:22,370 --> 00:34:33,350 tide removes from the scene the bagpipe clamouring garrisons with a field wide scarlet soldiery and the martyrs cry. 304 00:34:33,350 --> 00:34:50,620 Every man die at his post till what's ahead are the upby lovers who gaze from the London Eye at Multinational's lying along the sanitised Thames. 305 00:34:50,620 --> 00:35:02,960 Thanks, though. It's a it's a poem that I think comes across very quickly, easily is full of references to the English literary tradition. 306 00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:06,620 And it also includes, perhaps most most strikingly, 307 00:35:06,620 --> 00:35:15,350 that the line that became probably the most embarrassing line in an English poem of the 20th century. 308 00:35:15,350 --> 00:35:19,820 That line the necessary murder from Auden, Spain, 1937, 309 00:35:19,820 --> 00:35:27,350 which Auden himself excised very quickly and changed to the fact of murder and then orwill after that, 310 00:35:27,350 --> 00:35:35,120 absolutely castigated him in the essay Inside a Whale for this sloppy bourgeois middle class 311 00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:42,650 failure to grasp the horrors of war by using that ethically dubious phrase necessary murder. 312 00:35:42,650 --> 00:35:46,160 Yeah, so there's all of that that history there. 313 00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:53,360 But, you know, the poem itself opens up this big, big question, which in a sense, what you're addressing, 314 00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:58,910 again, in this very self-conscious way about your relationship to a particular tradition. 315 00:35:58,910 --> 00:36:03,920 And in a way, your own work is now caught up in that tradition in a different sort of way, 316 00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:07,190 because you've published by Faber, so you've become a Faber poet. 317 00:36:07,190 --> 00:36:12,680 And if if you thought, you know what most people know about if you are a poet, it's not only it's Latin, 318 00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:17,210 it's Heeney, it's that whole that whole line, but it also goes back to T.S. Eliot. 319 00:36:17,210 --> 00:36:26,120 And I just wondered if I know you've been thinking a little bit about, you know, you in the sort of the T.S. Eliot stable and your sense of that. 320 00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:31,250 But also you've been speaking recently about your own sense of Eliot's own 321 00:36:31,250 --> 00:36:36,410 earlier recuperate or interest in Indian literature and poetry and philosophy. 322 00:36:36,410 --> 00:36:41,510 And just if you could talk a little bit about your your sense specifically, 323 00:36:41,510 --> 00:36:45,950 not not so much of all the things of Shakespeare and Auden and all the things that are going through here. 324 00:36:45,950 --> 00:36:52,100 Of course, Auden was another favour. But but but Elliott in particular were the first. 325 00:36:52,100 --> 00:36:57,680 If everything I mean I mean, I don't I find I find that a kind of ambiguous thing. 326 00:36:57,680 --> 00:37:07,100 Being a favour will be called a favour, because I'm always thinking maybe I'm a novelty in this in my in the stable of this publisher I'm with, 327 00:37:07,100 --> 00:37:10,880 you kind of leave this very precarious, vulnerable kind of life without these things. 328 00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:15,620 You know, I'm sure other poets feel out as well to whoever they're published by. 329 00:37:15,620 --> 00:37:19,350 Feel like I'm going to be dropped any book. I always go through that emotion. 330 00:37:19,350 --> 00:37:24,560 They're going to drop the expert. They're going to say, it's not like we don't want to come back ten years time or something like that. 331 00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:33,950 I think you can live with that. So if everything feels like a curse blessing, I can speak nobly like that, though. 332 00:37:33,950 --> 00:37:41,360 But yeah, I guess the thing with what's interesting more about Eliot, I guess, is that he's his kind of fascination with India. 333 00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:45,890 So I suppose was sort of 19 early 1980s. 334 00:37:45,890 --> 00:37:53,330 He writes an essay for In The Times, a review in the TLS, which I think is going to come to light next year in a book. 335 00:37:53,330 --> 00:37:56,090 And I managed to kind of get hold of it by an academic. 336 00:37:56,090 --> 00:38:07,160 But he reviews about eight, eight or nine Indian books and most of agriculture and economic policy written by Indians, really dry books. 337 00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:13,100 And he starts off by saying, know what the what the the English doing there right now is exotic stuff. 338 00:38:13,100 --> 00:38:20,360 This is a stuff they need to be dealing with. It is actually sort of just chastising the empire men back then. 339 00:38:20,360 --> 00:38:28,070 He's kind of got this kind of really realistic perspective on India, but also just languages and cultures and traditions. 340 00:38:28,070 --> 00:38:32,300 He's trying to find ways, I think, to to merge the various traditions. 341 00:38:32,300 --> 00:38:36,830 And for me, something like four quartettes is as much about Buddhism, 342 00:38:36,830 --> 00:38:41,870 Hinduism as it is about Christianity, and even start reading the kind of images he's got. 343 00:38:41,870 --> 00:38:47,900 Those very general images, you know, the image of the rose, a lotus, and they kind of you know, they go between cultures. 344 00:38:47,900 --> 00:38:50,300 And I think that's why he does have any general references. 345 00:38:50,300 --> 00:38:55,490 And he's always trying to think how I mean, that's of course, it's much later on already can see his interests. 346 00:38:55,490 --> 00:38:59,810 And he studied Sanskrit for a year in America, you know, for a whole year. 347 00:38:59,810 --> 00:39:07,760 He works on any news Indian floorspace. And I want to be kind of influenced by it, that kind of air that somebody was trying to find, 348 00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:12,730 a way to be influenced by various positions, try and absorb them, bring them together. 349 00:39:12,730 --> 00:39:17,510 So that feels very important project for me in the future. That's something I'm working on. 350 00:39:17,510 --> 00:39:21,380 And I guess that was one of the main reasons why I started working on Ramayana. 351 00:39:21,380 --> 00:39:24,930 The Ramayana. Well, I guess we can move on. 352 00:39:24,930 --> 00:39:32,780 Yeah, that's great. Well, that is that is the the last the last section that we wanted to read was from his latest project, 353 00:39:32,780 --> 00:39:37,850 which is his it's called a retelling of the Ramayana. 354 00:39:37,850 --> 00:39:49,070 And the bit that I've chosen is from book three and it's called the section is called Sixing Big Bro. 355 00:39:49,070 --> 00:39:51,750 But I should maybe just give a little bit of context. 356 00:39:51,750 --> 00:40:04,460 Yeah, it's the this is the moment in which I'm sure Pynacker, who's the sister of Ravana, who's the bad guy, is the the lord of the underworld. 357 00:40:04,460 --> 00:40:14,810 She comes back to his kind of quarters and describes meeting a rama and Sita, who are both exiled in the forest. 358 00:40:14,810 --> 00:40:22,220 So she's she's met them and she comes back to describe them to her brother. 359 00:40:22,220 --> 00:40:24,530 So this is the moment that we're going. We've got you've got you're going to hear. 360 00:40:24,530 --> 00:40:31,790 But I thought I thought maybe just to prepare your ears for what you're about to hear, I would give you this same scene, 361 00:40:31,790 --> 00:40:39,350 at least a few lines of the same scene as rendered by Ralph T.H. Griffith in the late 70s. 362 00:40:39,350 --> 00:40:45,920 So this is the Victorian version, Victorian English version of this particular scene. 363 00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:53,480 It's called Shupe. I make a speech and it's from Kento 34 is the way he would describe it, just a few lines. 364 00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:58,430 Does it give you a flavour of the Victorian English then for the Giants? 365 00:40:58,430 --> 00:41:04,100 Furi broke as sure occur harshly spoke girt by his lords. 366 00:41:04,100 --> 00:41:11,000 The Demon King looked on her fiercely questioning Who is this Rama? 367 00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:17,660 Whence and where his form, his might, his deeds declare his wandering steps. 368 00:41:17,660 --> 00:41:22,220 What purpose led to Dundar Forest? Hard to tread. 369 00:41:22,220 --> 00:41:31,130 Tell all my sister and declare who maimed these us and of form most fair. 370 00:41:31,130 --> 00:41:36,500 So she's been maimed as well. That's the Victorian version. 371 00:41:36,500 --> 00:41:40,790 This is Daljeet version three little bit, if you like. 372 00:41:40,790 --> 00:41:47,300 Yeah, yeah. If you don't mind me, this can be than starting off [INAUDIBLE]. 373 00:41:47,300 --> 00:41:58,400 You all shutting up, boomed Rathner in a Decadron out of tune chorus at the sight of his even more tuneless kid sister. 374 00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:04,190 What the [INAUDIBLE] matter is with your face sister. What [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE]. 375 00:42:04,190 --> 00:42:08,030 What the [INAUDIBLE] her mother [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] with you sister. 376 00:42:08,030 --> 00:42:12,890 Shurat Binaca had been repaired by the magicians but we're still hurting inside. 377 00:42:12,890 --> 00:42:20,270 She approached her brother who is raving. Your nipples being cut, your nipples cut to your nose. 378 00:42:20,270 --> 00:42:29,300 Who's so mad with stake is onr. Oh brother how come you have no broadcast about newcomers to Dun Dukkha? 379 00:42:29,300 --> 00:42:34,430 Why, sister, it is your domain to dominate, replied Shupe Binaca. 380 00:42:34,430 --> 00:42:36,920 These brothers seem cosy with customs, 381 00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:47,360 yet our resident in our woods and aying for a fight they have poked their finger in a black snake's eye and goes on. 382 00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:51,660 I can I just say I don't have too much sway in this. One of the few. 383 00:42:51,660 --> 00:42:58,160 You picked it deliberately, and I know there's plenty of interest. 384 00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:02,240 Just the last question I have and then I really do want to open up to everybody else. 385 00:43:02,240 --> 00:43:07,160 One of the things that you're doing in the whole collection is, in a sense, it is a. 386 00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:13,340 It is a complex translation because you're aware of many you're using many sources and there's many versions, of course, 387 00:43:13,340 --> 00:43:20,450 of this of this great poem, which, of course, is for some people also not simply a sacred poem, but it's also a poem to live by. 388 00:43:20,450 --> 00:43:26,060 And your version is certainly not your your grandmother's Ramayana in that sense at all. 389 00:43:26,060 --> 00:43:33,800 And the way that the blurb describes what you doing on the on the on the edition that you've got, it says you're what it does is rejuvenate the story. 390 00:43:33,800 --> 00:43:39,170 The plan is to rejuvenate the story for a new generation of multicultural, multifaith readers. 391 00:43:39,170 --> 00:43:45,200 And I just wondered if you could, you know, give them the sense that we have of that language against the Victorian English there. 392 00:43:45,200 --> 00:43:50,780 Well, what what the translation process actually involves how you went about sort of just. 393 00:43:50,780 --> 00:43:54,230 Yes. To be the kind of kedgeree translation that you've. 394 00:43:54,230 --> 00:43:57,990 Yeah, I guess my my my my politics would be different. 395 00:43:57,990 --> 00:44:02,600 Something like Griffitts, whose version actually I read all of it. I liked it massive. 396 00:44:02,600 --> 00:44:05,870 I did like it big chunks is incredible. 397 00:44:05,870 --> 00:44:13,820 But I guess my politics for me, why I want to do Ramayana was I like the idea of a very it felt to me like a very insecure, 398 00:44:13,820 --> 00:44:22,550 somewhat vulnerable or insecure text because it exists, as you know, it was poetry as prose, as puppet show. 399 00:44:22,550 --> 00:44:28,670 As, you know, play has music and it exists in different versions in India as well. 400 00:44:28,670 --> 00:44:36,560 Yeah. And comic. So yeah. And exists loads of Mercian, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Burma, Laos. 401 00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:44,720 And so I try to get a hold as many different translations or bits from different the stories, 402 00:44:44,720 --> 00:44:49,010 adverts, anything I get hold of to to help me construct my own version. 403 00:44:49,010 --> 00:44:58,910 So I follow the basic storyline of you know, man gets married, wife, wife gets abducted man and goes the husband goes to win his wife back. 404 00:44:58,910 --> 00:45:07,610 So get gets that basic storyline. And I've taken bits from like one of these kind of mad bull buffaloes and stuff of buffaloes, 405 00:45:07,610 --> 00:45:11,360 which I think I just had bits of plotline and that's all made up the dialogue. 406 00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:18,500 But it's from Olaf's version where they're trying to explore incest. And so I took bits of that one. 407 00:45:18,500 --> 00:45:25,790 And I guess ultimately for me, it felt like the most fragmented Ramayana could possibly be ours after the most ultimately fragmented it. 408 00:45:25,790 --> 00:45:30,170 You can say it's a North Indian or East Indian or it's a Malaysian. 409 00:45:30,170 --> 00:45:37,730 And so that's the aim to create the kind of feel of something that felt kind of global, 410 00:45:37,730 --> 00:45:43,710 as many different countries like possibly could, to give it a global feel, because I guess that's sort of live in London. 411 00:45:43,710 --> 00:45:47,510 And, you know, it's just like a nothing of an area. Is this a global place? 412 00:45:47,510 --> 00:45:52,490 Isn't it? It's London from. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes. 413 00:45:52,490 --> 00:45:57,650 But it doesn't need a centre, doesn't need to rule against that sort of thing. But London is no kind of route. 414 00:45:57,650 --> 00:46:03,320 Yeah. And I live in Harrow and it's very mixed and nobody claims the area and nobody disclaims it. 415 00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:06,920 But nobody's got right to any more than thinking. I mean, 416 00:46:06,920 --> 00:46:11,480 one of the things that just doesn't come across in a reading like this is how 417 00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:15,690 a lot of what your work does is pleased with how things look on the page. 418 00:46:15,690 --> 00:46:22,190 So there's a there's a kind of a visual dimension to all of this as well, which which you can maybe see a little bit better if I just hold this up. 419 00:46:22,190 --> 00:46:25,640 But it's all the way through this, the play. Why was that important to you? 420 00:46:25,640 --> 00:46:32,630 Capturing. Yeah, again, just to capture the feeling of different genres of film that I'm not writing a standard. 421 00:46:32,630 --> 00:46:37,520 I'm not writing Griffiths. I'm not in the standard Paradise Lost type thing. 422 00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:44,510 I'm not in blank verse. I'm not going to want to keep you kind of shifting away from being pulled away from conventional poetry feeling. 423 00:46:44,510 --> 00:46:47,000 Yes. Well, great.