The musician, producer and ‘party poet’ discusses the vivacity behind his self-programmed literature nights and coalescence of different communities through poetry.
For over a decade, James Massiah has held paramount influence within the UK’s underground rap and poetry scene, seamlessly navigating through a multifarious list of professions including DJ, musician, rapper and poet. His remarkably diverse repertoire is even further extended through the curation of his own events series: Adult Entertainment, a poetry-club night hybrid designed to foster discussion around spoken word. A revitalised version of its former self, ‘The A & The E’, Adult Entertainment brings people together under a new-wave literary ecosystem, where partying and poetry work in symbiosis to provide the content of the evening. Above all else and as its name suggests, the objective of the event is to entertain, with works inspired by nights out, lust, nostalgia and London. Performances range from short stories on houseparty hierarchy and AI boyfriends to poems recounting worldwide drinking stints through playful personification of the liver.
On the last Friday of May, the Tate Modern housed the most recent instalment of Adult Entertainment, dubbed a ‘South London takeover’. Transcending the confines of elementary labels such as performer or host, Massiah steps into yet another role here. His purpose this evening is to unite. Taking the stage steeped in an infectious kind of gaiety, Massiah promises to pace his words and asks the audience how they’re feeling with unmistakable sincerity. He then introduces his fellow contributors: an eclectic chain of friends brought together by writing, poetry and spoken word forms.
Thanh Ma
Evenings at Adult Entertainment are confessional yet unburdened by guilt. Anecdotes of early-shut corner shops in Forest Hill and stashing coats in the Brixton McDonald’s before the club are some of the stories shared, spanning across short-form, free verse and prose. The audience is charmed but moved, too, with moments of articulation and sobriety peppered in amongst laughter. Bookending the event with his poems, the rhythmic buoyancy of Massiah’s’ verse is accompanied by wit and ambition. Unabashed admissions of going out too late or drinking too much are mixed in with metaphors for drive and aspiration, showcasing his striking creative dexterity. Massiah concludes the night with a poem of respite. “Sleep is essential. You should get some,” he reminds us, before paying homage to his native London through the parting mantra: “stay South.”
Sitting down with Man About Town, Massiah talks Adult Entertainment, religion, musical influences, and uniting people through poetry.
Could you tell me about Adult Entertainment, and its evolution from The A & The E?
It started in 2012; I graduated university in 2011, and prior to that I’d been in the church. I was raised as a Christian, and was really into textual analysis of poems, chapters, and verses from the Bible. I also loved the philosophy that came of it, the questions of ethics and how humans interact, or should interact with each other. So, in the wake of leaving the church and not being in formal education anymore, I wanted to recreate a forum where I could still do that. The A & The E was not so much a poetry night as it was a philosophy salon-forum.
Adult Entertainment is, to me, the culmination or the real fulfilment of what The A & The E was really about. I was trying to connect with people and have them tell their stories and I was just being way too heavy-handed with it. It’s just like, mate, just get a room full of people chatting. Strip it back and ask: what’s the essence of it?
You’ve spoken about your relationship with religion and becoming an atheist later in life. How do you think that shapes your journey in music?
The track “Peroxide” with the verse: “went church and I lost faith, but imma talk through it on our next date”, is like my little mantra to myself. When things aren’t feeling so good, I kind of just rap it to myself. It was a reflection on my time in the church – I played drums in the church and I love some of the hymns and the music. I don’t just mean the more up-tempo contemporary gospel music, I mean the old hymns. I used to love this one track, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, it’s one of my favourite songs of all time. There’s a really haunting quality to a lot of that music that I try to find in other music, and that I try to find in the music I produce as well. Now, as far as the practice of religion, I only reflect on it. I think that maybe my story is richer because of that time.
James Garn
Why do you think poetry is the medium that resonates with you the most, as opposed to prose or visual art?
I do make visual art as well, but it stems from poetry. I call them drafts, and they’re sort of like streams of consciousness, handwritten ‘not poems’. With prose, I’m writing a collection of essays at the moment, which will come out next year – if I meet my writing deadline, which I won’t do if I keep partying with these crazy people.
[James gestures towards his friends sitting behind us.]
But, if I pull my finger out and get focused, I will finish my book and there’ll be more prose for people. The poems I read tonight, I wrote three of them today. It’s this style of party poetry that I feel like I’ve created, but then there’s this one T.S. Eliot poem called Virginia, which is kind of a party poem. It’s about repetition and movement, discussing feeling, transition and the idea of being moved. That’s what you’re trying to do with a party poem. You’re trying to keep the energy alive in the room.
You say you wrote three of your poems today; is your poetry something you try not to ruminate on for too long?
I think it depends, you know, and I think also different poets have different offices. I’ve got poems I’ve written that are accidentally profound. I kind of write them flippantly. Every ten poems, there’ll be one that’s like, ‘okay, wow, this is really something’. So yeah, there are other poets that I go to for more weighty, more dense writing. And they inspire me too; I think it’s important that range is there. I’m almost there as a relief artist and I take pleasure in that. I think it’s an important role.
The tone of a poem doesn’t always need to mirror its weight.
Exactly. You can write a poem about death and it can be jovial, it can be light.
You label yourself a ‘dub poet and dancehall selector’. How did you come across those genres and who are your biggest inspirations within them?
It’s a thing from my dad – he’s a Christian man and I think he’s had his own struggles with secular music and his relationship to it. But when I was a kid, he would talk a lot about Mutabaruka, John Cooper Clark, Big Youth, U-Roy, Ranking Dread, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Eek-A-Mouse, Smiley Culture and John Agard – dancehall DJs and dub poets, or punk poets even. These are all names that I remember and loved.
Here’s the thing, ‘dub poet’ and ‘dancehall selector’, I say them kind of in jest. My friend Lord Tusk, he’s a serious, serious selector and he’s got records for days. If I do a show with him, those influences are shown more. The notion of dub poetry is a very, very hallowed form. It’s a serious thing. I was tired of being called a spoken word artist and I was tired of people not being sure if they’re allowed to call me a rapper or not. People were like, ‘so is it poetry you do?’ I was like, okay, look, ‘dub poet’, ‘dancehall selector’, that’s it. Simple.
Thanh Ma
When people picture the names and faces at the forefront of the underground rap scene, I think they often don’t make an immediate association to dub poetry, or maybe even poetry at all. Would you agree that a lot of people who are part of that scene wouldn’t necessarily think to attend a poetry night?
Yeah, but you know what the thing is? I take a lot of pride and a lot of pleasure in the different backgrounds of the people that I socialise with. And also the way in which they’re all curious people. They’re seekers and they’re diggers and they’re researchers. They want to find the connections and the roots and the sources of things. I have a sort of disparate group of friends, but they’ve all found each other, I guess through me, but then through what it is I’m doing, which is poetry, and these events. It’s parties, but it’s also poetry nights. And it’s the after-parties as much as the showcases in the early evening. I think there are other worlds that see certain cultural happenings as anathema to what they think of as being cool or hip or trendy. Whereas I’m like, ‘what’s cool, hip and trendy is what I think is cool, hip and trendy’.
A lot of people think of poetry as being stuffy, or elitist and aloof. And it can be. But then I’ve got poetry friends who wouldn’t want to go to certain club nights, because they think it’s too hip and too cool for them. My job is to show the hip, trendy people that they’re fine and chill. And the elitist people that they can be fine and chill. To completely dismantle all of those sorts of barriers. I just want to be able to spread the gospel of entertainment.
