Translating the In-Between: Performance Poetry and the Relationship between Language, Literature and Society

Abstract

The principal object of analysis in this essay is a poem first performed at a conference on African theatre held in Nice in the late 1990s. In the wake of increasing demands for a printed version of the poem, sub-sequently performed in different venues worldwide, ‘The Story of M’ was published in 2002 by the Black Arts Alliance and the Arts Council of England. It formed one of a collection of four performance poems entitled 4 for more (SuAndi, 2002). ‘The Story of M’ has since become critically acclaimed internationally and is widely recognized in Britain as the talisman of its author, SuAndi, a leading Black poet from Manchester (Figure 7.1).¹