Art and Action: Benjamin Zephaniah in Conversation

Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding
stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the
Humanities. In his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin
Zephaniah (2018), award-winning poet, lyricist, musician, and
activist Benjamin Zephaniah speaks out candidly about the writer’s
responsibility to step outside the medium of literature and engage
in political activism: “You can’t just be a poet or writer and say
your activism is simply writing about these things; you have to do
something as well, especially if your public profile can be put to
good use.” In conversation with Elleke Boehmer and Malachi
McIntosh, he will address the complex relationship of authorship
and activism in a celebrity-driven media culture and the ways in
which his celebrity persona relates to his activist agenda. The
conversation will tie in with contemporary debates about the role
of literature and the celebrity author as a social commentator.
Pre-recorded introduction: Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World
Literature in English at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Literature. She is the author and editor of
over twenty books, including Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
(1995, 2005), Empire, the National and the Postcolonial: Resistance
in Interaction (2002), Stories of Women (2005), Indian Arrivals
1870-1915: Networks of British Empire (2015), Postcolonial Poetics:
21st-century critical readings (2018), and a widely translated
biography of Nelson Mandela (2008). She is the award-winning author
of five novels, including Bloodlines (2000), Nile Baby (2008), and
The Shouting in the Dark (2015), and two collections of short
stories, most recently To the Volcano, and other stories (2019).
Boehmer is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing and
principal investigator of Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds.
Speakers: Benjamin Zephaniah is one of Britain’s most eminent
contemporary poets, best known for his compelling spoken-word and
recorded performances. An award-winning playwright, novelist,
children’s author, and musician, he is also a committed political
activist and outspoken campaigner for human and animal rights. He
appears regularly on radio and TV, literary festivals, and has also
taken part in plays and films. He continues to record and perform
with his reggae band, recently releasing the album Revolutionary
Minds. His autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah
(2018), was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. Malachi
McIntosh is editor and publishing director of Wasafiri. He
previously co-led the Runnymede Trust’s award-winning Our Migration
Story project and spent four years as a lecturer in postcolonial
literature at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of
Emigration and Caribbean Literature (2015) and the editor of Beyond
Calypso: Re-Reading Samuel Selvon (2016). His fiction and
non-fiction have been published widely, including in the Caribbean
Review of Books, Flash: The International Short-Short Story
Magazine, The Guardian, The Journal of Romance Studies, Research in
African Literatures, and The Cambridge Companion to British Black
and Asian Literature. Q and A Chaired by Professor Wes Williams,
TORCH Director. The event is organised in association with the
Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds project and The Oxford Centre for
Life-Writing (OCLW) and forms part of the webinar series Art and
Action: Literary Authorship, Politics, and Celebrity Culture.