Jump to content

Inua Ellams

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 72.138.195.10 (talk) at 04:12, 15 November 2020 (→‎Adolescence in Britain and Ireland: 1996-2002). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Inua Ellams[1][2]
FRSL[3]
Born
Inua Marc Mohammed Onore de Ellams II[4][5][6]

(1984-10-23) 23 October 1984 (age 39)[1]
Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria[7][8]
CitizenshipNigeria
EducationFirhouse Community College, Dublin, Ireland (2002)[1]
Occupation(s)Poet, playwright
Known forBarber Shop Chronicles
Websitewww.inuaellams.com

Inua M. M. Ellams[1][2] FRSL[3] (born 23 October 1984)[1] is a UK-based poet, playwright and performer.

Biography

Childhood in Nigeria: 1984-1996

Ellams was born in the city of Jos in the north Nigerian highlands[7][8] to the nation tribe of the nomadic Hausa people[1][9] in a family with a "long line of troublemakers"[10] with his grandfather and father being infamous in their ancestral village for their troublesome pranks.[5][6] He has Hausa heritage from his paternal grandmother[7][8].

Ellams' father, Inua Ellams I,[11][4][5] was born in the early 1950s and grew up Muslim in Bendel State (what is now Delta State) and, while in secondary school, survived through the Midwest Invasion of August 1967 in the Nigerian Civil War, which leveled his town and pitted him against his uncle.[12] He traveled extensively after educating at Nautica University[4][failed verification], eventually marrying Ellams' Christian mother[7][13][14] in 1995[15] in a mixed-faith marriage rejected by some wider family members,[16] and found success as a businessman in the import and export trading[6][11] of Nigerian food.[14]

Ellams' family lived a comfortable privileged middle-class Nigerian life with family servants.[10][17] Ellams attended boarding-school at the Plateau Private School in Jos.[1][17] Growing up, Ellams wanted to be, variously, an architect,[18] painter (he eventually became disillusioned with due to its perceived pretentiousness),[9] and town planner.[4] He followed both faiths in his household, Islam and Christianity, with "similar enthusiasm".[15] He played with his sisters' Barbie dolls while composing stories about comic strip superheroes.[11]

In 1996, his father went on a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia – a tenet of the Islamic faith – but he saw some things there which he did not agree with.[13][14] Upon returning to Nigeria,[13] his father began to openly doubt his faith and was considering to leave Islam[13] and decided to convert to Christianity.[6][11][18] Islamic extremists threatened the family and tried to kill his father[13][14] and burn down their house.[14] One of Ellams' uncles also disappeared in suspicious circumstances.[10][19] The family escaped to Lagos, but the threats and violence still continued,[14] so in the autumn of 1996, when Ellams was aged 12, the family migrated from Nigeria to London, UK[20] under political exile.[11]

Adolescence in Britain and Ireland: 1996-2002

The family settled in Holland Park, a "very multicultural" neighborhood of London.[1][21] British culture was not foreign to Ellams as he had visited London before at age 8 or 9[22] and loved British television in Nigeria.[18] Unlike in Nigeria, money was tight for his family in Britain, and Ellams even resorted to cutting his own hair[23] being unable to afford to go to the barbershop.[24] He attended Holland Park School[1] in Holland Park, London, where he experienced racism for the first time when, confusingly, a schoolboy called him a "nig nog", which had to be explained to him by a white friend.[9][18]

The London law firm which the family engaged to work on their immigration case was unknowingly fraudulent and the Royal Mail and Home Office had "lost" the family's immigration papers and passports and birth certificates,[10][10][6][11][25][failed verification] which stalled their British immigration case,[6] so in July 1999,[1] at the age of 14, his family was forced to move to Firhouse[26] – at the time a poor suburb – near Tallaght in the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland.[21] They lived there for three years,[14] and Ellams worked jobs in general office administration for a local architectural firm and a sports retailer in his secondary school years.[1]

He attended Firhouse Community College in Firhouse,[1][26] as the only Black boy at the school in his years.[27][10] Racism towards him was prevalent[15] (although it was out of ignorance),[26] but he learned to laugh and not give in to self-pity,[15] and eventually found a tightknit group of friends.[26] It is at this school that, at age 17, Ellams worked on his first play: a poor adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, with Dublin slang and a cast of his friends and the school basketball team.[18] He also organized the school's first arts festival and also served as vice-president of the student council.[1][21] Ellams' interest for poetry and basketball was kindled and supported at this school by Mr. Senan Nolan,[26] a poetry teacher and a basketball coach who saw Ellams through the confusion of the racism he was experiencing.[6] He learned about John Keats and Eminem,[15] simultaneously,[15] and discovered hip hop at the same time as he discovered poetry and basketball.[11]

In Firhouse, Ellams befriended another nerdy classmate Stephen Devine, with whom he would argue with on the most mundane things, and they bonded over Shakespeare and being top of their class in English.[12][13] He took poetry more seriously[14] after Stephen committed suicide due to depression[23] in 2001 over the summer holidays[15] when Ellams was 16.[16] Ellams returned to school from the holidays to discover that the classroom was rearranged by his teacher so he did not have to sit next to an empty seat.[17]

After his secondary education, he applied for university in Dublin in the field of graphic design[9], but his family was forced to leave Dublin.[9] Despite moving from Ireland, he retained aspects of his Irish identity.[26]

Adulthood in Britain

In late 2002,[21] at age 18, Ellams and his family settled back in London, UK.[24] By this time, their London immigration law firm had disappeared after being raided and shut down by the Home Office for fraud with the black market in fake identities.[18][6] He applied for college and art school in Britain, but having unresolved British citizenship status, Ellams qualified as an overseas student, which came with higher tuition fees.[14] Money being "painfully tight", he could not afford to go, so he did not pursue further post-secondary education.[14][17] Dejected, he tried visual art, but because he could not afford paint or other art materials and because he did not know how to use Photoshop[19], he turned to poetry,[21][9] thinking of it as "painting pictures with words".[9] Now an adult, Ellams started working as a self-employed freelance graphic designer for poets[18], and rekindled relationships with his previous London childhood friends.[21]

Ellams was transfixed by a CD of stage poet Saul Williams which was recommended by his friend, followed closely by a BBC television airing of a performative poetry piece by poet Jessica Holter of the Punany Poets.[20] In the following weekend at a bar near the London National Portrait Gallery, Ellams performed his first poetry session, and thereafter, based on his flourishing performance, was given a headline slot within two months.[21]

Ellams began to frequent bookshops, in particular Borders bookshop on Charing Cross Road,[22] every Friday night to write poetry and read and discuss extensively about X-Men comics with a community of Black poets, including Roger Robinson, Nii Ayikwei Parkes and Jacob Sam-La Rose, who would later become his mentors.[22][6] These experiences contributed to his lifelong interest and "encyclopaedic knowledge"[14] of Marvel comics, and they were formative in his poetry as Ellams relates that "part of my poetry education was through comics and fandom."[6]

In March 2007,[28] when Ellams was aged 22, his father suffered a hemorrhagic stroke which left him unable to work.[28][6] Ellams moved into cash-in-hand poetry performance and selling his books as a way to make a living and help his mother to educate his sisters through university while his father was unable to work.[6][28]\

In 2005 and 2007,[22] Ellams performed a spoken word poetry piece in a tent at Glastonbury Festival,[25] but the audience was drunk, noisy, uninterested, and even contemptuous of his performance, and due to poor rainy weather, the venue was muddy and battered by heavy winds.[23][24] Thereafter, due to this poor experience, Ellams wanted to move into theatre, where the staging could be better controlled and where the audience is more receptive,[25] and also due to theatre being a "natural progression" of poetry.[26]

Ellams attended a Royal garden party at the Buckingham Palace at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth II,[10][19] with Goldie and Andrew Marr,[25] while under threat of deportation by the Home Office.[25] Despite this, the Home Office refuses to recognize Ellams, or the rest of his family, as British citizens.[10][19]

The 14th Tale

Ellams first chance at theatre came when he was commissioned by the organization Apples and Snakes (where he worked as a poet) to write a 15-minute poem with theatrical elements in a competition against three other poets.[27][28] Although he half-bakedly adapted his first book as his competition entry, Ellams ended up winning the prize of making a longer play, which became The 14th Tale.[29][30] Close to calling it quits six drafts in, Ellams chose to extend a previously written poem about his father called Ash Skinned after being advised by his mentor Roger Robinson to write about what Ellams was most afraid to write about – himself.[31] Ellams performed three informal scratch showings of his preliminary play script,[32] including to Kate McGrath co-founder of the theatre production company Fuel Theatre,[33] which was invited to the showings at the behest of Apples and Snakes.[34] After a few months, McGrath contacted Ellams to further develop the play,[35] and took a chance on Ellams despite him not having a work permit in the UK.[36][6] With additional funding from the London Arts Council,[37] Ellams scratched and showcased his finished play The 14th Tale,[38] with freelancer Thierry Lawson as theatre director and Michael Nabarro for lighting,[39] to a full sold-out audience at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston, which was well received.[40] This got the attention of the British Arts Council, who booked the play for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it opened to critical acclaim and was awarded the Fringe First as the festival's best production.[41] The play returned to London for a National Tour in September,[42] where it was seen and further considered for a run by the National Theatre.[43] Two years after being first written,[44] The 14th Tale was shown at the National Theatre as one of the first plays there featuring a Black man in a solo production.[45]

The Midnight Run

In London in June 2005,[1] Ellams founded The Midnight Run[citation needed], an undirected and politically unaffiliated urban social excursion project where strangers gather to explore a city's streets from 6pm to midnight or 6am.[21][9][22][citation needed] The project originated when Ellams and a close friend were waiting one night for a bus after seeing a play at Battersea Arts Centre.[21][22] The bus did not show up, so they walked the bus route aimlessly for hours discovering London.[21][22] Further influenced by the 1950s French artistic movement The Situationists and the nomadic traditions of Ellams' Nigerian Hausa tribe, Ellams began inviting members of his poetry newsletter mailing list.[21][9] Over the years, the sessions expanded from poetry excursions initially, to other arts and activities ranging from "Tai Chi instructors to basketball coaches, to guerrilla gardeners and Greek wrestling enthusiasts, to puppetry, poetry and political speech writing, as well as cookery classes".[9][21] The project is currently international, with sessions in countries such as Australia and Italy.[22][9]

Personal life

Ellams has a twin sister[18] as well as one younger and older sister,[11] to whom he attributes his sense of femininity. His twin sister, Mariam Ellams Oreva Asuquo,[29][30] owns a cake bakery business Mimi To You Cakes[30] in South East London,[30] and wrestled him in childhood.[18] His younger sister, who is around five years younger than him,[18] also owns a bakery business[18] and, unlike Ellams, was granted British citizenship in October 2018.[13] His older sister, who is around two years older than him,[18] works as a PA for the Transport of London as of July 2019.[18] Until 2018, Ellams' family had only "discretionary leave to remain" in the UK and had to apply to renew and extend their stay in the UK by formal request to the Home Office every three years at a cost of £900 per person;[10] however in 2018,[13] 22 years after first immigrating from Nigeria, Ellams' family was given "indefinite leave to remain" in the UK.[13][17] Except for his younger sister, Ellams and his family have not yet been granted British citizenship as of September 2020,[13] and Ellams' application for citizenship was refused in December 2019.[25] Ellams disdains Donald Trump, who figures in some of his poems,[11] though he would like to move to New York City, US.[18] Ellams is gluten-intolerant.[18]

Ellams is fascinated with hip hop culture[9] and basketball, which figures occasionally in his work like The Half God of Rainfall.[14] He started playing basketball at age 12 to get the attention of a girl obsessed with African-American culture during his time in Holland Park School.[14] He still plays basketball pick-up games two times a week as point guard.[14]

Ellams describes his spirituality as a cross between Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Zen, Neo-spiritualism and poetry, which he believes to be related to religion.[16]

Ellams partner is Vietnamese-Chinese, born in Vietnam, and works in virtual reality film.[16]

Ellams has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company,[31] Royal National Theatre and the BBC. In June 2018, Ellams was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature as part of its 40 Under 40 initiative.[3][32]

Work

Poetry

Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales (flipped eye, 2005)

Candy Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars (flipped eye, 2011)

The Wire-Headed Heathen (Akashic Books, 2016)

The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011)[33][citation needed]

Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe, 2014)[33][citation needed]

Performances and plays

The 14th Tale

Ellams's one-man show The 14th Tale was awarded an Edinburgh Fringe First at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2009 and later transferred to the Royal National Theatre, London.[8]

Untitled

A one-man show staged at the Soho Theatre in 2010,[34] telling the story of twins born on Nigeria's independence day.[35]

Barber Shop Chronicles

Barber Shop Chronicles is a play set in black barber shops in six cities on one day, against the backdrop of a football match between Chelsea and Barcelona. The play explores the African diaspora in the UK,[36] masculinity, homosexuality and religion. The play was produced by the National Theatre, Fuel Theatre and Leeds Playhouse and was shortlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award in 2017.[37] Following a period of touring, the play was also performed at the Roundhouse in 2019,[38] and a recording of the National Theatre production was streamed in May 2020 as part of the National Theatre at Home season.[39] For the production, Ellams recorded 60 hours of "male banter"[18] in barbershops all over Africa and in London at his barber Peter's shop Emmanuel's in Clapham Junction.[18] This project originally did not secure funding.[9]

The Half God of Rainfall

In April 2019 his new play, The Half God of Rainfall, was presented at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre,[40] in advance of its run at London's Kiln Theatre, as well as its publication as a book.[6]

Three Sisters

In December 2019–February 2020 Ellams's reworking of Chekhov's play Three Sisters was performed at the Royal National Theatre, London.[41] The play restaged the story in the 1960s in the midst of the Biafran war in Nigeria.[17]

An Evening with an Immigrant

In 2020 Ellams has been performing a live stage programme with anecdotes of his childhood and his experiences as a refugee and will continue to update it to reflect his current experiences. An excerpt was shown at the Hay Festival on 24 May 2020.[8]

Awards

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n "inuaellamsCV copy" (PDF). InuaEllams.com. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  2. ^ a b "Inua Ellams". Inua Ellams. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  3. ^ a b c "Royal Society of Literature >> Inua Ellams". The Royal Society of Literature. 28 June 2018. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d Marc Fennell (interviewer), Inua Ellams (interviewee) (23 January 2018). Inua Ellams: Creating space to get lost (SoundCloud audio). Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia: Sydney Opera House - It's A Long Story. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  5. ^ a b Eric Otieno (19 February 2018). "Barber Shop Chronicles - Inua Ellams disentangles the nuances of Black Masculinity in Play". Griot Magazine. Retrieved 30 September 2019.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Claire Armitstead (22 April 2019). "Inua Ellams: 'In the UK, black men were thought of as animalistic'". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  7. ^ a b c Alyssa Klein (22 January 2015). "Nigerian Poet Inua Ellams Pens A Poem For Baga". OkayAfrica. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  8. ^ a b c d e Delia Jarrett-Macauley (2018). "Inua Ellams - Literature". British Council - Literature. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l wildness (October 2017). "An Interview with Inua Ellams (Interview)". wildness. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h Lyn Gardner (23 August 2017). "An Evening With an Immigrant review – how poetry saved Inua Ellams's life". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h Paul Taylor (10 July 2020) [2019-12-10]. "Playwright Inua Ellams on transposing Chekhov's Three Sisters to the Nigerian Civil War". The i. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  12. ^ Inua Ellams (June 2014). Letter to an Unknown Soldier. 14–18 NOW. Retrieved 1 October 2020.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i Elizabeth Amos (interviewer), Inua Ellams (interviewee) (October 2018). "Culture and Kinship in the Barber's Chair (Interview)". American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), Harvard University (published 27 November 2018). Retrieved 30 September 2020. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Elizabeth A. Harris (26 September 2020). "This Basketball-Loving Poet Resists Categorization". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  15. ^ a b c d e f Kate Kellaway (4 October 2020). "An Evening With an Immigrant review – irresistible". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
  16. ^ a b c Steve Dow (interviewer), Inua Ellams (interviewee) (26 October 2017). ""I'm 32, I sound like I'm 60" (Interview)". AUDREY Journal. Retrieved 1 October 2020. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  17. ^ a b c d e Andrew Dickson (22 March 2020). "Playwright Inua Ellams on poetry, basketball and the Nigerian melodrama of Chekhov". Financial Times. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  18. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Susannah Butter (interviewer), Inua Ellams (interviewee) (23 July 2019). "Inua Ellams interview: 'Men think they have to be tougher to downplay the frailties they feel' (Interview)". Evening Standard - GoLondon. Retrieved 30 September 2020. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  19. ^ a b c Maxim Boon (28 August 2017). "Writer And Theatre-Maker Inua Ellams Finds Poetry In The Immigrant Experience". The Music. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
  20. ^ Iman Amrani, Noah Payne-Frank, Grace Shutti, Ken Macfarlane (22 March 2020). "'I became a black man when I arrived in England': Inua Ellams on his play Barber Shop Chronicles (Interview, Video)". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 September 2020.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  21. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Inua Ellams (speaker) (29 June 2013). Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost: Inua Ellams at TEDxHackney (YouTube video). Dalston, London, UK, [1][2][3]: TEDx Talks (TEDxHackney) (published 22 July 2013). Retrieved 29 September 2020. {{cite AV media}}: External link in |location= (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
  22. ^ a b c d e f g Isabelle Aron (interviewer), Inua Ellams (interviewee) (23 September 2020). "Inua Ellams: 'London is the closest I've felt to a home'". Time Out - London. Retrieved 1 January 2020. {{cite news}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  23. ^ a b Inua Ellams (speaker) (10 October 2015). Redefining black masculinity - Inua Ellams - TEDxBrixton (YouTube video). Brixton, London, UK, [4]: TEDx Talks (TEDxBrixton) (published 22 January 2016). Retrieved 29 September 2020. {{cite AV media}}: External link in |location= (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
  24. ^ a b Laura Collins-Hughes (2 December 2019). "'Barber Shop Chronicles' Gives Black Men Control of Their Story". The New York Times. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  25. ^ a b c d e Sam Marlowe (25 September 2020). "An Evening With An Immigrant, Bridge Theatre, review: A rich, riveting personal true story". The i. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
  26. ^ a b c d e f Dean Van Nguyen (18 May 2017). "'It was difficult settling in to Dublin, dealing with racism and ignorance'". Irish Times. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
  27. ^ Inua Ellams (18 October 2009). "Part 2". The 14th Tale. flipped eye publishing. ISBN 978-1-905-23326-7. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  28. ^ a b c Inua Ellams (15 March 2008). "Something to Love". Inua Ellams (Blog). Retrieved 1 October 2020.
  29. ^ "The Typo King FRSL / FRSA on 2020-09-23". The Typo King FRSL / FRSA @InuaEllams. 23 October 2020. Retrieved 14 November 2020.
  30. ^ a b c "Mimi To You Cakes". Mimi To You Cakes. Retrieved 14 November 2020.
  31. ^ "'The first time I read Shakespeare's The Tempest, I got angry.'". BBC World Service - The Cultural Frontline. 16 May 2016. Retrieved 17 September 2017.
  32. ^ a b "The RSL elects 40 new Fellows under the age of 40". The Royal Society of Literature. 28 June 2018. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  33. ^ a b "Inua Ellams – Poetry Spotlight". Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  34. ^ Philip Fisher (2010). "Theatre review: Untitled at Soho Theatre". British Theatre Guide. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  35. ^ Lyn Gardner (5 October 2010). "Untitled - review". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  36. ^ Kirsty Lang (23 November 2017). "BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Inua Ellams on Barber Shop Chronicles, Battle of the Sexes, Charles Causley, Godless". BBC. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  37. ^ a b "2017 Awards - Alfred Fagon Award". Alfred Fagon Award. 8 December 2017. Retrieved 17 September 2017.
  38. ^ Miriam Gillinson (26 July 2019). "Barber Shop Chronicles review – hair-raising ebullience". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  39. ^ Arifa Akbar (13 May 2020). "Inua Ellams: 'Barber shops are a safe, sacred place for British black men' (Interview)". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  40. ^ "The Half God of Rainfall - Birmingham". Birmingham Repertory Theatre. April 2019. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  41. ^ Alice Saville (11 December 2019). "'Three Sisters' review". Time Out - London. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  42. ^ Catherine Love (16 March 2017). "Inua Ellams: 'I'm bracing myself for a showdown with UKIP'". The Stage. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  43. ^ "The Break - five original short monologues". BBC Writersroom. BBC. 2 November 2015.
  44. ^ "Inua Ellams - Hay Festival". Hay Festival. 24 May 2020. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inua_Ellams&oldid=988771887"