indie-interview-levi-tafari

	A Poetic Celebration of Diversity


	Interview with Levi Tafari

Poet and playwright Levi Tafari was born in Liverpool. He is the author of four poetry collections: Duboetry (1987), Liverpool Experience (1989), Rhyme Don't Pay (1998) and From the Page to the Stage (2006), and his plays have been performed at theatres in Liverpool and Stafford. Levi has also contributed to many educational projects running creative writing workshops and worked in Brussels with our INDIE kids. He tells Canan Marasligil more about his writing and life experience.

How do you feel when people ask you “where are you from”?
I don’t feel any negative or positive; I just feel people are being inquisitive. When I say to people I’m from Liverpool, they go on asking from where originally, so I tell them I was born in Liverpool. And sometimes people have difficulty and they go on asking: but before that? Then you think: how can there be any before I’m born? But I acknowledge that I have a West African root with Caribbean heritage and a British experience. I have Ghanaian roots, Jamaican heritage because my parents are from Jamaica and I was born and raised in Liverpool. So I see myself as being tri-cultural, having three cultures.

Do you use this tri-cultural aspect a lot in your poetry?
I use it in my everyday living, and the three elements guide me through life. I also use them in my poetry. I sometimes write poetry in the Jamaican nation language, sometimes it might have a kind of West African rhythm and a reggae beat, or even hip hop rap style, which I know is American, but also part of the African-American experience.

Is gathering all these experiences and heritage more enriching than an obstacle for you?
That’s right. I’ve been able to turn it into something positive, rather than seeing it as negative like other people might do. People think that having more than one culture makes you confused, but when we taste food with different flavours, it doesn’t confuse our tongue. It’s delightful!

You said yesterday to the children from the INDIE project that your name has a specific meaning. Can you explain it?
Levi means “unity” and Tafari means “creator”, so when you put them together, you get a “creator of unity”, which I try to achieve with the various people I work with. This name was given to me when I converted to Rastafari (religious movement that emerged in Jamaica within working class and peasant black people in the early 1930s). People are very spiritual in the Caribbean so it’s not unusual to be given Biblical names. Levi is a strong name because unity is strength, and Levi was the priest.

You said to the children yesterday that one never know when one will become a refugee. Here in the Western countries, we have the feeling that it will never happen to us. What would you like to say to these people who think that they are protected in some way?
To change their way of thinking because anything can happen! It might not necessarily be a terrorist attack, it could be nature. Nature can strike really bad; the Tsunami took more than 300,000 lives! People should empathise with other people’s situation, because you know, one minute you’re a healthy person and the next minute you have a nasty cough which the doctor tells you is nothing good and then you have to change your lifestyle, you may even become disabled, and then you think “now I understand what they’re going through”.

In one of your poems you say “Communicate, Educate, Organise” -is this how people will be able to achieve such understanding?
Definitely, because all of these are reciprocating: education is a two-way process, it’s to teach for someone to learn, and someone has to learn to be able to teach. The same applies to communicate, if I am talking to you, you need to listen to what I’m saying and I need to know that you listen for the communication to be complete. And then organising is about balance, two sides working on three, then in harmony. So Communicate, Educate, Organise!

And then you said: Communicate, Educate and Get Wise!
Get wise that’s right!

Do you think you achieve wisdom through poetry?
I think so, and I think I started writing because I embraced the Rastafarian way of life, and this gave me a focus and a direction, and a good way of thinking, a spiritual foundation. Knowledge is one thing, but wisdom is another. They say that knowledge teaches us that a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom teaches us that you do not put a tomato in a fruit salad. This is the difference. You might have the knowledge, but do you have the wisdom to go with the knowledge?

In your poem Celebr8 you write “There’s Room for You and Space for Me”, which is a way of saying let’s live together with our differences of course, but is living together ‘tolerance’? We had a discussion about this term this morning while reviewing the Charter, and everybody agreed on changing the word tolerate to…
Appreciate! I agree, and I also was going to suggest reviewing that word. To tolerate means to put up with, whereas to appreciate means to embrace and to see the goodness. People need to learn to appreciate the differences. We can have a tolerant spirit, but we need to appreciate other people because we’re all people! It starts with self. People who are racists, sexists, ageists, are just reflecting their insecurities on other people. They’re at war with themselves and they take that war to other people. It makes the world bitter.

You shared this positive feeling about diversity really well with the children here in Brussels during the last three days.
We gave the kids the material, the ideas and they came up with the substance. For their last work, they wrote something that was relative to them in their voice, in their mother tongue, so I feel uplifted!

Interview by C anan Marasligil
Brussels, 28 Februrary 2008