Edinburgh’s International Poetry Festival, Push the Boat Out (PTBO), returns to the nation’s capital this November. For three days, Summerhall will be host to an array of talks showcasing some of the best that contemporary poetry has to offer.
On Sunday 6 November, four writers included in Canongate’s breathtaking anthology More Fiya will take to the stage to perform and discuss the collection – Dean Atta, Janette Ayachi, Rachel Long and Degna Stone. I’m honoured to have been asked to chair the event – More Fiya is a powerful exploration of Black British identity and samples some of the most talented poets writing in the UK today. The four poets featured in this PTBO event all have strong, individual voices and are mesmerising performers.
Edited by poet and DJ Kayo Chingonyi, More Fiya brings together work by 34 Black British poets. It’s a long-awaited sequel to The Fire People, the 1998 anthology edited by Lemn Sissay and a work that was influential in Chingonyi’s own journey. As he notes in the introduction to More Fiya, for a long time in Britain “the anthology was [Black writers’] principal space of possibility as published poets” and collections like The Fire People served to disrupt a “poetry ecosystem” that neglected, diminished, and ignored the voices of minority groups.
The significance of the project is not lost on Ayachi: “It is a dream to be published in such a meaningful, original poetry anthology that signifies stories that have so often been silenced from voices that have sometimes been unheard.”
Half of the More Fiya poets appearing at PTBO have very close ties to Scotland; Ayachi lives in Edinburgh and accomplished YA novelist and poet Atta has spent recent years living in Glasgow. “I’m thrilled about the other performers arriving from distant places to the homeland!” says Ayachi. “Edinburgh has so much to offer in the arts and literary scene, I feel proud to live here and share what we as a city can represent in terms of talent, colour and inspiration.”
Ayachi’s first collection, Hand Over Mouth Music, is an energetic and lyrical representation of Scotland’s streets which are charmingly brought to life in her work. She explores love, destruction, grief and fire in the three poems she has included in More Fiya. “Quickfire, Slow Burning is the title poem from my new collection. It was taken from what a lover described me to be once, it stuck. Fire is an element that can so easily destroy land and cultural history. It’s the epitome and centrefold of feeling desire.”
She says she’s “honoured” to be included in More Fiya. “I can’t sing praises for this collection enough; it’s touching, magnetic, celebratory and channels magic from centuries of our deep burials.”
Degna Stone is also full of praise for Chingonyi and the project: “He has curated an incredible anthology that builds on the legacy of The Fire People and creates a space for a multiplicity of Black voices to be heard. I’m overawed to be in the company of so many amazing poets and excited that my poems will reach new readers.”
“Where do I come from if not here? This country. My country,” writes Stone in How to Unpick the Lies? To me, those lines reach to the core of the flame that is More Fiya. While there are poems about relationships, family, home, politics, language and travel within the collection, the book operates in one plane as a response and a rebuttal to the hurtful and harmful belief that Black British writers do not belong. “They’re poems that (I hope) speak to the times that we’re in,” Stone says. “I think there’s something interesting in the way they all seem to explore losing a sense of self.”
The poet and editor is making the journey from north east England to PTBO. “I’m so excited to be back in Edinburgh to read at Push the Boat Out! I love sharing my poetry in Scotland, there’s an energy to the various poetry scenes here that is so vibrant. I’ve always, always had a brilliant time each time I’ve headed north of the border.”
Along with Ayachi, Stone, Rachel Long – whose debut collection My Darling from the Lions was shortlisted for a host of awards including the Forward Prize and Jhalak Prize – and Polari-nominated and Stonewall Book Award-winning Dean Atta, More Fiya features a range of established writers such as Malika Booker and Roger Robinson alongside newer voices like Warda Yassin.
“The work included in More Fiya has the flavour of always moving, whether it is back and forward in time or across various soils of our bloodlines,” reflects Ayachi. “Nothing about this collection stands stagnant. What a book like this brings is a difference to the foreground that is inherently needed.” It’s a difference that is gripping, moving, musical and beautiful in equal measure.
Push the Boat Out takes place in Summerhall, Edinburgh, 4-6 Nov
