Mapping the Future: The Complete Works

INTRODUCTION

Sunday 15th January 2023 at the Royal Festival Hall. It is a cold London night. Ten poets stand on a stage often occupied by international orchestras and celebrities. The event is sold out, the audience waiting eagerly. It is the reading for the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize shortlist, one of the most prestigious events in the UK poetry calendar. In previous years, it has not been known for the diversity of the prize winners, nor the audience. But tonight is different. Four of the eight poets standing on the stage are Black.¹ Three are fellows of The Complete Works (TCW), a national development programme for Black and Asian poets, founded by literary activist Bernardine Evaristo in 2007. Tonight, their words light a fire in the audience, an audience of all ages and backgrounds. Rapt, they hang on every word as it falls into the silence.

This is history being made. This is the new face of poetry in the UK. Rewind to 2005 and the idea a night like that at the Southbank Centre could ever happen is a dream few are brave enough to imagine. This is the year the Free Verse report is published,² investigating the level of diversity in UK poetry. The figures are even worse than expected. Fewer than 1% of the poets published by major presses in the UK are Black or Asian. Evaristo, the force behind the report, decides that something must be done.

That something is a new poetry development programme for poets of colour. A programme that selects the most talented poets from a national call out, offering them mentoring, seminars, and professional development from the most well-established poets in the UK. Over time, the programme becomes something much greater: one of the most successful poetry collectives in the world.

Back in 2005 there are few mentoring programmes in UK poetry, with little understanding of what they can achieve long-term. None attempt what The Complete Works is trying to achieve. It is a leap of faith.

TCW officially begins in 2007, and at its inception is run by London’s literature development organisation Spread the Word co-founded by Evaristo). But it quickly becomes apparent that it needs someone to manage it. This is where my story with TCW begins.³

I have just completed a successful national mentoring and translation programme for Exiled Writers Ink. I have a PhD in Latin American poetry and years of working as an activist. I know little of the UK poetry world. To my surprise, I am invited to interview for the post. Years later I remember that Bernardine’s unwavering gaze seemed to look straight through me. I stutter, forget who my favourite poets are. My mind goes blank. I am certain I did not get the job. But my belief in the possibility of change and community, the idea that poetry can and should be for everyone, somehow wins out. I am offered the post and begin the journey of a lifetime.

It is not easy. In the early days, I am asked outright by top figures in literature, ‘Do Black and Asian poets even publish full collections?’ Senior poets and editors tell me that poets of colour will never get published by major presses, but they are brave to try. And these are the ones who are supposed to be supporters of diversity, friends of TCW. There are grumbles behind my back, and sometimes to my face, from many in the literature world. They say TCW is just ticking boxes, that nothing will change.

I make mistakes. I learn from them. I learn how much I do not know. In the very early days we have a tutor, a very well-known British poet, who comes to speak to the poets in the first round of TCW, including Malika Booker, Roger Robinson and Nick Makoha – poets who will go on to win many prizes, both national and international, including the T.S. Eliot Prize. The tutor tells them that the British Empire and the history of colonialism is a thing to be celebrated. There is an awkward silence. The tutor is not invited back.

Some of the mentors try to push the poets to write in a different style, with the specific goal of getting published by the larger poetry presses. They misunderstand the aim. We are not trying to change the poets, we are trying to change the poetry landscape. The poets, particularly those in the first cohort, are forgiving and continue to believe in the programme. They start to publish collections, win awards.

By the time of the second round of TCW, which begins in 2012, there are far more applicants. The community of poets of colour start to have faith in its vision, what it is trying to achieve. And they can see that it is succeeding. It is at this point that I add a new clause to the mentor’s contracts: that they will strive to help the poets strengthen their own unique voice, rather than attempting to shape it.

The road is still not always smooth. There is a tutor, editor of a well-known poetry journal, who is asked directly by a second round TCW poet why they do not publish more Black and brown poets. The editor replies that they do not wish to dumb down for their readers. Some poets walk out of the session. I cannot blame them.

The grumblings from the mainstream poetry sector continue. As the TCW poets begin to win more prizes, publish more collections, this grumbling grows louder. But change cannot be stopped. In 2015, three poets from TCW – Karen McCarthy Woolf, Mona Arshi, and Sarah Howe – are shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Arshi wins. And Howe’s Loop of Jade wins that year’s T.S. Eliot Prize.

A third round of TCW begins in 2017. More collections are published, more awards are won, more recognition gained. TCW poets win Forward Prizes (Will Harris), the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year (Sarah Howe and Raymond Antrobus), and much more. There are almost no literature festivals or platforms that do not feature TCW poets.

There are still some in the mainstream who complain that it is temporary, that the poets do not deserve these prizes. The world seems to disagree. By 2023 the figure of Black and Asian poets published by major presses is up to 20%. TCW fellows have published over 30 collections, meaning they have made a significant contribution to this figure.

What is most exciting is the incredible diversity within their writing. The beautiful range in the style and themes of poets who write from the position of other. Poets who write between cultures, sometimes between languages, challenging normative ideas of power, sexuality and more in a way that speaks to the world we live in today. It is this beautiful diversity that is celebrated in Mapping the Future, an anthology including the work of all 30 writers who’ve taken part in TCW over its ten-year span.

Mapping the Future offers a snapshot of the brilliance of the TCW poets, but it does not tell the whole story, particularly of the programme’s long-term, continuing impact. Winning prizes is one thing, but the poets have also become significant figures shaping the UK poetry landscape. Several have completed PhDs and are now lecturing, shaping the next generations of poets, readers and critics.⁴ Many have gone on to judge the prizes they were once told they could never hope to win, with Robinson serving as T.S. Eliot Prize judge, Booker and Rishi Dastidar as Forward and Costa judges, and Arshi on the panel selecting the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award.

TCW fellows are also making strides as guest editors of major journals such as The Poetry Review and Magma, and imprints – Kayo Chingonyi as editor of Bloomsbury’s new poetry list. TCW fellows also take up places on boards, further influencing the landscape: Arshi (Poetry School), Makoha (Arvon), Leo Boix (Magma) while Dastidar serves as chair of Spread the Word for six years.

As judges, lecturers, critics and editors they are now significant figures in a sector from which they were once excluded.

The poets have also become ground-breakers in terms of challenging genres. Roger Robinson continues to combine poetry and music in his highly successful career as a much-lauded musician. Inua Ellams is a multi-award winning playwright with many sold-out plays at the National Theatre also viewed by millions online. His work, most notably, The Half God of Rainfall, is a combination of poetry and prose. Arshi becomes the first TCW poet to publish a novel, Somebody Loves You, an experimental novel that wins international acclaim and is shortlisted for the Jhalak and Goldsmiths Prize. More novels will arrive in 2024, as the poets continue to challenge the space between poetry and prose. Three books of essays will also be published, as well as many new poetry collections. Raymond Antrobus has written a ground-breaking children’s book about a deaf/ disabled boy that has been translated into many languages. Jay Bernard won the Ted Hughes Prize for their poetry film featuring the poems in their debut collection Surge. Yomi Ṣode is combining theatre and poetry in new ways, as well as working closely with Chineke! Orchestra to produce a seminal piece of work with composer James B. Wilson at Southbank Centre inspired by an iconic moment in the Black Live Matters protests in the UK. He and McCarthy Woolf have also worked closely with visual artists, created poetry films and continue to expand the range of what poetry can do. British Latinx poet Boix has won numerous translation prizes, including a PEN Translates Award, and has brought many new Latinx poets to the attention of an English-language audience. His bilingual poetry has played a role in challenging the idea that poetry in the UK must be almost entirely in English – something that he had to fight hard to achieve, with early tutors suggesting that he might wish to simply write in Spanish.

TCW fellows have also taken up the fundamental work of the programme, nurturing and developing poets of colour. Makoha has set up the Obsidian Foundation, for Black poets in the UK. Based on the US organisation Cave Canem, of which he is a fellow (along with Booker and Antrobus), it has already become an important feature of the poetry landscape. Howe, in partnership with poet Sandeep Parmar, founded Ledbury Critics, an organisation that has helped to develop the writing and publication of over 30 poetry critics of colour. This has played a key role in ensuring that collections by Black and Asian poets are reviewed in the national press (they were previously largely ignored), and that the critiques are meaningful and nuanced. The Ledbury Critics cohort are now regular reviewers for the Telegraph, Financial Times and more.

I have been fortunate to be able to continue this legacy by helping Bloodaxe to set up the wonderful James Berry Poetry Prize, an initiative devised with Evaristo. This offers three poets per round (every three years) the opportunity to be mentored and have a full collection published by the UK’s most inclusive poetry publisher. In 2020 I also founded The Bridge, an online international collective for global majority poets, who are offered free monthly Masterclasses by some of the best Black, Asian and Latinx poets in the world.

The poetry world has also changed significantly since the start of TCW in 2007. There are new independent publishers like Broken Sleep, Out-Spoken and Penned in the Margins expanding the range of what is brought to British audiences. This is not to overlook other independent publishers, most notably flipped eye and Peepal Tree, founded before TCW – along with Bloodaxe and Carcanet – which have made a huge impact on both the poets and the wider landscape. The poetry lists of trade publishers which had previously included very few or no poets of colour saw a complete reversal, most notably at Chatto and Penguin. Granta took on Will Harris and Jonathan Cape outbid four other publishers to acquire Momtaza Mehri’s debut collection. And there are many more mentoring and development schemes, including the excellent Women’s Prize (run by the Rebecca Swift Foundation and managed by The Literary Consultancy).

Poetry in the UK is constantly changing and developing, becoming more multilingual as it reflects the diversity of Britain: over 300 languages are spoken in London alone. There are more links with the United States and a global audience. I am certain that there are many new developments to come, particularly in areas such as poetry film, cross-arts work and experimental fiction. I know that The Complete Works fellows will play a large part in bringing about this future, and that their legacy is one that continues to grow.

I would like to finish by thanking Bloodaxe for publishing all three TCW anthologies over the years, and for Neil Astley’s faith in it from the beginning. I would also like to thank Bernardine Evaristo for founding TCW and doing so much important work in the area of literary activism. I would also like to thank the TCW poets for their faith in me. Most of all, I would like to thank you, the audience and readers – you are the ones who keep the flame of poetry alive by buying our books and attending our readings.

NATHALIE TEITLER

¹ Denise Saul, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Yomi Ṣode (all TCW fellows), and Anthony Joseph, who wins the prize.

² Published by Spread the Word: Eds Mel Larsen, Danuta Kean.

³ After the first round, I was invited by Arts Council England (ACE) to run TCW as an independent organisation.

⁴ Karen McCarthy Woolf and Denise Saul have both completed their PhDs. Malika Booker and Nick Makoha are in the final stages of their doctoral studies. Sarah Howe already had a PhD on entering the programme and is a senior lecturer. All are also university and further education lecturers.

PREFACE

Poems as a Form of Knowledge Production

The title of this Preface (mis)quotes Victoria Adukwei Bulley, who writes that ‘dreaming is a form of knowledge production’ in her poem of the same name. It is a compelling sentiment, as well as an idea, and one which speaks eloquently to this current gathering.

Mapping the Future includes all thirty Fellows of The Complete Works mentoring programme and with them it captures multiple geographies, cultures, identities and modes of practice and poetics over a fifteen-year period. The landscape which it set out to transform has altered radically, not only within literature, but throughout the arts, and the publishing sector. Both Nathalie Teitler and Bernardine Evaristo speak to these dramatic shifts in demographics and relate some of the combined literary achievements across all three intakes, which comprise poets of the Middle Eastern, African, Caribbean, Asian and American diasporas.

This book is organised alphabetically via cohort. It includes essays on process and poetics as well as poems, starting from the most recent round in 2017 back to the initial intake, which I was a part of, in 2008, when, as stated, UK poetry was statistically whiter and far less porous to othered poetries than it is today. Returning now to the entirety of the Fellowship in 2023, the fact that the UK has been through seismic political change in that period is discernible. The nation where we make our homes and into which we release our poetry is post-Brexit and post-pandemic. The rhetoric, narrative and language these occurrences produced as political events have brought us to a place where exceptionalist nostalgia reigns over reality; a country in the grip of a collective (un)consciousness which Rishi Dastidar describes so aptly in his satirical poem ‘The Brexit Book of the Dead’ as ‘Empire 2.0’.

Beyond these vital matters of representation and identity, the idea that poems (and with them imaginative material that exists beyond Cartesian logic) might exist as acts of transformation and decoloniality is powerful. Keats’ negative capability captures that sense of writing into the unknown, but the canon and its environs are complicated for black, brown and non-white writers whose collective cultural knowledge systems have been historically undermined. Inevitably, writing into such spaces is also to write against them under what we might broadly term a poetics of resistance. That resistance may be explicit and subtle at the same time, as in Kayo Chingonyi’s poem ‘Kumukanda’, which expresses the ambivalent alienation of being an uninitiated boy who leaves Zambia for the UK and how this experience impacts his sense of self and language. It may be unerringly and inescapably direct, as is Warsan Shire’s now iconic poem ‘Home’, which reminds us that in the current migratory paradigm ‘no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.’ It may engage with archives and/or events, as does Jay Bernard in their poem ‘Clearing’ which uses first person account to bring us back to the horror of the New Cross fire; a tragedy which is amplified and echoed in Roger Robinson’s ‘The Missing’, dedicated to the victims of Grenfell. Or it may be fuelled by a focused interiority, as in Edward Doegar’s ‘The English Lyric’, which in its quiet study