Dzifa Benson: 'I believe poetry can live anywhere and everywhere'
BY Katie Smart
8th Nov 2022
Dzifa Benson is a Ghanaian-British multi-disciplinary artist whose work intersects science, art, technology, the body and ritual which she explores through poetry, prose, theatre-making, performance, immersive technologies, essays, and criticism. Dzifa is a widely published poet whose most recent publications are in Staying Human, the latest in Bloodaxe Books’ celebrated series of anthologies and in More Fiya, an anthology of Black British poets edited by Kayo Chingonyi (Canongate Books). Her poetry and plays have been presented at the Royal Opera House, the Bush Theatre and the House of Commons and her theatre, fiction, non-fiction and poetry essays and reviews have been published in the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Telegraph, the Times Literary Supplement and The Poetry Review. Dzifa abridged the National Youth Theatre’s 2021 production of Othello in collaboration with Olivier award-winning director Miranda Cromwell. Dzifa has an MA in Text & Performance from Birkbeck and RADA and is also a Ledbury Poetry Critic. She was shortlisted for the inaugural James Berry Poetry Prize in 2021, was poet-in-residence curator for Whitstable Biennale 2022 and was a BBC Contains Strong Language 2022 poet. She is also curator in residence at Orleans House Gallery, poet in residence at Pallant House Gallery and is a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellow 2021/2022. Dzifa is also a regular editor for our Writing Poetry course, providing editorial feedback to our students.
We spoke to Dzifa about the hybridity of poetry, crafting for the stage, how beginners can get into poetry and the importance of reading widely and experiencing other art forms.
We’re delighted to have you on board as a reader and editor for our Writing Poetry course. What’s the most rewarding part of teaching others about poetry?
The most rewarding thing about teaching other people poetry is watching them grow in confidence and seeing their poetry become better and more impactful when they put the work into nurturing that growth. Also, I learn just as much about my own poetry from teaching other people about it so it feels like a win-win situation.
Your poetry and stories have appeared in the several anthologies and journals including Staying Human (Bloodaxe Books) and More Fiya, an anthology of Black British poets edited by Kayo Chingonyi (Canongate Books). Do you have any advice for poets just starting out on how to get started with their submissions to journals and magazines?
Many beginner poets like to post their new poems on social media. Don’t do this. Posting new poems on social media makes them count as ‘published’. Journals and magazines tend to prefer poems that haven’t been published elsewhere including on social media. So resist that need for the instant gratification you could get from likes on social media and think of the long game. If you really must post poems on social media, make sure they are poems that have already been published or poems you don’t intend to publish elsewhere.
The other thing is to start submitting to journals and magazines as soon as you start to feel confident about your poetry. This is important because it indicates to book publishers who you might approach to publish your eventual collection that you have a readership/audience, especially if it is also an international one so submit to publications outside of the UK too. Go for the most high profile publications you possibly can such as The Poetry Review here in the UK and Poetry in the US which both pay poets to publish their work.
Another reason why it’s important to book publishers to see your poems in magazines and journals is because it shows them that you are the kind of poet capable of winning prizes which makes them more comfortable about publishing and consequently selling your book.
Getting used to submitting your poems also helps to hone your professionalism. It enables you to develop a critical, objective eye about your own work because you have to learn what are the right poems to send to the right magazines and journals because they all have their own style and the kind of poems they like. Using a spreadsheet to track what poems have been sent where helps a lot with this process.
Lastly, get used to the idea of rejection. It helps to build resilience. Even the highest profile poets have had their work rejected from magazines and journals many times. It’s the ones that keep going despite setbacks that are the most successful poets.
Can you describe your poetic practice and where you look for inspiration?
I’m a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice embraces poetry, theatre, visual and public art, journalism and more recently, technology. There’s a lot of cross-over between those different modes of creative expression and lots of opportunities for hybridisation centring poetry. So I’m very open-minded about where I look for poetic inspiration and my practice is characterised by a commitment to craft, lots of graft, bold choices, risk-taking and innovation. I’m very close to completing the manuscript of my debut poetry collection.
Earlier this year, I was poet-in-residence at Whitstable Biennale which inspired me to write site-specific poems that were installed around Whitstable Harbour and town. My favourite installation at the festival was a site-specific poem I wrote for a jetty that jutted out into the sea. The poem was hidden and revealed by the movement of the tides making the poem a work of visual art too.
I’ve also just completed my residency at Pallant House Gallery’s Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit exhibition in which I was writing ekphrastic poems and running workshops with adults and children about how to derive poetry from visual art.
Currently, I’m curator-in-residence at Orleans House Gallery where I’ve curated the exhibition Lines of Dissent in which I’m responding to artworks with lyric, erasure, ekphrastic, concrete and narrative poems as well as dramatic scripts. I’ve even thrown an origami poem into the mix too in the shape of the DNA double helix as a way of creating an object of art that also happens to be a poem. As part of the residency, I’ve also commissioned 35 different artists from the worlds of poetry, photography, dance, theatre and music to respond to the artworks in the exhibition. This showcases an essential tenet of my poetic practice which is focused on fostering and nurturing community within the British poetry landscape.
More recently, I’ve been exploring how immersive technologies can expand the impact, innovation and reach of my poetry. So as you can see, I believe poetry can live anywhere and everywhere and I am always looking for new ways to bring poetry closer to the lives of people who are not poets.
You also write and perform for the stage. Would you say that you have a different approach to the craft of poetry when it comes to page versus stage poems?
I don’t have much patience for the idea that there’s a big difference between writing poetry for the page and writing poetry for the stage. For me, there is simply well-crafted poetry that sits well on the page and with the right kind of stage craft can be made to work beautifully for the stage too. A good example of this in practice is the Almeida Theatre’s production of poet Yomi Sode’s sequence of poems ‘and…breathe’ which was wonderfully directed for the stage by the Olivier award-winning director Miranda Cromwell. Another example is debbie tucker green, a well-known playwright. When I first read the script of her play ‘ear for eye’, I was surprised to discover how much it resembled poetry on the page instead of a traditional dramatic script.
I write plays too so these days, that is what I immediately think of when I think of writing for the stage. But writing plays has a lot in common with writing poetry. They both rely a lot on subtext for their effect and they are both compressed forms of storytelling. In fact, I often think that I use the same part of my brain for writing both poetry and theatre. It feels like a different part of my brain from the part I use to write prose or the theatre and literature reviews I do for the Telegraph or the Financial Times. When I remember that theatre arose out of poetry in ancient Greece, the similarity makes sense.
You’ve performed your work at a range of events, festivals, museums and galleries. Do you have any advice for poets who are nervous to perform live for the first time?
There are many things a poet can do to steady nerves before performing live for the first time but if I had to recommend just one thing that I think is an absolute must, it is to connect to the breath. Deep, full breaths which completely fill and empty the lungs and in which the inhalation is the same length as the exhalation does wonders for calming everything right down.
What poem or collection do you always recommend to others?
There are so many great ones but Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky is extraordinary and Citizen by Claudia Rankine broke the mould of what poetry can look like when it was first published.
What recently published pamphlet or collection have you enjoyed reading recently?
It was published in 2020 but I’ve only just finished reading it – Cannibal by Safiya Sinclair is a great discovery.
What are your top tips for aspiring poets?
- Graft hard on craft because it pays huge dividends. Appreciate the reality that it takes time to become a good poet.
- Try your hand at more formal poetry even if you aren’t going to use it all the time because it will help improve what you write in free verse. This means writing outside of your comfort zone.
- Learn how line breaks can power your poetry to new heights.
- Seek out peer mentorships – see if you can form a group to give each other feedback.
- Take workshops and masterclasses.
- Attend poetry recitals and spoken word shows.
- Read, read, read. Then when you you’ve done that, read some more! Read widely and beyond anglocentric poetry so read poetry in translation and from all the continents. And read books that aren’t poetry books too.
- If you can, start writing poetry criticism – it’s great training for writing good poetry and for analysing how good poetry achieves its effects and is one of the best things you can do to improve your own poetry. It will also keep you abreast of what is going on in the industry at large.
- Go to see art, watch films and tv shows, listen to music, dance and travel as much as you can. They will all increase your literary, cultural and emotional vocabulary and therefore the frames of references you can bring to your poetry.
- Ultimately, be insatiably curious about the world.
- Did I mention how important it is to read poetry?
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