Manorism

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The biggest clue here is the title. We know that colonisation is fundamentally an extractive project; whatever other justifications we might wish to dress that truth in – legal systems! railways! trade! – does not change that. But by using the word refractive, Alexander reframes history, reclaims stories – makes us look slant at what has been, and what could be.

And then take your breath away as he describes one of the results of this: ‘the populace bony / sleeping as thistles over fire’. Or even more brutally: ‘I appear to the Occidental eye as carbon without consequence’. Unsurprisingly the ‘carnivorous paws’ of King Leopold don’t come out of this well. The word ‘Manorism’ itself is another of these frameworks: a code for living by, one where the role of pride and respect – how it is earned, what happens when it is not present – is inescapable. Ṣode’s definition, in ‘On Fatherhood: Proximity to Death’, is subtly revealing in what it says about relative power between young men: ‘whether one yields to the other and keeps walking, / or whether we both head-nod to mark a familiarity as skin folk.’ Ṣode’s eye for respect and its absence is acute. In ‘A Sestina, for the Curious Oyinbo’, he details what happens when a woman at a writing retreat asks the tutor ‘ Do you want to be white?’:

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but i found this book genuinely amazing. undoubtedly i’ll be reading more by yọ̀mí ṣódé in the future, his work is absolutely incredible, i could not look away, i read this in pretty much one go. some parts i’ve already reread.

Expertly directed by Miranda Cromwell, it never once feels lethargic, though it has pools of stillness weighted with heavy emotion. Jonsson does not rush through these, nor indulge in them, but times them to a perfect pitch so that his story is about the bewilderment of grief but also the depth of love between these two men, and delivered without sentimentality. Yomi Ṣode is a writer, performer and teacher, who was born in Nigeria and moved to London at the age of nine. He made his name on the spoken-word poetry circuit, on YouTube and at music festivals. His theatre debut, Coat – an autobiographical monologue centred on the preparation of a meal that he cooked on stage – had a sold-out run in 2017. His second theatre piece, and breathe… – a one-hander about death, mourning and young masculinity – was premiered at the Almeida theatre in 2021. M anorism, his first poetry collection, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize earlier this month. asks what it means to find oneself between worlds- who is, and who isn’t, allowed ti be more than their origins? what do we owe each other? what do we owe ourselves. Manorism is a wonder of a collection. Yomi writes into the space where silence has been enforced, with language so dexterous it sings, with an honesty that is as sure as it is vulnerable. Throughout the collection, he gives language to grief, acute and enormous. He speaks not only to the moments we might falter in the face of our mourning but also to how we might rebuild, how we might not only survive those who pass, but thrive. What a joy it is to hold these words Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of OPEN WATERHighlights include opening for Saul Williams and The Last Poets, with appearances at Yahoo! Wireless Festival, Latitude, Lovebox, Olympic Village, New York Public Library, Sadler’s Wells Theatre as well as working with Channel 4 and BBC Radio 1xtra. He os the founder of Boxedin. A monthly poetry night in shoreditch. He is a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, and has had work commissioned by The Mayor’s Office, Southbank Centre, V&A, UN Humanitarian Summit, UCL Grant Museum of Zoology, The Foundling Museum, BBC World Service/ BBC Africa and various charities. His debut solo play COAT, about immigration, identity and displacement, was developed with Nimble Fish, Apples & Snakes, Southbank, and as part of the Last Word Festival at the Roundhouse. It then played at the Roundhouse before touring with performances at the Battersea Arts Centre, The Albany Theatre, and festivals including Africa Writes Festival and Brighton Festival. AND BREATHE..., the live theatrical adaptation of poems from the 3rd section of MANORISM, premiered at the Almeida Theatre in June 2021, starring David Jonsson and directed by Miranda Cromwell. Yomi’s play WALTZ, about his lived experiences as a social worker, had a reading at the Bush Theatre in 2021 directed by Daniel Bailey, and MANORISM, an immersive adaptation of his first poetry collection, recently opened at the Southbank Centre as a genre-breaking fusion of live poetry, dance, projection, music and theatre. i could not recommend this more, i recommend this to even people like me who usually don’t read poetry.

A work of formal experimentation, where lyric essays nestle against play-let structures, in service of a Claudia Rankine-esque determination to bear witness and find frameworks with which we can look at the world properly, fully ... Brilliant ... It's like fireworks going off ... Sode is unflinching and fearless ... Manorism's real gift to us as readers is, ultimately, Sode's deep and unfailing humanity. This is a book in which love can be found Rishi Dastidar, Poetry School BlogAnother compellingly original artist was the Nigerian-Yoruban writer Amos Tutuola. Very early in his The Palm-Wine Drinkard is the following passage where our hero meets Death: Art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon writes in his biography of Caravaggio: ‘He had always been an outsider, a troublemaker, a difficult and dangerous man. Yet his art was so compelling, so original, so unforgettable, that people were simply transfixed by it… The fact that he was obliged to invent himself may partly explain his deep originality.’ Graham-Dixon also reminds us that the artist, now lauded for his use of chiaroscuro – the contrast of light and dark within a work – was critized for showing the real world in all its ‘unregenerate ugliness’.